Ginger Bell and Fobby Naghmi on leadership gaps in mortgage lending
On the latest episode of the Power House podcast, host Diego Sanchez sits down for a group chat with Fobby Naghmi, senior vice president at Homecoming Mortgage and sharesand Ginger Bell, founder of Edumarketing. The conversation will focus on Bell’s and Naghmi’s co-authoring of the real estate and mortgage textbook “Leadership Matters,” and the importance of communication and training for leadership development in the mortgage industry.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. To start, Bell and Naghmi explore why leadership is important and what motivated them to write the book.
Clock: Leadership is everything, honestly. Whether you lead yourself, volunteers, your child’s soccer team, an entire organization, a nonprofit, or your business, it all starts with leadership.
Naghmi: To echo Ginger: everyone has a voice. As leaders, we each have our own unique individual voice, even as we are influenced by the voices of others. When we have ideas and thoughts, it is important to express them. I’ve been moved by the authors we’ve brought together since we started putting this together.
Sanchez: You have many different voices that you share in this book. Ginger, why did you decide to go that route?
Clock: I believe leadership is a collective. We have so many different industries in our industry. When we selected the authors to be part of this collaboration, we specifically wanted to have individuals who could have a voice from those different areas.
Sanchez: Ginger, how does a good leader lead his or her team and company through these difficult times?
Clock: There is a chapter in Keith Canter’s book about the “red pen” culture. He spoke specifically about managing and leading change, while giving people a collective voice to share their fears, and the importance of having a plan.
Good leaders are not necessarily those who have a plan. Good leaders often ask: what is that plan? What does that look like? And how are we going to put this together? It’s about collaboration. The book has so many stories that lead through that. As an industry we need to come together and grow as leaders.
Sanchez: Fobby, do you think there is a leadership shortage in the mortgage lending space?
Naghmi: I think there is a shortage based on what the mortgage industry itself is like. You have a top producer in the industry. It is inevitable that he or she will become the manager. But he or she may not be groomed for leadership, so we create the deficit. Just because you are a top performer does not mean you can lead, because we need to reshape ourselves.
Clock: Just because you’re good at sales doesn’t necessarily mean you’re good at leadership. The deficit we have is preparing people to become leaders, which is why this book is so important.
To end the conversation, Sanchez brings up a point about how positive daily habits impact a leader’s performance. Bell and Naghmi share their perspectives.
Clock: Planning is the most important thing for me. Understanding the priorities and long-term projects and then picking small pieces of those long-term projects to add to today’s list.
Naghmi: For my morning, the first hour and a half to two hours consists of meditation-grounding prayers. This is followed by exercise or yoga, where I move my body. It has to start with me being grounded.
