I practice real estate in Broomfield, CO and I'm passionate about creating higher standards in real estate. I read some posts on Active Rain about Honesty. In response, I think the issue of honesty goes much deeper than a blog post or platitudes like ‘honesty is the best policy'. I believe questionable honesty, marginal integrity, and wavering ethics are an epidemic in our industry. Years ago, I worked for The Ken Blanchard Companies (author of The One Minute Manger). Ken used to say, "perception is realty", meaning if our customers perceive us to be dishonest or unethical, then all the jumping up and down and writing blog posts about how honest we are won't change a thing. Their perception is real. Steven Levitt, author of Freakonomics reveals dishonest behavior in many walks of life from school teachers, to realtors, to sumo wrestlers, based on the structure of their incentive, meaning most of us are given an incentive to be dishonest. So how do we "raise the bar" in our industry? To me, it all starts with a clear sense of shared purpose-why do we do what we do? If we answered that question, then we would create higher principles and standards around that purpose, which then leads to better people and systems, which ultimately leads to a higher quality of service to the end customer. This is where the NAR comes in--the standards are simply too low. It's all too easy for anyone with a pulse to become a realtor and start advising people on the largest financial transaction in their life, hoping they'll make a tidy commission. Or maybe, just maybe, a higher purpose starts from the ground up with a group of high minded professionals chatting on blog posts...
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