SAN DIEGO-The importance of realizing how people's behavior is based on age difference and being adaptable with creating budgets were two of the points brought to attendees' attention at BOMA's Every Building Conference & Expo here earlier this week. Educational sessions that explained today's leadership qualities and the best ways to create and manage budgets covered the overriding theme of the conference: how understanding people helps property owners and managers be more successful.

Charlie Dismore, training director for Capstone Real Estate Services Inc., described the top ten calls to leadership in his session titled “Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way, Part II.” (Last year's session, Part I, explored the five sources or reasons that create leadership: reward, coercive power, legitimate, expert and referent.) These calls to leadership were: physical presence, productivity, making your workplace a safe place, humility, courage, generational awareness, trust, performance evaluations, leading from the front and creating a call to action.

“People have shared experiences based on age,” said Dismore. Understanding, for example, that the Silent Generation (a.k.a. Traditionals) prefers a hierarchical organization and that Millennials are multitaskers helps owners and managers to be more productive when dealing with these demographic groups. Regarding Generation X, the first generation to earn less than their parents did, he said, “Money doesn't necessarily motive them, but lack of money might cause a lack of motivation.”

Understanding people was also the theme of the “Budgeting for Success” education session, led by leadership consultant David Hewitt. “Why do we budget?” he asked. “We want to create a dialogue between you and the owner. It's not about the numbers—it's how you expect to achieve your goals.”

Comparing the budget to a “strategic planning document,” Hewett explained that the budget process helps property managers understand what owners are hoping to achieve from their commercial properties, whether it's an annuity on which they plan to live or long-term yield goals. “It also helps you tell the owner the reason and the story behind the numbers.”

Hewett added that he sees a growing trend toward rolling-calendar budgeting, in which a new budget is created every 90 days to allow for changing market or business conditions, reforecasting and adaptability to unforeseen events. Also growing in popularity is zero-based budgeting, in which new budgets are not based on past expenses.

Movement toward more technology in budgeting is another trend, as digital documents become more common, and the importance of dealing with issues when they aren't currently in “crisis mode” (e.g., working on air conditioning in the winter and snow removal in the summer). He also recommended that budget producers talk with brokers regularly to get feedback on lease situations and sharing the budget with as many people as possible to create staff buy-in.