This winter, Inman is obsessing over leadership in real estate. We’re publishing profiles, Q&As, strategy guides, and an in-depth 5-part report on what the industry wants from its leaders. Then, on March 26-28, we’re going to gather those leaders in the California desert to digest all of these inputs and figure out where to go from here.

This is a collaborative process. Please engage with our posts, and send us feedback to leadership@inman.com. And if you are a leader who wants to join us in the desert in March, or if you want to recommend a colleague, send a note to brad@inman.com and tell us why.

Roland Kampmeyer is the Managing Director of Kampmeyer Immobilien GmbH in Cologne, Germany, founded in 1995. The brokerage serves the Cologne, Bonn and Düsseldorf metropolitan areas. As an internationally active networker, he is a sought-after expert on corporate development issues in times of constant social and technological change. His passion is the future issues of real estate marketing. We recently sat down with Roland to ask his views on the current state of real estate leadership.

As a leader, what keeps you up at night?

I am inspired by the challenge of understanding the correlations of the global real estate business and at the same time contributing to the industry’s change by providing excellence. We have the chance to concentrate on our own strengths, while constantly measuring our performance through the satisfaction of our clients. They do not expect perfection from us at all times, but they expect us to strive for perfection and create sustainable value for them.

Roland Kampmeyer

If you could change one thing in real estate, what would it be?

Make it 5 instead of 5000 steps! In order to sell only one property, you need to follow a procedure which is made up out of way too many different steps. Following procedures this long, everybody might get lost and make mistakes at some point. My vision would be an intelligible process, allowing the transaction in a maximum of 5 steps.

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How have your expectations of your management team changed over the past two years?

Good question! About 2 and a half years ago structural transformation started fundamentally changing our business and is still doing so. We now work closely together as a community of values, responsibly shaping our workspace together. I expect my management as well as myself to create and further promote shared cultural values and above all, live up to these. The mutual exchange within the team creates a ssuccess-orientedconnection within the whole corporate culture, affecting the operative business right up to the management.

How do you keep your team competitive?

I always ensure that all team members are part of our shared-value community and represent our principles and values, beginning with the mindset that the success of every individual team member is as important as the personal one. If an employee has lost his or her tie to the company’s values or agreed targets, it is time to part ways. By recruiting and addressing talents in the right way the above described scenario can be prevented and thus the company’s competitiveness increased.

With so much disruption in real estate, what’s your best advice for managing change?

First of all, you must understand the effects disruption and societal change have on every individual. Our clients show us how they react and adapt to these changes. It is our responsibility to perceive and adapt to these reactions. With a lot of visionary awareness, it is possible to detect these changes in our customers’ requests and expectations and adapt to them at an early stage. It might be enough, to be just a tiny bit ahead of these changes. New opportunities will offer themselves constantly to you, leaving competitors behind and satisfied customers in front of you.

Want to connect with Roland? You can find him on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

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