The Science o
Why Some Mortgage Employment R By Steve Rennie
also described “hygiene factors” or environmental factors which include: Company Policy and Administration, Supervision—Technical, Salary, Super-vision—Personal and Working Conditions. Dr. Herzberg’s theory is still highly regarded within business today, as it has served as the foundation for a myriad of assessment tools (including our Model-Match Assessment) used to measure employee job satisfaction/dissatisfaction. His major contribution is the premise that an employee can be motivated, but still dissatisfied which can ultimately lead to a drop in productivity or the loss of the employee to another employer. Two-Factor Theory lies behind a key component of one of the biggest selling business books of the past 25 years, 1989’s First Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman. In the book the authors provide the 12 fundamental questions that employees ask of themselves, and that great managers/leaders need to answer if they hope to keep their employees motivated and engaged. The 12 questions are:
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hy do s o m e professionals just seem to “fit” better with their company? Why do some salespeople perform better at one company than another? These are questions that have driven those of us in the recruiting profession—more specific within mortgage sales recruiting—to try to identify the reasons for a successful fit and extraordinary performance so they can be replicated. When my company was founded in 2008, it was a challenging time for the mortgage industry, yet the constant through those challenges and through every cycle the industry has faced, has been the need to attract and retain highly productive mortgage sales professionals with books of business. Our experience in recruiting these specific professionals taught us that fit and production are byproducts of what we call “ModelMatch.” Where Model-Match exists, high production and longterm relationships are realized. Where Model-Match is absent, lack of production and failed long term relationships are more than likely. We have previously written about what the practice of Model-Matching looks like. Our definition: Model-matching is the pro-cess of improving the mutual results from relationships between lenders and originators. It is a comprehensive process of assessment of both parties across a wide range of factors, including leadership, culture, business, operations, technology and geography. This process involves due diligence and consideration of both objective and subjective factors of a relationship in order to produce a holistic picture of positive-matched and negative-matched areas within the relationship. What we have yet to describe are the psychological foundations for ModelMatching. This article will provide a condensed overview of research behind the concept of Model-Matching. With the respect for the principles of Dr. Robert Cialdini within the mortgage industry, relative to the topics of influence and per-
suasion, we believe such a grounding of our practices in widely accepted psychological research will be appreciated. Where does Model-Matching come from?
Hierarchy of Needs— Abraham Maslow Dr. Abraham Maslow was an American psychologist who published Motivation and Personality, in 1954. Maslow’s theory, which is familiar to anyone who has every taken an introductory psychology class, describes human motivation as a result of pursuing more highly valued needs only after more basic needs have been met. According to Maslow, human needs proceed upward along this path: Physiological, Safety, Love/Belonging, Esteem and SelfActualization.
While Maslow’s work has largely been by-passed by other theories today, what his work established was the clear relationship between motivation and both internal and external factors that could be addressed by employers to improve job satisfaction and performance.
Two-Factor Theory— Frederick Herzberg Dr. Frederick Herzberg was an American psychologist who published The Motivation to Work in 1959. In it, he described two competing sets of factors that determine how motivated a worker is to perform in his or her job. He described “motivator factors,” which include: Achievement, Recognition, Work Itself, Responsibility, Promotion and Growth. He
1. Do I know what is expected of me at work? 2. Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right? 3. Do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day? 4. In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for doing good work? 5. Does my supervisor or someone at work seem to care about me as a person? 6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development? 7. At work, do my opinions seem to count? 8. Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel my job is important? 9. Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work? 10. Do I have a best friend at work? 11. In the last six months, has someone talked to me about my progress? 12. This last year, have I had the opportunity at work to learn and grow?