Stormy Waters, Steady Ship: Leadership in Times of Crisis
All times of challenge--no matter their nature--come with two basic leadership truths. First, they demand all hands on deck. Whether the crisis is regional, such as hurricanes or wildfires, or global, such as a pandemic, everyone on the property management team has to row together.
(This article, in slightly different form, originally appeared in BOMA Magazine.)
And therein lies the second truth about leadership. You can’t row together without a qualified team. Leadership in times of calm or chaos is as much about those being led as much as the ability of the leader to inspire.
“People on high-performing property management teams have landed there for a reason,” says Randal Froebelius, BOMA Fellow, P.Eng., president and general manager of Equity ICI Real Estate Services Inc. “They have the talents and the ability to accomplish what needs to get done in a crisis. With experience comes a certain level of instinct, knowing how to respond. I believe that members of our team that have worked with us for a certain amount of time understand what client expectations are, what our philosophies are on customer service, problem solving and leaving the client feeling like we’ve delivered on our value proposition.”
“Having a team that has passion for what they’re doing, who share the same focus that you do and understand your goals and vision is essential,” agrees JLL’s Chicago-based general manager, Maggie Amaya, RPA, FMA. She is also secretary/treasurer of BOMA Suburban Chicago. But inspiring that passion takes a certain kind of leader. “Leaders should project honesty and confidence. Those are two of the things a leader needs in times of crisis.”
Inspiration leads to engagement, critical always but particularly in times of crisis, says Froebelius, who has served as chair of both the Toronto association and BOMA Canada and currently serves as vice chair of BOMA International. While COVID remains top-of-mind for all members, you can just add it to the list of challenges that are part and parcel of property management.
DEFINING MOMENTS
For Froebelius, a defining career moment came when he became chair of BOMA Canada. There are 11 local organizations in Canada, compared to the 88 that make up the US infrastructure, and until fairly recently, they tended to act independently. Although BOMA Canada was established in 1987, it wasn’t until the early 2000s that the organizations really began to collaborate under the umbrella of the national association.
“For Froebelius, a defining career moment came when he became chair of BOMA Canada, an affiliate of BOMA International with 11 local associations of its own across the country. “Part of my challenge in the role of chair was to continue to build the trust of the local associations,” he says, “and ask their help in building a stronger, more cohesive bond between the local associations and BOMA Canada.” Froebelius spent the better part of his term making a conscious effort to visit each of the locals and build those relationships. By the end of that year, he continues, members across Canada were engaged in the creation of a strategic plan. “I’ve always felt it was a huge success.” And it was so, he says, because the local leaders saw the vision, and because he was unafraid to ask for help and “show some vulnerability.”
Wait. What? Vulnerability . . . in leadership? Absolutely, says Froebelius: “You have to be open to other points of view, especially in an association as regionally dispersed as BOMA. Our association has been built on collaboration and inclusivity. Otherwise, you’ll never get buy-in from the people you’re trying to rally.”
Boyd Zoccola agrees. “You have to be aware of what your weaknesses are and call in additional strength,” says the EVP of Hokanson Companies Inc. in Indianapolis. “That’s the time to surround yourself with people with different strengths than yours and then rely on them.” For the record, Zoccola was national chairman of BOMA for the 2011-2012 term and has chaired a range of committees and task forces including Medical Office.
What Froebelius calls vulnerability, Sandrena Robinson, BOMA Fellow, calls “empathy. Empathy will guide a leader’s communication style during the worst of situations,” says the LEED Green associate and general manager in the Denver office of LBA Realty. “People always respond better when they feel someone understands what they might be going through.”
But crises are not always events. They can also be sourced in attitudes, as Robinson attests.
“My team was victimized by unconscious bias from a customer for several years,” Robinson recalls. “The client felt the team performed poorly in its management duties, even though every other customer applauded the team for always delivering Level-Five service.”
Her response to the issue was positive, definitive and an affirmation for team and client alike. “The customer was aware of the TOBY Award and acknowledged that it epitomizes exceptional management services from a property team,” says Robinson, who was 2014 president of the Metro Denver association.
She admits it was a gamble. On one hand, “I knew that the unwelcomed comments from the customer would stop if we won the competition. But I also knew that if we didn’t win, the loss would play into the mindset of the customer regarding our management abilities. However, I knew my team and had every confidence that we would win.”
And in fact, they did win a 2015 TOBY, and the win came with the expected benefits. “The customer actually began to treat the team with the respect it deserved after we won the award,” she says. “We’ve always been a high-performance team. The TOBY Award merely solidified that fact for everyone.”
LEADERSHIP IN COVID
Of course, the socially distanced gorilla in the room is the ongoing--and often shifting--challenges of the coronavirus pandemic. “Wrong decisions can impact your team’s confidence in you,” says Zoccola, and amidst the ever-changing guidance from local, state and national regulators, all property managers faced that risk. Avoiding it is trickier for smaller shops simply because, “there are fewer people to serve as your sounding board.”
While sifting through “information from all levels of government, the very best we can tell our team is that we value their safety above all else and that we continue to evaluate the situation. We want our people to know that we’re constantly looking at what goes on around us and trying to make the best decisions for our team. As a regional firm, we take advantage of others’ white papers and research to help influence our decisions.”
Clear communication throughout is key. “The changing protocols are not an indication of how we lead our teams,” he adds. Even though two return-to-work dates had to be altered due to those changing protocols, “our staff knew we have their safety in mind, because we were communicating with them constantly.”
Every crisis comes with its own set of rules, says Amaya. But the leadership traits that drive the team through successful management of this or any other crisis don’t vary by much. “COVID is separate from a hurricane or fire,” she says. “But the skills to deal with the chaos are pretty much the same. You have to be decisive and take control of the chaos. You have to exercise caution and stay positive at the same time.”
Zoccola isn’t so sure. “There are different types of leaders,” he says. “Just like the leader of a small business probably isn’t the right leader for a Fortune 50 company, the leader of a Fortune 50 company isn’t necessarily the right leader for a small company. In the same way, leadership in times of calm is a little different than when we’re in crisis.”
That, he reiterates, is when managers need to surround themselves with talent and put ego aside. “You need to be willing to surround yourself with people that are as talented or more talented than you are. You see it all the time, where people who try to hold others down or hire B players because they don’t want to hire someone smarter than them. Throughout, you need to be clear and concise and close to the message until you see it’s not working. Then you change the course.”
“It’s been said that you are only as good as your weakest link,” Robinson adds. “If that’s the case, then a well-grounded leader and team will willingly lend the greatest support to the team member who might need it most.”
There’s the implication there of the aforementioned need to row together, a culture of understanding that exists within the property management community, especially among team members who have logged any time at all in the profession. “An effective leader’s style should be predictable, respected and embraced by stakeholders,” says Robinson. “People need to be comfortable with their leader--even if that includes knowing their weaknesses.”
With experience comes understanding and, to use her words, greater empathy. To that extent, the relationships built in times of calm will pay dividends when chaos erupts. After all, “We all have our badges of courage, our battle scars,” Froebelius concludes.
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