What constitutes high performance in property management?

If you’re a high-performing business development executive, leasing agent or portfolio manager, you’re much more than your title!

We encourage our people to position themselves with their clients as a “trusted adviser” – a representative of not only their assets and best interests, but a skilled individual who is continually supporting their holistic investment strategy.

To be perceived as a trusted adviser, you need to have a deep understanding of your clients’ needs, now and into the future. What are they looking to achieve in two months, 12 months, 24 months and beyond? Asking the right questions will not only provide the answers you need to tailor your strategy, but will demonstrate your intention and ability to deliver.

In addition to staying ahead of your local property market, it’s important to stay across the macroeconomic landscape. This is particularly relevant in NSW where investors have been exiting the market due to unsustainable financial costs associated with interest rates and the cost of living.

However, once you understand the economic outlook, you could, as just one example, support a client to reposition their asset when they were previously thinking about exiting the market as an investor. This is just one example among many and highlights the tangible impact this type of knowledge has on client service excellence, your agency’s retention rate and more.

Stay ahead of the pulse and prove to your clients that you’re more than a facilitator – you’re an adviser who is expertly positioned to help them achieve their holistic, long-term real estate goals.

2. Put your oxygen mask on first

Embracing the “put your oxygen mask on first” philosophy means prioritising your wellbeing so you can sustain high performance over the long run. This helps ensure that you are equipped to manage your responsibilities effectively, in leadership and otherwise, and to do so with energy and clarity.

Prioritising wellness will look different for everyone. For some it might be more to do with mental wellbeing – breaks during the day or only working during business hours, as an example. For others, it might be structuring their working day in a way that means that they have dedicated time for physical movement. Professional development should not be overlooked in the role it plays in wellbeing either. Expanding your network, your ideas and your preconceptions are so important in sustaining high-performance.

The other component of this (and one that I am very passionate about) is the need for everyone to have a meaningful support network. We cannot do our best work if we are not feeling our best. In addition to important personal and professional relationships, I would encourage you to utilise your company’s Employee Assistance Program (or similar – if there is one in place) when needed, or connecting with other property management professionals outside your organisation.


It’s also important to keep abreast of the support that’s available at an industry-wide level. Initiatives like Rise, and its recently launched Real Care app, have been designed to specifically help provide more support for each one of us. This reflects the great progress that we continue to make as an industry, and our shared commitment to not only navigating challenges together but bringing to light effective and meaningful solutions.

3. Work smarter, not harder

When you limit the more menial tasks in your day, you make way for what we call “high-impact work”.

This is work that’s often not in your inbox or on your to-do list but makes a big impact over the long-term – and you can do it no matter your role or seniority.

It could be taking the time to have an additional check in or conversation with a client, colleague, or manager. It could be a considered and personalised follow-up on a proposal or taking the initiative to lead an internal project that will provide more visibility and a chance to learn new skills.

One of the ways to achieve this is to lean on technology as much as possible. There are many great and innovative tools and platforms now available for PMs that streamline both your workday and the experience of an owner and a tenant. Don’t forget about the suite of tools offered by both Microsoft and Apple aimed at improving productivity and your focus during the day.

We’ve seen the results of this firsthand. In 2023, we were intent on making space for more high-impact work for all our people across PM, from our field services team conducting routine inspections, to our leadership team in coaching and developing their colleagues. After a comprehensive exploration phase, we were able to reduce our technology stack, from a collective of over 10 individual platforms, by more than 50 per cent. We now focus on a few select platforms that all speak to one another, provide more accurate data, and have improved the experience for our clients, tenants and our people. Our only regret is not doing it sooner.

4. Proactive, not reactive

They say you can’t plan the future – but part of high-performance is about preparing and planning for as much as you can. For a portfolio manager, this could be taking regular preventative action to avoid issues in properties, while also implementing actions to actively improve owners’ and tenants’ experiences. For example, are there energy-efficient improvements that could be made to a property that would increase comfort for the tenant and lower operating costs for the owner? What role would this play in tenant retention, fostering a positive relationship between the owner and the tenant, and agency reputation?

For a leasing agent, this could take the form of leasing vacant homes efficiently, but also working to support tenants who may have missed out to place them in homes you may have off-market, or in the pipeline.

For a BD, this could be working through current leads, while thinking ahead to where your next lead is coming from – and if it’s not clear, setting up the prospecting strategies, meetings and conversations for this to occur.

For those in a leadership position, it could be ensuring that you’re keeping ahead of your team’s priorities, challenges and opportunities, and ensuring you’re in their corner, ready to support when needed.

Asking yourself questions about what could be done today or this week, to improve the future, is a great habit to get into and something our high performers share.

5. Hold yourself accountable

Everything you do contributes to your personal brand in our industry – whether you realise it or not. Every interaction, every communication, every open home, every appraisal, every way that you navigate a tough situation or deliver tricky news, matters.

Hold yourself to the highest standards – and keep yourself accountable of them. Home in on doing the common things uncommonly well. This is a trait that you’ll see in the world’s top-performing businesspeople and innovators. So, for anyone aspiring to achieve high performance this year or looking to empower others to do so, strip it back to the basics. From there, not only will you be consistent (and others’ experience with you will be consistent), but you’ll have a solid base on which to grow.

Accountability, trust and communication are just a few of “the basics” that we focus on at BresicWhitney – and they never go out of style.

6. Values-driven

It’s not about what your values are, it’s about how you embody them. Are you showing up in a way that’s aligned with what you stand for every day? Are you contributing to your agency’s culture and wider beliefs, in a meaningful and authentic way? And are you empowering others, including your clients and your colleagues, to live in a way that’s aligned with their values?

The relationship between values and high performance is intertwined for many of us, including here at BW. Our values are part of our culture of high performance and excellence, and high performance and excellence is something our people value and aspire towards.

I’ll leave you with a quote from famous motivational speaker and author Brendon Burchard: “High performers are not born; they are conditioned by habit.”

Let’s remember that it’s never too late to instil habits that inspire high performance, no matter what stage of your career you’re at. I hope you’ve found these tips useful, and I look forward to seeing all the incredible efforts within our industry over 2025.

Chantelle Collin is the head of property management at BresicWhitney.