Driving a sustainable and profitable property management business is all about promoting a performance culture. As business leaders, you work hard training your teams, implementing procedures and monitoring key performance indicators to ensure they are armed with the right tools to perform at the highest level. There is one thing that holds many business leaders back, though. Culture is all about your team’s personalities and not so much much about your systems and processes.
Each of your team members has their own personality. Life wouldn’t be too exciting if we all shared the same one. But when it comes down to what drives them at work, there are two very defined types. There are team members that want to feel supported through documented systems and processes, and then there are those rogue ones that just want to do their own thing. As a smaller organisation, you most likely overlook the latter, however as your business grows, it requires systemising and accountability to be able to scale. These rogue team members start to become a thorn in your side and often leave on their own.
To build a performance culture, you will need two key things; A business that holds their team members accountable and team member that wants to be responsible. Let’s consider what makes a high-performance culture.
Feedback Seeking feedback from customers and business leaders is an essential component of driving performance. In a high-performance culture, team members welcome feedback and see it as an opportunity to grow and improve themselves.
Accountability Team members attracted to a high-performance environment thrive on accountability. They have a process-driven mind, a target driven nature and require definition in their role. These team members perform at their peak when driven by a well-documented policy and procedure guide, position description and key performance indicators.
Hunger for knowledge In a high-performance culture, the team is reluctant to accept the status quo. They are always striving to improve both themselves and the systems and processes from which they operate. You will find they need to analyses issues, identify improvements and share their learning with the team for the greater good.
Engaged Engaged team members are driving by your business goals. Rather than operate inside a vacuum, they support the firm’s mission statement and work to deliver on your point of difference. They show respect to their team members and promote transparency both internally and externally to the customers.
Recognition Teams that work hard to achieve goals also respond exceptionally to being recognised for this hard work. A high-performance culture is underpinned by great rewards and recognition program. They like to celebrate their achievements as a team.
Next time you are recruiting into your business, consider the type of person you want to attract. I find being transparent with new candidates during the interview process about all of the above, will drive people out your door if they are not suited to the culture.
