Ginger Bell and Fobby Naghmi on leadership deficits in the mortgage industry

In the latest episode of the Power House podcast, host Diego Sanchez sits down for a group chat with Fobby Naghmi, senior vice president at Homecomings Mortgage & Equity, and Ginger Bell, founder of Edumarketing. The conversation covers Bell’s and Naghmi’s co-authored real estate and mortgage guidebook “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 their motivation for writing the book.

Bell: Leadership is everything, honestly. Whether you are leading yourself, volunteers, your kid’s soccer team, an entire organization, a nonprofit or your company, everything begins with leadership. 

Naghmi: To echo Ginger, everyone has a voice. As leaders, we all have our own unique individual voices, even though we may be influenced by other people’s voices. When we have ideas and thoughts, it’s important to get them out there. I’ve been moved by the authors we’ve brought together since we started putting this together. 

Sanchez: You’ve got a lot of different voices that you’re sharing in this book. Ginger, why did you decide to go that route?

Bell: I believe leadership is a collective. In our industry, we have so many different verticals. When we selected the authors to be a part of this collaborative, we specifically wanted to have individuals who could have a voice from those different areas.

Sanchez: Ginger, how does a good leader manage his or her team and company through these tough times?

Bell: There’s a chapter in the book by Keith Canter on ‘red pen’ culture. He specifically talked about managing and leading through change while giving people a collective voice to share their fears, and the importance of having a plan. 

Good leaders aren’t necessarily those that 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 must come together and grow as leaders.

Sanchez: Fobby, do you think there’s a leadership deficit in mortgage?

Naghmi: I think there is a deficit based on how the mortgage industry itself is. You have a top producer in the branch. Inevitably he or she will become the manager. But maybe he or she isn’t guided for leadership, so we create the deficit. Just because you’re a top performer doesn’t mean you can lead, as we need to reframe ourselves. 

Bell: Just because you’re good in sales doesn’t necessarily mean you’re good in leadership. The deficit we have is preparing people to be leaders, and that’s why this book is so important.

To end the conversation, Sanchez brings up a point on how positive daily habits affect the performance of a leader. Bell and Naghmi share their perspectives. 

Bell: Planning is the most important thing for me. Understanding the priorities, long-term projects, and then picking out little pieces of those long-term projects that can be added to the list for today.

Naghmi: For my morning, the first hour and a half to two hours is meditation grounding prayers. After that, physical exercise or yoga follow, where I’m moving my body around. It has to start with me being grounded.