There’s no precise recipe for workplace productivity, but young professionals pursuing a future in commercial real estate suggest some staple ingredients. Those who participated in a recent survey conducted by the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) of Canada rank mentorship and investment in professional development, appreciation of work-life balance, empathetic leadership and corporate practices that reflect industry trends and/or socially responsible principles among attributes that attract them to and keep them with an employer.
The survey draws insight from 52 managers and specialists in the early stages of their careers, working throughout Canada and in commercial real estate’s various disciplines. Earlier this year, they were asked to respond to eight questions about their work environments, additional supports they would value, and pertinent education and networking events that BOMA Canada’s Emerging Leaders program could facilitate. Aligned with the latter initiative, three young professionals drilled deeper into themes linked to the survey findings during a forum at BOMA Canada’s annual national conference, BOMEX, in mid-September.
Survey results indicate many real estate employers are winning approval from young professionals. Nearly 79 per cent of respondents said their organization supported career growth and a majority said they enjoyed either “excellent” or “very good” flexibility around allowance for hybrid work. Employers were commended for providing mentorship, leadership training and networking events and for fully or partially covering fees for professional development programs and courses.
Nevertheless, the wish list for additional supports is somewhat longer. Since, by definition, emerging leaders are relatively new to managerial roles, they identified various challenges on that learning curve. Respondents were relatively evenly split in what they ranked as the outcome they would most like to achieve, but the largest share (27.5 per cent) chose “work-life balance”. Equal quotients (21.5 per cent) seek to master “effective delegation” and “prioritizing competing demands”, while about 12 per cent are striving for “transparent leadership”.
In turn, they envision assistance arriving along a range of possible avenues, but structured guidance, experiential learning and opportunities to both share experiences with peers and confer meaningfully with senior executives are most in demand. There is also a call for tools to help deal more proficiently with mundane tasks — a request that seems to complement respondents’ interest in learning more about artificial intelligence (AI) and technology.
Substantive subtleties
Speaking to BOMEX delegates, Raisa Hussain, a senior property manager with Colliers Canada in Toronto, sketched out her strategy for two tracks of her career progress since entering the field six years ago. She’s taken a largely self-directed approach to acquiring and refining many of her job skills, while reaching out to others to help demystify some of the intangibles.
“Mentorship is like GPS for your career,” Hussain asserted. “The technical side of things — leases, budget operations — the numbers weren’t the problem. I learnt how to navigate those and I taught myself through courses. What I didn’t know was how to navigate a room where decisions were made, how to make my voice heard or how to build that relationship that truly opened the doors.”
She credits enrollment in BOMA International’s Daniel W. Chancey Leadership Academy for opening up that path. The program, which was previously known as the BOMA Fellows Leadership Academy, pairs a maximum of 15 candidates in each annual cohort with a mentor from among the select group of real estate leaders who have received the rare honourary distinction of BOMA Fellow. Hussain was matched with another Canadian, Keith Major, a prominent real estate executive, a BOMA International life member who served two terms as the association’s secretary/treasurer, and a recipient of the BOMA Canada Chair’s Award.
“Keith stood out to me, not just for his career achievements, but for his calm, steady demeanor,” Hussain recounted. “He never told me what to do. He helped me see where my energy was best invested and which path might be worth pursuing or which was not a fit for me.”
It’s such traits and approaches that Hussain’s co-presenter, Michelle Kinsella, director of integrated program delivery for RBC’s Canadian retail branches, underscored in her analysis of skills employers would be wise to proactively foster. She lists collaboration, communication, problem solving, time management and conflict resolution among the suite of “soft skills” tied to interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence, and contends there is a deficit in many commercial real estate workplaces, which is perhaps tied to an industry bias toward technical proficiency.
“Here’s the disconnect: we hire for technical skills and fire for soft skills,” Kinsella observed. “Some of the top concerns for property owners, tenants and customers aren’t about the technical aspects of commercial real estate. They’re about the essential skills that often go unmeasured: clear communication with stakeholders; empathy for tenants’ business needs; adaptability in response to changing market conditions; and active listening to maintenance requests.”
Changing workplace culture could be exacerbating the dilemma. Email and text based communications now predominate, but they are generally clumsier at imparting nuance and emotional cues and more open to misinterpretation than person-to-person conversations. That’s happening after COVID subverted many of the conventional formative opportunities — on post-secondary education campuses, in workplaces and social settings — for young adults to refine social skills, and AI now threatens to further erode human interaction. As a result, though, employers may become more conscious of voids that need to be addressed.
“Most employees anticipate this will increase the need for soft skills such as empathy, critical thinking and leadership as a way to differentiate from AI,” Kinsella maintained.
Intentional approaches
She urged young professionals and organizational decision-makers alike to take an intentional, structured approach to acquiring and cultivating those skills. Both Kinsella and Hussain outlined their own efforts to get involved in projects, campaigns and peer review exercises within their organizations, the industry and the broader community, which have involved group deliberation, consensus building, public speaking and exposure to diverse expertise and perspectives.
While it’s important for advancement candidates to be open to feedback, it’s perhaps even more important for their supervisors to provide constructive guidance. Companies can adopt training, tools and resources to develop and reinforce productive leadership qualities that give employees the confidence and morale to contribute and excel.
“We can practice active listening. We can keep an open mind and look for common ground in what we can learn from different people. We can identify our own emotional triggers and work on responding rather than reacting,” Kinsella tallied. “The more we can manage ourselves, the better we can relate to others.”
Young professionals are likewise contemplating how their work connects to broader society. Respondents to BOMA Canada’s survey indicate that they want company practices and priorities to align with their values and keep pace with evolving trends. Sustainability, mental health and transparency in corporate dealings with staff, clients, investors and the public are all identified as important.
“They also wanted more environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations to become a greater priority in CRE,” the survey report states. “Firms that provide concrete implementation strategies will likely have a stronger competitive advantage.”
Reflective of those concerns, the third BOMEX presenter, Caleb Solomons, director of interior design for HOK in Calgary, focused on accommodating neurodiversity. He mapped out the extensive range in how people perceive and respond to sensory stimuli, and highlighted potential productivity and competitive benefits of design and operational measures that take hyper-sensitive and hypo-sensitive workers into account.
“Individuals who are coming into the buildings we design and manage are identifying this need. We’re seeing those conversations around neurodiversity happening at the C-suite and being woven into governance,” Solomons noted. “The same kind of concepts were part of solving for sustainability, for wellness, for high-performance employee productivity. I think what’s really great about this neuroscience is that it’s going to be more fuel in the furnace as it relates to the built environment getting better, stronger and healthier.”
