The path of a leader is one that is constantly changing and evolving, as leaders themselves grow and learn. The idea of learning as a lifelong journey has unique application in the leadership space. A leader who embraces the concept of learning in leadership, as a continuous process, sees learning not just as a periodic experience for certain stages of their journey but as an effort they need to commit to on a daily basis.
Leaders who understand the said importance of learning in leadership, and see it as a primary, daily commitment to making themselves, inspire growth and development for not just their teams but those around them. They create the growth that is stimulated in their culture, instead of allowing their culture to control growth.
Kelly Davies is among the leaders who believe that continuous learning and growing is one of the secret mantras to success. As a Realtor & Team Leader of The Kelly Davies Homes Team, she makes sure to offer an adequate learning environment to the team members while delivering the best of real estate services.
The First Love
Kelly enjoyed looking at home and design work for as long as she can remember. And as her teen years came through, she could see herself owning and managing her own real estate business. To her, the idea always grew and never faded into the back of her mind. Taking the first steps towards her dreams, Kelly pursued a degree in business administration from Roosevelt University in Chicago.
From thereon, she kept her core focus in residential real estate as she loves the freedom real estate provides and the ability to offer exceptional service to many people throughout the community.
Everyone Needs Help
When Kelly founded The Kelly Davies Homes Team around four years ago, she was quite proud of the hard work she had put in. In her words, “I always say I was lucky enough, blessed enough, and worked hard enough to get to a point where I could no longer be an independent agent.”
However, Kelly was putting in around 80-90 work weeks with two young children. Soon, she realized she needed help to manage her personal and professional life alongside offering the best of her abilities to the clients. So, she started by hiring an Assistant and a Buyer Agent. And today, the number of The Kelly Davies Homes Team stands tall with 12 agents and employees collaborating together to help people make sound decisions when it comes to real estate investment.
Kelly also needed help in understanding the need to spend out money on growth prospects and investments. However, it was something that she learned on her own. She calls it the biggest hurdle in her professional journey that is spending money without a real plan in place and not having enough funds early on to really run the business as she always wanted. As hardworking as she has always been, Kelly came up with the solution to the problem herself. She states, “I just continued to work really hard & invest a lot of my income back into my business which is how I am now able to have the business that I do & help many other agents grow in their careers.”
A Helping Hand
As the team leader, Kelly oversees all of the daily operations, and everything from talking with new potential clients, providing market analysis reports, to reviewing all paperwork & offers before they are present, and also handling the marketing aspects of the business. However, besides having an amazing team, Kelly also appreciates the helping hand that the technology brings to the table. She couples the hardworking team with the technology to ensure optimal client satisfaction by having smart systems in place.
This helping hand from technology allows the Buyers & Sellers to use the industry-leading tools and find a new home or sell their current one. She says, “We offer the finest in cutting-edge technology, and because we are a larger team we also are able to offer 24/7 services to our clients. And to accomplish the same, I have a fantastic team of employees in place that put everything into action.”
Growing Learning Mindset
Kelly believes that a dynamic leader is highly self-aware, therefore always learning and growing. She integrates the same thought into her leadership by ensuring her team grows and learns on a continuous basis. To achieve the same, she has placed numerous training opportunities throughout the year for her as well as the team. Consequently, the team performs consistently due to the said lifelong learning attitude and also innovates novel ways to best serve the clients.
And to start building that learning mindset, for young and aspiring leaders, Kelly advises getting a head start by hiring a mentor in place as soon as they can. For her, it was her broker who would help Kelly whenever she needed help with anything or had any questions. “Having a leader is crucial as there is no way anyone can predict or navigate all the variables that will arise in your real estate career,” states Kelly.
A Future of Growth
Kelly perceives the future of her team and the business to be poised for enormous growth. She is quite content with the progress they have made and would like to see The Kelly Davies Homes Team continue to prosper and grow. “I would like to continue to responsibly be able to ‘feed’ everyone that is currently a team member with plenty of business opportunities while growing enough to allow for more agents to join the team,” she concludes.
The journey of leadership brings a lot of learning and growth with it. No one becomes a leader without having a lot of experience and learning along the way. This is both by design and also by necessity. The idea of being able to authoritatively lead organizations is something that requires enormous amounts of time, effort, and energy on the part of anyone who can manage to get to the top. And people succeed as leaders because they have a mindset they can learn by emulating, and applying what they do. Kelly Davies is a prime example of a dynamic leader from whom a lifelong learning attitude can be learned.
