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Finding Inspiration
By Suzann D. Silverman on Feb 28, 2013 in People
It’s inspiring to hear the details of a success story, and never more so than when the person had to fight their way to the top. Talk to a female executive in commercial real estate, and chances are you’ll walk away with more than a few such inspirations. Talk to 25 of them, and you’ll be overwhelmed with good ideas, advice and insights. And regardless of whether you’re male or female, you’ll want to put them to use.
Needless to say, finishing up work on Commercial Property Executive’s March 2013 feature, Top Women in Real Estate, I had more new ideas than I knew what to do with. OK, true confessions, we didn’t talk to all 25—a few were so busy we never got them on the phone. But most made themselves available, and their stories provided a lesson in perseverance, ingenuity and dedication.
While these traits might be expected of such a group, some less likely characteristics also emerged during the course of our interviews. Among them was what seemed an unusually prevalent (though not omnipresent) tendency toward self awareness, an ability to recognize and admit to strengths and weaknesses that doesn’t always survive the climb to the top rungs of the career ladder. Beyond the admission, it was evident in an expressed willingness to listen and communicate, as well as to identify and emphasize the best characteristics of their team members.
With self awareness can come humility and even insecurity, and while that latter trait might not seem a natural fit for aggressive dealmakers, two of the most successful brokers in New York City, Mary Ann Tighe of CBRE Group Inc. and Tara Stacom of Cushman & Wakefield Inc., admitted to it—and illustrated how they put it to good use. Another top-ranked female executive, Christie Kelly, CFO of Duke Realty Corp., stressed the importance of learning from mistakes. “If you aren’t failing at times, you’re really not challenging yourself or your business team to be the best,” she declared, in a loose reflection of 18th century poet Alexander Pope’s lesson.
A common trait among the group was a constant desire to keep learning from experiences and new opportunities. They look outward as well as inward for new ideas, and a couple even seek feedback from their children, putting faith in the honesty and perception of the young.
Remembering their own experiences, most of them actively mentor others, in particular other women, both formally and informally. And they enthusiastically offered a variety of advice for anyone striving to advance in the industry.
Among the most salient suggestions:
- The importance of hard work got top billing, along with a commitment to fulfill promises.
- The need for honesty and integrity also ranked high among their recommendations. “It takes a lifetime to build your reputation, and it takes a minute to lose it,” cautioned Blanca Commercial Real Estate president & CEO Tere Blanca.
- Networking and relationships also figured large, with industry organizations providing not just that benefit but the opportunity to improve knowledge and develop mentors, as well.
- A willingness—and even eagerness—to embrace change came up a number of times, with Jones Lang Lasalle Inc.’s new CEO of the Americas, Lauralee Martin, pointing to real estate’s primary characteristic as being “flexibility, flexibility, flexibility.”
- Other recommendations included an admonition to focus on the client and their goals, along with a reminder to value team members.
But perhaps the advice that stood out most for me in this highly technological age—and it came, not surprisingly, from three very successful brokers—was the importance of human interaction. Especially in a relationship-oriented business like real estate, they cautioned, phone is better than email, and face-to-face interaction is even more effective. It’s easy to say “no” in an email, they pointed out, and a lot can be lost in communication without the opportunity to hear the tone of a person’s voice and view their facial expression.
With such words of wisdom to their credit, it’s no wonder these women have achieved so high a level of success.
Suzann D. Silverman is editorial director of Commercial Property Executive. Read more about CPE’s Top Women in Real Estate in the March 2013 issue, and view the slideshow featuring their words of wisdom on cpexecutive.com.
