In partnership with
I just built a brand new 12-week coaching program for KW Thrive Santa Cruz!
In the weeks ahead, I will be sharing some of the same content with you here in the newsletter. Each week in the program has a clear focus, designed to move agents step by step towards consistent production.
The 1-on-1 coaching track begins with a personality assessment. We use the Keller Personality Assessment (KPA) to build a GPS (Goals, Priorities, and Strategies) and 4-1-1 plan. This process gives agents a clear starting point. The goal is to match activities to natural strengths and build consistency from there.
If you’re interested in joining, contact me directly.
FROM THE CALM AGENT DESK
Personality and Production: Why Who You Are Shapes How You Sell
From Assessment to Action
Last week in our KW Thrive coaching program, agents completed a personality assessment called the Keller Personality Assessment (KPA). We’re now using those results to build GPS (Goals, Priorities, and Strategies) and daily action plans. Instead of asking agents to master every lead generation tactic, we’re identifying the few activities that align best with their natural strengths.
The goal is focus. In real estate, consistency depends on building systems that align with personality.
Why Personality Matters in Business
Personality traits influence business performance. Research shows that traits such as conscientiousness and emotional stability have strong correlations with job outcomes. These traits affect how people respond to pressure, handle rejection, and organize their days.
Olga Khazan, a journalist and author of “Me, But Better”, spent a year working to intentionally change her personality. In a recent interview she explained that personality is not permanently fixed. Scientists studying personality now view it as patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that can move along a spectrum. Change happens when a person connects actions directly to long-term goals and values. For example, individuals who want to advance in their careers may deliberately practice habits that raise conscientiousness, such as consistent time blocking, or they may strengthen agreeableness by improving how they handle conflict and set boundaries.
These small but repeated behaviors gradually shift traits in ways that support business success.
Assessments provide a way to identify which traits may help an agent stay consistent and which traits may need support.
What is the KPA?
The Keller Personality Assessment (KPA) is a comprehensive personality and cognitive assessment tool designed to measure how a person naturally thinks, behaves, and approaches challenges. It is used inside Keller Williams for real estate agents, but the instrument itself is not limited to real estate. It evaluates personality traits that apply across industries and roles, including leadership, customer service, and operations. The KPA helps individuals and organizations identify strengths, potential challenges, and the types of environments where someone is most likely to succeed.
While the KPA measures a wide set of characteristics, two traits stand out in their impact on real estate agent performance: Intensity and Adaptability.
Intensity measures drive, urgency, and the ability to sustain focus on goals. Agents with high intensity often attack lead generation with energy, handle a higher volume of conversations, and push transactions forward even when faced with obstacles. Low intensity does not mean lack of success—it often shows up as a steadier, relationship-centered style of business building. These agents may close fewer transactions in the short term but can excel in creating long-term referral pipelines.
Adaptability measures flexibility, openness to change, and the ability to adjust when conditions shift. Agents with high adaptability tend to manage multiple client needs smoothly, pivot quickly in changing markets, and navigate unexpected challenges in transactions without losing momentum. Agents with lower adaptability often prefer structure and predictability, which can make them highly effective when following proven models and systems, but they may need intentional strategies to handle sudden changes.
Together, Intensity and Adaptability shape how an agent approaches both lead generation and client service. A highly intense and highly adaptable agent might thrive in fast-paced markets and unpredictable deal environments. A steadier but less adaptable agent may need more structure, but can excel in maintaining trust-based relationships and executing repeatable systems with precision.
Understanding these traits allows agents to build a business plan that fits who they are, while also identifying where support systems or growth activities are needed.
Personality is Mutable
For decades, psychologists believed that personality traits were fixed after early adulthood. Newer research shows that traits can shift when people connect actions directly to their long-term goals and values.
Change is about building new behaviors that gradually move traits in a useful direction. People often change traits without realizing it. Someone may become more conscientious as they advance in their career, or more socially confident as they practice putting themselves in new situations. These changes come from repeated behaviors that shape identity over time.
For real estate agents, this creates practical opportunities:
An agent who wants to raise conscientiousness can practice structured time blocking, daily lead tracking, and regular accountability check-ins. Over time, the behaviors reinforce the underlying trait.
An agent who wants to strengthen agreeableness can work on setting boundaries in a calm and professional way, or practice handling client objections with empathy. Each small success helps shift the trait in a positive direction.
An agent who wants to expand openness can commit to learning a new skill each quarter, such as AI tools for marketing, or testing an unfamiliar prospecting method.
The research emphasizes that personality shifts occur through consistent action, not wishful thinking.
Mood follows action.
When an agent acts in alignment with the person they want to become, the personality traits start to follow.
The important message is that self-awareness gives agents a starting point, but practice creates the change.
Game Plan
Personality is a starting point.
With awareness and the right planning, traits can guide strategies that are both consistent and sustainable.
Focus on a few activities that align with who you are. Stretch into growth areas deliberately. Use tools such as AI to amplify efforts.
In real estate, success comes from consistently applying strategies that match personal strengths.
How AI Can Help
AI can support the alignment between traits and business activities.
AI PROMPT
Prompt for Personality Assessment Analysis
Act as a real estate productivity coach. I will upload my personality assessment report. Analyze my results and build a strategy for me. Identify the strengths in my personality that can help me succeed in real estate and explain how they support consistency, focus, and lead generation. Point out potential challenges that may affect prospecting, client communication, negotiation, or time management, and suggest systems or accountability methods to offset them. Recommend three to five prospecting activities that align with my strongest traits and are realistic for daily or weekly execution, and include one or two activities that will stretch me outside my comfort zone so I can grow over time. Draft a simple GPS (Goal, Priorities, Strategies) tailored to my personality profile and show how it could be converted into a 4-1-1 (monthly and weekly plan). Suggest time management habits or routines that match my personality traits, and include tools or scripts I can use to stay consistent. Keep all recommendations practical, specific to real estate production, and directly actionable.
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