Last modified on June 1st, 2021
By Megan Eales Monroe

Across all industries, a new work paradigm is emerging in 2021 — and it calls for a new style of leadership. The rise of location-independent collaboration, as well as the many changes and challenges of the past year, have made the need for human-centered leadership greater than ever before. 

Within property management, human-centered leaders must provide the tools and technology their teams need to work efficiently, build a company culture that creates space and freedom for teams to perform at their best, and communicate proactively and transparently with staff, residents, investors, owners, and other stakeholders. While there is no easy way to succeed in all of these areas simultaneously, there is one factor that is crucial to success in all three: optimizing how your time is spent.

To help property management executives maximize their time, AppFolio looked to advice provided by some of the multifamily housing industry’s most forward-thinking executives. We then paired their indispensable leadership insights with thought-provoking exercise prompts and compiled them into one comprehensive guide to help you create your own self-directed leadership growth plan.

The Leadership in property management: 2021 and beyond guide is available for you to download now, but here’s a sneak peek of some of the best advice it contains on maximizing your time and impact:

It all starts with effective delegation

As a leader in your organization you already have a lot on your plate, which is why it’s vital to delegate tasks to others on your team. By reassigning day-to-day tasks you can free yourself to focus on bigger initiatives and also help build confidence and trust within your team.

“If I had delegated more day-to-day tasks when I was younger, I feel I would have grown to a different level professionally and as a leader.”
– Neil Cadman, President, Cadman Group

Turn Neil’s insight into action with this exercise prompt:

• What are three projects or day-to-day tasks can you delegate to your team members right now?

Filter out distractions and noise

With a never-ending list of business decisions to make, customer needs to address, and employees to manage, it can be incredibly difficult to spend time focusing on what matters most: what’s really going to move the needle for your organization. That’s why Gozen Hartman, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Fairlawn Real Estate, looks at her day-to-day responsibilities a little differently than a typical to-do list:

“So the way that they describe it is that if you think about all the things in your life, you have rocks which are the biggest and sort of the most important things…and then you have sand, which might be sort of noise going on all around you…So if you have a jar and you fill it up with the sand first, which has all the noise and the stuff that you have not identified as the most important, there’s going to be no room for the rocks, which are the things that you have identified are the most important to further things along and get you to where you want to be.”

– Gozen Hartman, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer, Fairlawn Real Estate

Turn Gozen’s insight into action with this exercise prompt:

• What are your “rocks” or the most important things in your life, both personally and professionally?

Make room for what matters most

Freeing up more of your time through delegation and prioritization has an important purpose: it opens up more space for you as a leader to focus on the larger impact your company can create. Not only does having more time allow you to find elegant solutions that empower your team to focus on what they do best, it also allows you to cast a larger vision of how your business can impact the greater community. 

In today’s landscape, property management organizations are perfectly positioned to become powerful agents of change by increasing their social footprint and decreasing their environmental impact. Not only are these global initiatives sought after more and more from employees and customers of all ages, races, and genders, but they’ll soon become expected as part of your day-to-day business practices, too.

Lisa Wise, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Flockster from Flock DC, explains how her organization is leading the way today:

“…we believe that doing good business leads to more business and we have to be tender and thoughtful about how we impact our planet, how we impact people, how we advance anti-racism, and how we do what we can to support a community that supports us.”

– Lisa Wise, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Flockster, Flock DC

Turn Lisa’s insight into action with this exercise prompt:

• What are three ways your organization can increase its social footprint?

Get the guide and get even more expert leadership insights 

Effective leadership is everything in property management. Download our new guide Leadership in property management: 2021 and beyond now to put these learnings, self-evaluation prompts, and more to good use for yourself and your organization.