Strategies for Real Estate Leaders to Unlock Exceptional Team Performance

Over the last couple of years, the development environment has been especially challenging, with high interest rates and construction costs making getting complex projects off the ground difficult. To succeed in the current market, it’s not enough for developers to assemble a top-tier team. You must also foster a collaborative work culture, where every team member is empowered to operate to the best of their ability and given the tools necessary to succeed. 

Leadership is critical to guide your team through the complex development process in the current environment, getting projects to stabilization and profitability. If you take a top-down approach to leading your team, you will be able to unlock team performance and will see benefits across your portfolio. Understanding the characteristics you should embody as an effective real estate project leader, as well as the strategies and tools you need to create an empowering culture, can help your team operate at maximum efficiency and will ultimately make your firm more competitive.

Here’s a closer look at the characteristics that define an effective leader in the development industry, and the strategies and tools you can leverage to empower innovation and efficiency across your firm: 

Characteristics of Effective Real Estate Project Leaders

Several key characteristics will set you apart from the average real estate project manager and establish your reputation as a strong leader. By offering strong communication skills, a flexible mindset, and a commitment to finding the right tools for your team, you can set every member of your team up for success. Excellent leaders don’t just offer guidance - they empower each worker to do their best work and become leaders in their own right. 

Here are some of the traits and qualities an effective real estate project leader will exemplify: 

1. Strong Communication Skills 

Being a strong communicator, in both written and verbal mediums, is one of the most important qualities a project manager can possess. Effective communication is timely, clear, and thoughtful, and should be tailored to its appropriate audience. For example, you might have a shorthand with your senior team members, but new hires may need more in-depth instruction. Project managers should also be masters of all communication forms, including but not limited to one-on-one meetings with team members, emails, reports, stakeholder presentations, and more. 

2. Proactive Mindset + Problem-Solving 

The development process can be unpredictable, and a strong project manager must be able to anticipate risks with a proactive mindset and solve problems that arise over the development lifecycle. Every stage of the process can pose new challenges - financial, legal, environmental, regulatory, or otherwise. Your ability to navigate unexpected obstacles can make or break a project timeline and have major implications for your budget. 

3. Finding the Right Strategies and Tools

Project managers who want to be proactive problem solvers will need to pick the right strategies and tools to facilitate operations. Finding modern tools that optimize efficiency, improve decision-making, and foster communication and transparency among stakeholders will offer your team a competitive edge. Development teams have historically relied on outdated and error-prone spreadsheets to manage complex projects, but modern real estate development software is empowering developers to harness the power of automation and AI to boost efficiencies and ensure more predictable outcomes. 

4. Flexibility + Agility

Leaders in the development field should certainly have vision and determination, but keeping a flexible mindset is equally important for success. Sometimes issues arise that require reiteration, and a willingness to communicate with team members to find creative solutions can make your team more effective. Having the flexibility to shift your plan as necessary, instead of staying entrenched in one way of thinking, is the mark of a good team leader. 

5. Team Building 

Team building is vital to ensuring your project is successful. You’ll need to not only hire good talent for your team but also make sure everyone understands their role and works well together. By setting clear expectations and responsibilities at the start of a project, you’ll ensure team members can stay focused and minimize the risk of redundancies or other miscommunications. 

Fostering an environment of open communication and collaboration among all project stakeholders can also improve job satisfaction among team members. An environment where team members feel valued and heard, it can also encourage a more open exchange of ideas and lead to further innovation. 

6. Enthusiasm, Motivation, and Vision 

In order to succeed as a development leader, you need a strong vision for your real estate development project to set clear goals or objectives and to bring your team into further alignment. Enthusiasm for your project and vision is critical, as it encourages a positive work environment and keeps morale high through challenges. When you have an exciting vision for a project and can communicate that to your team, the enthusiasm will be contagious. 

Tools and Strategies to Create an Empowering Culture

Leaders who can create an empowering culture for employees will see benefits across their portfolio of CRE projects. Establishing an empowering culture will help you increase employee engagement and satisfaction, retaining top talent in a challenging labor market. You’ll also likely see collaboration and facilitate better decision-making, boost productivity and efficiency, and help train future leaders in your organization to prevent loss of institutional knowledge

Here are some of the strategies and tools that will ultimately help your real estate team improve performance and deliver positive outcomes on complex projects: 

1. Break down silos and promote the flow of ideas and information 

Teamwork is essential for overcoming the challenges that arise in the development process, whether those are financial, regulatory, environmental, or otherwise. Organizational silos, where teams are isolated from each other, can prevent the kind of collaboration necessary for your firm to tackle obstacles. Breaking down hierarchical communication structures or outdated workflows that isolate key project data can help your team move towards a more integrated and collaborative approach. Modern real estate development software like Northspyre can help your team centralize key project information and make data accessible across departments. Easy-to-access performance dashboards that share progress across departments make collaboration and communication easier than ever before. 

2. Set clear expectations and goals 

CRE projects are complex and involve multiple stakeholders, so setting clear expectations is essential to keep things moving and on track. As leader of your development team, it’s important for you to lay out the different expectations for each individual worker, as well as the kind of collaboration you want to see during the process. Every team member was hired for a reason, and by setting clear expectations early on in the development process you can prevent redundancies and miscommunication. 

3. Create a culture where listening and feedback are valued 

Establishing a culture where employees are encouraged to share ideas and feedback is beneficial for several reasons. First, creating an environment where employees feel heard and valued will increase overall performance. Second, offering a safe environment to share ideas can help foster creativity and innovation, as team members will be more likely to come forward with ideas. 

4. Empower employees to succeed on their own terms 

You should make a conscious effort during onboarding to survey workers and understand their working patterns and preferences. Ensuring the structure of your team is working for, and not against, employees. Every worker has strengths and weaknesses; taking the time to understand the conditions your employees need to excel will pay dividends over a project lifecycle. 

5. Provide clear avenues for growth 

Building a long term leadership strategy requires you to provide growth avenues and opportunities for members of your team. Employees who can picture their future with your organization are less likely to look for greener pastures elsewhere. Offering and honoring paths to promotion are important to retain team members, and can also boost the transfer of knowledge. Training up employees means there will never be a leadership gap at any level, and reduces the risk of a team member walking away with organizational workflows or information. 

6. Equip Employees with Modern Tools and Technologies 

Developers have for too long relied on outdated and error prone spreadsheets to organize projects, and these workflows are holding teams back from optimal performance. Modern  real estate development software is essential to break down silos and unite your finance and project teams, By using Northspyre, your project teams will be able to quickly view progress on on every project in your portfolio, end manual entries and accelerate operations using industry leading automation tools, end access cloud workflows that enable your team to work seamlessly and more effectively across ever stage of development. Project teams who use Northspyre see projects completed faster and under budget, and the software has enabled teams to $175 billion to projects. 

Learn more about Northspyre’s Role in a Collaborative Work Culture 

Northspyre is a purpose-built, single software solution designed using automation to reduce manual data entry, increase productivity, and maximize your returns from pre-development to stabilization. The platform makes it easy for your team to manage administrative tasks like data uploads and document management, automatically generating investor reports, stakeholder links, and draw requests. .Your team can stop wasting time on tedious administrative tasks and focus on high-level strategy. 

Leaders can use the platform to unite finance and project teams and facilitate greater transparency and collaboration across departments. Organizing your project data into detailed dashboards and putting information at your team's fingertips with the powerful search feature, Northspyre indexes all your contracts, proposals, lien waivers, and more. By leveraging key project data, your team can prevent miscommunication and make informed decisions at every stage of the lifecycle. Northspyre acts as the cornerstone of your collaborative work culture, facilitating efficient operations, proactive decision-making, and more predictable outcomes on all your complex projects. 

Book a demo to learn more about how Northspyre can help your CRE team operate with maximum efficiency and ensure positive outcomes on complex projects.