Hi Team! Happy 2019!
The past 12-18 months have been absolutely huge for us. We have hired a new team & introduced well over 10 new technology platforms. Now that everything is running smoothly & everyone is happy (LOL) I’m really wanting to take a step back & cut down to working 4 days a week.
I have two Senior Property Managers would I would love to utilise more. Our Senior PMs are not given that title because they have more PM experience than others, they have to be mentors, assist in processes/procedures, run meetings & be able to hold the fort when I’m not there.
I would, however, love to give them on-going responsibilities that can be measured & incorporated into their bonus. They have obviously very good PM’s & don’t need to be monitored on the general PM tasks. One of the hardest things I have found over the past 12-18 months is to let go & allow others to take the reigns but now that I have been able to, I want to make the most of it!
Has anyone done this before and can offer some advice?
Thank you! 
Senior Responsibilities
Hi @sarah I have included the LPMA team leader position description as a starting point. You could expose them to some leadership tasks and make them accountable through KPI’s. This will give you an opportunity to start backing out of the business.
Thank you so much Adam! How do I access it do you know?
sorry @sarah I had a blond moment. I thought I had uploaded it. Here it is now.
L - Team Leader Job Description.pdf (121.1 KB)
LOL thank you so much
The main thing I start with is making sure that they are across the risks management of what the firm does. I have a set of checks that I do for any new recruits every single week for the next 3-4 months and I report to the recruit on how they did every single week. This is one of the most important thing because even though it seems that I am babysitting them, I also teach them what consistency means and from my point of view I am managing the risks from the start.
When I look at developing someone, I teach them first to do the same for the team and report to me. That’s when I can also develop their mentoring abilities. I put them in control of the risk factor so that they understand part of what makes running a business important and why and that they can feed this down to the others. You will be able to monitor this by having quarterly debrief with the team they are managing.
The next step is to put them in control of the finance part. they need to understand what it means to look at overheads and also see on a large scale how the finance functions allows to find out errors made really quickly and start thinking about that. That’s easily incorporated in KPI because it’s your profit and loss that will dictate whether they are going in the right direction.
By then they are supported and trusted by both team and leadership team, they have a bigger picture of what is going on and they are still within arm’s length of the day to day.
So the next steps is to help them see trends, assess market reaction from a company perspective and check out where the company stands. That’s where their problem solving abilities take another dimension. they are not just dealing with tenants and owners, they are considering the overall industry landscape. For this, you will need interns with various background. empowering them to give the interns direction, think outside the box will kick start their creativity and their willingness to take part. That’s when you know you’ve got a leader in the making.
that’s how I function and my starting point is that I need to make myself redundant of the tasks I am performing today within the next 6-12 months because that will mean that I am already at the next level. I am also teaching them to answer this too: What do I need to do to make myself redundant in the next x months. This is what drives my day to day and how I interact with our team.
Hope this helps
Hi @marine I think you have a very thorough system to upskill your senior PMs into leaders. Do you find you have to put much work in this or do you just point them in the right direction and let them go?
Hi Adam
Sorry for the late (very late) reply.
I’ve tried pointing in the right direction and 99% of the time, it does not yield any good result in the long run, meaning that I usually get mistakes too late down the track.
I do value the time I put in training and reviewing what people do very regularly. I came to realise that most people don’t know what they don’t know and so for them it’s actually more stressful to not have the safety net of someone reviewing everything and getting very regular feedback. I also know that a very tiny minority are happy running it on their own without too much input. They will come up when they realise they’ve done something wrong and they’ll sort it out. I definitely respect that (I am that kind of person so I can relate) however, I’ll still be reviewing everything to make sure we are all going in the right direction 
but the feedback will be more relating to mentoring than actual directions.
I also know that the way you’ve been taught is the way you are going to teach. I want to ensure that everyone understand that being a leader is so much more than just delegating or reviewing. They need to understand that they actually need to care for people, make themselves available and learn to ask questions. And that means that I first need to display very strongly what I want them to develop so that they feel cared for, heard and important for the organisation… and everyone else will too.
And this is actually why I love managing people so much, even through the hard times and performance issues ect. because the way I develop others says more about me and the kind of person I am than anything else. I know what I want to stand for and this is why the way to upskill people is quite clear in that respect.
I grew a lot since I was first given the task of delegating and managing people, I’ve done a decade worth of mistakes and I’ll hopefully do a lot more of them. And at the end of the day, mistakes don’t really matter that much, the type of connection you have with people however does.
Hope I did answer your question
I love this!
Thats great @marine Funny you should mention the way you have changed as a manager. I also have changed quite significantly from when I was a manager in my mid-twenties to now. I used to see the team as my resource to accomplish the business goals and objectives. I now see myself as a resource to the team. I complete 180-degree flip.
Absolutely spot on Marine! Love this…
@adam so what are “Appropriate CPD points”
Also, I do not understand "Tertiary qualifications in relevant discipline an advantage.
Can you clarify this?
Hi @glenn CPD is an Australian abbreviation for Continued Professional Development. Like in the US, we have different legislation for different states. Some states require 12 CPD points to renew your real estate licence, other states just encourage you to complete some sort of CPD annually to stay sharp! Tertiary qualifications refers to some sort of college or university degree that support the role you are applying for. Not common to have this in Oz. You would see more property managers with degrees in the US I suspect.
We don’t have specific degrees and real estate or property management either. The would be more a business degree or some something similar.