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...