In Track 02 of The Edit, Samantha McLean, Chris Hanley and Fiona Blayney examine the gap between managing people and developing them – and why AI efficiency cannot replace human coaching, communication and judgement.
Almost every real estate agency says development matters. Far fewer can name the person whose actual job is to make people better.
That is the question at the centre of Track 02 of The Edit: who is actually teaching your people right now?
Samantha McLean and Chris Hanley are joined by Fiona Blayney, founder of Real Plus and a coach, trainer and consultant who has spent almost 25 years inside real estate businesses across Australia, New Zealand and beyond.
The conversation begins with what Fiona can diagnose within minutes of entering an agency: people are often given a new title before they are given the knowledge, technique and structured support required to perform the role.
A new title is not a development plan
In most businesses, Fiona says, nobody formally owns coaching. There is no clearly accountable person, framework, process or defined outcome. Development is left to the business owner, a team leader, the person at the next desk or whoever happens to have enough experience to help.
“Most of it actually happens by osmosis. And we think we’re doing it.”
That gap becomes obvious when a receptionist moves into property management, a property manager becomes a team leader or a department head takes on broader responsibility. The role changes immediately; the learning often does not.
Fiona’s model starts with four questions: what outcome are we trying to achieve, where is this person now, what is the gap between the two, and what pathway and check-ins will move them forward?
Coaching is not entertainment
The episode draws a sharp distinction between information and technique. Information is easy to distribute. Technique – how to ask the question, conduct the conversation, read the person and adapt in the moment – is much harder to teach.
“Coaching is not entertainment,” Fiona says. “There are elements of making a person feel good, but not everybody gets a ribbon.”
Real coaching is not a motivational hour or a collection of scripts. It is a deliberate program that moves someone from their current position to a future position, shaped around the person in front of the coach.
Chris adds that even the best script is useless if the person delivering it does not know how to communicate. For leaders, that means modelling the behaviour, teaching technique and repeating the message until it becomes part of the operating rhythm.
AI should not remove the human
The same leadership problem appears in the rush towards AI and automation.
Technology can remove administrative work and create valuable efficiency. But the episode asks what happens when the promise of automation becomes “you never have to talk to a client again”.
The warning is not anti-AI. It is about remembering what the service exists to do.
“Sometimes, in and amongst the excitement of something shiny and new, we lose sight of what we’re here to do in the first place,” Fiona says.
For property managers, sales agents, landlords, tenants, buyers and sellers, the hardest situations are rarely solved by another automated email. Misread tone and a single poorly chosen word can turn tension into conflict.
Sam’s prescription is simple: if an issue runs beyond two emails, pick up the phone.
“Talking to another human being is the single best way to solve conflict.”
What you’ll take away
- Why most agencies manage people without deliberately developing them
- How to tell whether coaching has an owner, an outcome and a real process
- Why technique matters more than another script or information dump
- What leaders must teach when people move into new roles
- How automation can quietly erode a service promise
- Why the two-email rule can prevent conflict and return control to the working day
- How to bring external learning back into the business and test it against your clients, market and brand
The practical challenge for every principal is to make development visible: decide who owns it, define what better looks like and build a rhythm in which people can watch, practise, receive feedback and try again.
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.
Fiona Blayney and Chris Hanley will continue the conversation at PM1, held at the Sydney Hilton on 13–14 September 2026. Find out more at PM1.