Keepers of the Castle: Real Estate Executives on Leadership and Management

Leadership Matters More Than Ever in a rapidly evolving business landscape. The skill sets required for managing real estate companies have expanded and grown steadily more complex. Future leaders must be able to do more than staff executive teams and manage increasingly complex organizations with financial acumen and interpersonal savvy. They must also understand local markets and bricks-and-mortar principles while having a firm grasp of national and global economic trends. And tomorrow's leaders will require ever greater skills and innate abilities to ensure success for themselves and their businesses.

Based on interviews with more than 150 individuals who constitute a who's who of the world's leading real estate executives, this book examines the transformation of America's largest industry-real estate-and identifies the attributes needed by chief executives and other leaders who are guiding their businesses through profound change. As this book was written, the U.S. real estate markets changed dramatically-for the worse. The housing crisis, credit crunch, rising energy prices, and economic recession have dramatically affected real estate markets. This book identifies the leadership strategies of and lessons learned by leading executives who have survived the downs of multifaceted business cycles and profitably taken advantage of ensuing opportunities in recovery.