Growing operators

The best thing I manage is not a building. It is the bench, the operators coming up behind me. After more than a decade in this business I am convinced of one thing: buildings do not scale a company. People do. You can take on another building next year. You cannot buy someone who cares whether the lobby is clean.

So that is what I hire for. The mechanics of this trade can all be taught. Lease files, statements of account, move-in day, how to walk a boiler room. What cannot be taught is caring, and noticing. When I sit across from a candidate, I am not reading for a property management resume. I am listening for whether they talk about people or only about tasks. Some of the best operators I have worked with came to this industry with no property experience at all. They knew service. The rest we taught.

Coaching, to me, happens in the field, not from behind a desk. When someone on the team is struggling to book showings or handle a hard conversation, the answer is not a memo. It is stepping into their shoes. Give me your phone, let me show you how I book the appointment, then you take the next one and we talk about what happened. I learned this trade by doing it, so that is how I teach it.

I also put people in pairs on purpose. One person is strong on paperwork and light on closing. Another is the opposite. Put them together on the same work for a couple of months and both get stronger, and the team stops depending on any one person's strengths. Just as important, it teaches everyone that the manager is not the only phone number. We are one team. Call each other.

The part most leaders get wrong is room. When somebody asks for more responsibility, the worst answer is a longer task list. Give them a program to own instead, with their name on it, and let them run it and report back. Every time I have done that, the person has grown faster than any training plan predicted. People rise to what you trust them with.

And when they do rise, say so out loud. Recognition costs nothing and builds more culture than any policy I have written. Celebrate the person who went over and above, in front of everyone. What gets praised gets repeated.

This is also why I take mentorship seriously beyond my own company. The industry needs more operators who see residents as people and process as a craft. If the bench keeps getting deeper, the buildings take care of themselves. That is the quiet math behind 98 of 100 residents renewing. It was never only about the buildings.