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In 2010, Domino’s was last in taste tests against every fast food company in America and had gone backwards two years in a row.

The new CEO, Patrick Doyle, stood up in front of the whole company and said the thing nobody wanted to say out loud.

“You and I at Domino’s have a problem, and our problem is our pizza tastes like sh*t.”

Dom Thurbon tells that story in his new book, To Be Honest, and again in Track 08 of The Edit, where he joins Samantha McLean and Chris Hanley.

Dom says that between 2010 and 2020, Domino’s outperformed Netflix, Apple, Amazon, Google and Tesla as a share. It started with a CEO willing to name the problem.

“When it comes to change and improvement, truth is like a superpower.”

Real estate’s sh*t pizza

So Sam asks Chris the obvious question: what is real estate’s version of that pizza? He doesn’t take long to answer.

“Leadership is the sh*t pizza.”

Chris says if you gave a room of real estate leaders a test asking for the five things they need to do to build a better business, nearly all of them would pass. The real question is why they aren’t doing those things.

In his view, the central issue in most businesses is bosses not telling themselves the truth, and not telling their staff the truth, when everyone already knows the answer.

For older leaders especially, he says, success makes it easy to believe you no longer need to change. The single most important thing a leader can do over the decades is ask for help. And the truth has one advantage people forget.

“Even if you don’t like telling it, it’s faster.”

Them truth, we truth, me truth

Dom, who spent five years as a partner at EY, uses a framework from the book to explain why change stalls. “Them truth” is when we talk honestly about everyone outside the room – staff about bosses, agents about property managers.

“We truth” is when we say “we as an industry have a problem with underquoting”. He saw it in what he describes as Australia’s largest ever culture review at the time, run at EY by Elizabeth Broderick.

“We as an organisation were happy to sit around and say we have a problem with inclusion. You know what? No one did say my management style is not inclusive.”

That third kind, “me truth”, is where the change happens. Someone puts their hand up and says, I underquote, or I as a leader do this. Until leaders get there, Dom says, change is slow and hard.

Why we lie

Chris wants to know what the research says about why people tell porkies. There is a whole chapter in the book called Why We Lie, and Dom starts with why the question matters.

“You can’t lie your way into orbit, right? You can’t lie your way to a space program. You can’t even guess your way there.”

He sorts the research into five reasons. We lie out of self-interest, for ourselves or our tribe. We lie because it’s easy – people lie more when it’s simply made easier, even when the reward doesn’t change.

We lie to fit in, the way people adopt a group’s beliefs to belong to it. We lie because we think it’s the right thing to do, the white lie told for someone else’s benefit. And a very small number of people lie because they are pathological liars.

Dom adds that, on average, women are more likely to lie when they think it helps someone else, and men when they think it helps themselves.

For a lot of leaders, though, the reason is simpler. Telling the truth is just really scary.

Lying without consequences

Chris has noticed something else. He says there used to be concrete consequences for porkies, and over the last decade that has gone, whether in business or politics. He counts leaving information out as just as bad as a deliberate lie, and recalls hearing someone say something was wrong and immoral “but it’s not illegal, therefore it’s okay”.

Dom calls that the middle of the bullseye. He says the data shows we’re not just consumers of misinformation – we spread it. According to Dom, 70 per cent of people will reshare social media content without fact-checking it, and without even reading the full article.

“We are complicit in the problem.”

The book opens with a quote from Sam Harris: “There is no longer any moral opprobrium attached to lying.”

Go first

Chris asks how the industry teaches the next generation that telling the truth is better and more productive. Dom’s answer is two words.

“The simple two-word answer is go first.”

It comes back to “me truth” and role modelling. If leaders want honesty from their people, they have to be the ones having the hard conversations first.

Larry the liar

Then Chris sets up a role play. He’s a vendor comparing three agents. One has promised substantially more than the evidence supports – he’s heard someone call that agent “Larry the liar they believe”. So why don’t you believe in my property? Dom plays the honest agent.

“I believe in your property so much that I’m not willing to let you be disappointed in three months’ time when the answer from the market comes back as the answer I’m giving you.”

He doesn’t call the other agent a liar. They could be mistaken, or see the market differently. This is his experience, his track record and his best assessment – and he’s not going to “pre-disappoint” anyone. Sam gives the answer nine out of ten.

Chris says it would survive the kitchen table, with two things added. First, he knows a truckload of agents whose business is built on honesty. Second, agents walk into every lounge room with a dilemma. They have to give sellers hope, and he still remembers a line from the first Hunger Games: a little bit of hope is good, too much hope is dangerous. He believes most sellers already have a good idea of what their home is worth before the agent walks in. Everyone has the same information now. What separates agents is technique – how they present the options and guide the conversation.

Truth is a skill

That point about technique is what Dom says most people get wrong. In the research, lying is studied as a behaviour and truth is discussed as a concept, as if truth is simply what’s left when you take the lying away.

“It’s not. Truth is a skill. You have to learn how to do it. You have to find the right words, learn how to frame things, step into discomfort.”

Chris says the greatest emotion running through real estate right now is fear – about the market, the value of people’s own homes and the weekly meetings with sellers when nothing is happening. The truth is hard, he says, and it never stops being hard. You just get better at delivering it.

Can it be taught? Dom says unequivocally yes. It starts with deciding the truth matters enough to step into the discomfort, then comes the technique: managing your emotions, finding the words, learning scripts so your energy goes on staying calm. His advice for a difficult conversation is to write it first and practise.

“Under stress, we don’t rise to meet expectations, we fall to our level of training.”

Chris adds that someone told him more than 60 per cent of people in sales teams didn’t go through the GFC. In the GFC, his team agreed a written agenda with each seller for their weekly meeting, and both sides kept a copy.

When a junior speaks up

Sam asks Dom to role-play the other direction. A junior team member tells you a decision you’ve made is hurting clients. What should your first two sentences be? Dom starts with thanks, acknowledges how hard it was to come in and say it, and asks them to tell him more. When in doubt, seek to understand.

“They will learn more in the two seconds after they stop speaking and you start reacting. They will learn more about culture and expectation and behaviour than they will learn in a hundred offsites and 50 values on the wall.”

Honest about falling income

Sam’s last question goes to Chris. If the team is worried about falling income, how do you talk honestly about the business without sugar-coating it? Chris has had that conversation recently. You tell them everything, he says, and if you’re in a place where you can’t, you probably haven’t built a very good organisation. If people come through your door and tell you the hard stuff, you’re lucky.

His view is that nobody gets through this market alone. If your culture is split into lots of little groups, it won’t survive. The answer is transparency, and lots of truth.

What you’ll take away

  • The Domino’s turnaround that started with one honest sentence.
  • The difference between them truth, we truth and me truth, and why change waits for the last one.
  • The five reasons people lie, according to the research.
  • What the honest agent says when “Larry the liar” has quoted higher.
  • How much hope is too much in a listing presentation.
  • What to say first when a junior tells you you’ve got it wrong.

Dom’s practical advice is the place to start. This week, pick the hard conversation you’ve been putting off – with a seller, a team member or yourself. Write it down, practise it, then go first.

This is The Edit

The Edit is Elite Agent’s real estate mixtape – a series of practical, honest and occasionally uncomfortable conversations with the voices and hard-earned wisdom worth paying attention to.

Each track begins with one hard question facing agents and principals now. Samantha McLean and her co-hosts stay with it long enough to get past the easy answer.

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Explore every episode of The Edit.