Real Estate and Construction

John D. Frager

By Mark Scott

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John D. Frager does not expect his employees to die in the line of duty at Grubb & Ellis|BRE Commercial, nor does he plan to give up his life in pursuit of the company’s goals. But the values of servant leadership espoused in the 2003 film “The Last Samurai” do relate to success in the business world, says the company’s president and CEO. By always keeping his eye on the customers and setting goals that help his company serve them better, Frager has led the 200-employee commercial real estate firm to $38 million in 2006 revenue. Smart Business spoke with Frager about constantly raising the bar of expectations and why you can’t do it all yourself.

Build your team. Focus on building a strong and cohesive leadership team that’s going to help you run your company. You can’t do it by yourself. You’re trying to build a team that can lead the company together.

You have to understand a person’s skill sets, their strengths and their weaknesses. It takes time to naturally mold a team in their roles and responsibilities that fit them the best.

Our main goal is to create clarity in the organization — where we’re headed, what behaviors we value within the organization, what makes us unique with our competitors and the goals that we want to achieve.

Have real clear and defined roles and responsibilities for everybody. Build regiment in your team as far as your meeting times and how you track getting things done, planning and goal-setting.

Ask questions. What makes an effective executive is when you ask a set of questions. Any time you come into a situation, you say, ‘Hey, what needs to get done here?’ Develop some action plans and get people to take responsibility and communicate the plan. Focus on the opportunities rather than the problems. Face issues and try to solve them.

Make goal-setting a priority. It all starts from the setting of performance standards and consistent achievement of those standards. When you do that, that’s what really makes a difference in the company.

It assists in getting momentum and getting things done. In the book ‘Good to Great,’ Jim [Collins] talked about the big flywheel. You have to get momentum. Those first few pushes of that big flywheel are difficult. Once you set action plans and you get people moving in the right direction, that flywheel starts to spin, and then it gets easier and easier to get it to move faster, and it builds up some of its own inertia.

Keep raising the bar. You have to create a high-performance orientation where we’re constantly raising the bar.

Establish written goals and objectives for everybody. Setting standards, and consistent achievement of those standards, really makes a difference in a company.

Look at the roles within the company and develop performance objectives. We try to do at least monthly reviews with everybody. They are not highly regimented. The first part of it is asking what’s going on in that person’s life and how things are going. Following up with, ‘How are you doing on your goals?’

As a leader, you’re saying, ‘What can I do to help?’ It demonstrates you care for them, and they know they have a leadership that is trying to help them, and they know that their performance counts.

You need to create a fun atmosphere at the same time to inspire everyone to do their best. Sometimes it can be a fine line between a high-performance culture and a high-anxiety culture. Our goal is to make our firm challenging, satisfying and a fun place to work.

The atmosphere at the office really helps create the energy and the synergy to be successful.

Aim high when hiring. You can’t spend enough quality time hiring the right people. It’s a very rigorous effort. Look for drive. It’s the need for achievement, competitiveness and optimism.

Somebody that sets high personal goals, is ambitious and is prepared to work long and hard in the pursuit of excellence. Somebody like Tiger Woods. The guy shoots a 63, and you interview him, and he’s upset because he thought he should have shot a 60.

Someone that is going to get into the game and is determined to be a top producer for us and doesn’t just give up once a challenge has been accepted. To me, that is somebody like Michael Jordan. If you were at a party with him and you played a game of ping pong and beat him, he probably is not going to let you leave the party until he beats you.

Help your employees. One key ingredient is providing strong training because that’s really an investment in people. Share with them, ‘Look, we’re going to help you develop your skills. We’re going to help you improve and build a really high-quality resume. No matter how long you’re here at our firm, you’re going to leave a better person.’

Instill a strong desire to constantly improve everybody’s skills. That helps us as far as improving our reputation. What we’re trying to build is that individual responsibility for skills development and personal growth.

We have a leadership development course that we run eight people through each year. We have them participate in a monthly class on basic leadership skills — how to facilitate a meeting, how to understand different personality types, how to have a fierce conversation, building a team.

They participate in voluntary leadership roles within our organization until they get some hands-on experience at running a committee or an advisory board or one of our specialty divisions.

Balance work and life. It’s energy, not time, that is our most precious resource. You really want to manage your energy levels.

You have to learn that there is a pulse with a high-performance environment. You have to learn to balance stress and recovery periods. Some days are going to be really stressful. You can manage that and sustain that for a while, but you have to carve in some recovery time.

It’s all about physical energy, emotional energy and mental energy. All these different types of energy you really have to manage. The proper application of all that really gets you ahead. (Make time for) exercise, quality time with family and retreat. Break away.

HOW TO REACH: Grubb & Ellis|BRE Commercial, (858) 546-5400 or www.brecommercial.com