Tony Cline has over 20 years of experience in property management. After purchasing a real estate and property management brokerage in Denver, Colorado, he spent more than two decades as managing broker. Today he's focused full time on his work as a Property Management Success Coach. Tony is a Second Nature Triple Win Mentor.
Property management professionals are always talking about what it takes to be successful in the industry. Whether it’s personality traits, skills, or qualifications, we talk all about what makes a great member of a team. But rarely do we stop to think about what traits make a good leader in property management.
At the end of the day, leadership has its own set of skills, especially in property management. It’s not about personality style; you don’t have to be an extravert versus an introvert or a numbers person versus a people person. But you do need to have certain behaviors and skills to lead a team to success. Here are my top four.
1. Strong conviction in your work
If you want to lead a team in property management, you need to have a strong, core belief in the work that you’re doing, and you need the conviction to stick to that belief, even when it’s not convenient.
First, you need to believe in the boundaries that you set for yourself, your company, and your employees. You also need to have confidence that those boundaries are pointing you in the direction that you want to go as a company, because if they’re not, they shouldn’t exist. Put simply, you make rules that are going to help your company succeed, and then you enforce those rules.
Conviction here means giving feedback, guidance, and correction to team members who violate boundaries or stray from best practices. It means having the hard conversations when someone isn’t performing up to par.
Second, you need to have conviction in your policies, and the culture and people that uphold them. Policy drives process, so if you don’t stand behind your policies, you can’t develop effective processes.
Finally, you need to have conviction in who you are as a leader and as a company. Your company identity dictates the types of people you want to hire, as well as the types of clients you’re willing to work with. You need to determine who you’ll allow into your business, and you need to stand by that. It’s what gives your company a true identity, and it’s the most direct way to protect and uphold your core values.
2. A lack of ego
Ego is hugely detrimental for a leader. For small business owners like broker/owners, ego usually manifests itself in a desire to maintain complete control over every aspect of the business. After all, it’s your company, and you got it to where it is, so you should keep control everywhere you can, right? Wrong.
A lot of leaders resist giving up control until there’s a tipping point where everything finally clicks. Typically they either make a really great hire, or they eventually burn out and they’re forced to let go of control. Sometimes the best thing that can happen to a small business owner is hiring someone that they’re intimidated by. Bring in someone who’s so good at what they do that it feels like they could do your job better than you. Those are the people who will help take the business to the next level.
Beyond hiring, a good leader needs to set their ego aside and trust the people on the front lines. They’re the ones who are closest to the problem, and they know what they’re doing. Not only should you trust your team, you should encourage them and build them up. It’s your responsibility as a business owner to provide the right systems and training to achieve the results that you want, and then get out of the way. Let your team perform where they’re highly skilled so that you can focus on the work no one else can do.
A good leader should always be asking, “what can I get done without me having to be the one to do it?”
3. Willingness to understand, contextualize, and forgive mistakes
If you want to lead a team, you need to understand that all mistakes are not created equal. There’s an important difference between a mistake that’s made in an attempt to help the business, and one that’s made in an attempt to help oneself.
When an employee breaks policy by sending a work order to a vendor that wasn’t previously approved, because all the approved vendors were backlogged and there was an urgent maintenance issue, that’s a mistake that stems from a desire to help a resident. When a different employee breaks policy by approving an applicant who doesn’t meet your company standard, just because they want to fill a unit and not have to look through more applications, that stems from a desire to help themselves.
As a business leader, it’s crucial to recognize the difference here, and deal with each one appropriately. An employee who goes rogue just to benefit themself needs to be corrected quickly. An employee who broke protocol but was acting in alignment with company goals and values should be heard out and forgiven.
Here’s another way to think about it: some mistakes disrupt the fundamental culture of the team, and others don’t. The ones that do are the ones that need to be dealt with.
4. The ability to inspire
Finally, a good leader needs to be able to build a true culture and give the whole team something to buy into together.
I firmly believe that people inherently want to be a part of something. They want to feel that they’re contributing, and that their work has meaning. When you create a single north star for your company, your employees will work toward it. When you fail to do so, that’s when you run into poor performance, high employee turnover, and limited business success.
You can set your company up for the future by inspiring future leaders and keeping them engaged. This isn’t just about the here and now, but also about the legacy of your company. When you decide to sell or retire, you’re going to want to make sure it’s in good hands. What better way to do that than by developing future leaders within your company?
A true leader can get the best work out of their team, not by intimidating them or running a proverbial tight ship, but by inspiring them and developing a true belief in what you’re doing together.
Final thoughts
Leadership isn’t easy. And when you’re used to doing the work of an individual contributor, it can be easy to conflate the things that make a good property manager with the things that make a good property management leader.
My advice is to stop thinking that you need specific character traits or a certain personality type to be a successful leader. Instead, focus on these four areas, and you’ll quickly see how impactful they can be.
Want to learn more about managing a great team? Listen to my friend Melissa Gillispie’s podcast episode on the three Ts: team, touchpoints, and tech.
May 13, 2025
