For those in the real estate industry, seeing the glass as half full has
been easier said than done over the past couple years, but a slow
market hasn’t discouraged Pam O’Connor.
“If you don’t have optimism, I don’t care how much other talent or
how many other qualities you have, it’s really hard to lead people,” says
O’Connor, president and CEO of Leading Real Estate Companies of the
World. “You have to be somebody who always sees the silver lining,
because everybody has hiccups.”
Rather than allow her team to get demoralized, O’Connor instead
takes the opportunity to learn from what others
might consider negative situations. LeadingRE, an organization that
networks independent real estate companies from across the country,
has been able to leverage its ability to quickly adapt to changing market conditions.
Smart Business
spoke with O’Connor about how empowerment and recognition keep her team engaged.
Q: How would you describe your leadership style?
We’re not an organization of prima donnas. We’ve got a lot of really
young, bright people here, and I consider myself as working for them,
making sure they’ve got the resources and programs available
to deliver a great experience to our member companies and the customers that they serve.
We’re empowering in that we hire people that are self-starters, and
we have a well-fleshed-out business plan that they actually contribute
to every year. That’s a process we go through that, all said, probably
takes a couple months. They all provide the input for that, and we
develop it, and that provides them the broad parameters within which
they’re expected to execute. They’re held accountable.
That sort of strategy really makes people perform at a higher level
because they do have some latitude.
Q: What are the benefits of making good hires?
If you hire the right people, everything else falls into place. We do
behavioral testing on new hires, and we look hard at a couple of things
that measure intelligence. I don’t mean that we’re looking for MENSA-types hung up on how smart they are but people who are quick studies and who can grasp concepts easily and can be creative and analytical.
We look for people who are curious and who ask questions. I’m
always leery if I’m sitting with somebody and they never take down
one note. I’m more interested in somebody who is curious and wants
to absorb new things.
If you hire for those kinds of qualities, they’ll do the thinking for you.
They’ll stay in tune with what’s happening in the marketplace and
come up with suggestions. That’s the role of a great leader, to try to
assemble the right people and not to be threatened by good people.
I know what my strengths and my weaknesses are. I look for people
who will fill in where the weak areas are and complement what I can
do. Hopefully, I can bring to them some things that I’m stronger at and
help them develop.
Q: How do you motivate your staff?
One of the problems you get with younger people nowadays is that
they’ve been on soccer teams and everything else where everybody
gets an award, so everybody thinks they’re the same. To me, you really have to recognize achievement or there is no incentive for people
to keep achieving.
We make our people feel important and make them feel that they’re
part of the whole process and then take the ones that perform at a
high level and use them as poster children for everyone else. Not in a
way that makes the other people feel badly, but just, ‘Look what
Jennifer did today that made us all look good.’
Whenever we get compliments on somebody, we pass that on so
that everybody sees it. There’s a fun kind of competitiveness, but it’s
not a back-stabbing kind of situation. Everybody just thrives on doing
a good job and being appreciated for that.
Q: How important is flexibility in a growing company?
Nowadays, the world is changing so quickly that to try to say you
have a five-year plan, I guess if you’re Motorola or IBM, maybe you
have to have those kinds of disciplines. But if you look at our industry
and all the analysts’ prognostications from this time last year, nobody
would have anticipated that the market would be off to the degree
that it was. One of my brokers said to me, ‘You know, about halfway
through the year, I realized that hope was not a strategy.’ In other
words, you can’t just think it’s going to get better and just keep doing
what you were doing.
With technology changing and the huge changes in market demographics out there, an exploding multicultural population, the young
people coming into the market in their 20s and 30s, any company in
any part of business today is facing those changes. You’ve got to get
inside the heads of the consumer, and companies that are setting their
programs and policies for five years can’t do that very well. They’re
left in the dust as the customer has gone on without them.
HOW TO REACH: Leading Real Estate Companies of the World, (800) 621-6510 or www.leadingre.com