What are the best career development strategies for young professionals in real estate?

After 25 years as a leadership headhunter, I’d argue that building a career is like building a great development. You need strong foundations, an understanding of how to work with people, and the best tools and materials to deliver your objective. Only then will you get from the ground floor to the penthouse — where the view is clear. There are many inspirational leaders who have built their careers, brick by brick, like this.

There are four essential tools that every good leader needs:

1) Knowing Yourself

Recognise that the perfect leader doesn’t exist, and perfection isn’t even the goal. Every great leader is both brilliant and flawed and, crucially, willing to make mistakes and keep learning.

The traditional view of leadership is also flawed, over-indexed on charisma which can drive innovation, but may also lead to overconfidence, eccentricity, and manipulation (think ponzi scheme mastermind Bernie Madoff or bitcoin’s Sam Bankman-Fried).

Leadership isn’t a title or something you are, it’s something you do. It’s your actions that inspire trust and commitment, and that begins with knowing yourself. Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” You can examine your life by undertaking psychometrics, revisiting your 360 reviews, and asking yourself: out of ten, how self-aware are you? No one starts out a fully formed leader – it is something you work on.

Great leaders focus on doing a job well, and the rest follows. Isabelle Scemema, Romain Ferron, Roger Orf, Anne Kavanagh, Ric Lewis all agree. They know what they’re good at, doubling down on it, while working on those areas where more is needed.

How well do you truly know yourself? What are you good at? How willing are you to work on those areas that could be better?

2) Communication Skills

Leadership and communication are two sides of the same coin. If you can’t get people to listen, to understand, to believe, then you won’t get far. Communication is about making it easy for others to hear you and act on what you’ve said. It’s like a muscle that needs to be trained.

First, consider your audience. Who are they and what do they need to hear? Then think about your objective. If it is unclear to you, it will be for your listener too. Also, identify and communicate the messages you want people to take away. Is it memorable? In a world of distractions, it helps to be obvious! Finally, remember to listen – to understand, not merely to respond.

Great leaders are outstanding communicators. They tell powerful stories in impactful ways. They get people to listen, understand, and believe in what they stand for. If someone believes in you, they will lift you up, and act to help you forge a path.

3) Building Teams and Helping Others

Nobody can be skilled at everything. The best leaders know their skills gaps, and hire exceptional people to fill them, building diverse, effective, and supportive teams embracing different skillsets. They don’t just point at the hole — they bring the sand to fill it. They think creatively about how they build successful teams and networks, and it pays to think creatively when approaching problems.

Ken Griffin, an American hedge fund entrepreneur, once hired a rocket scientist to apply advanced techniques to pricing models. Inevitably this was met with scepticism by many, but it turned out to be a winning move.

The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst has a simple motto: Serve to lead. In other words, look after your team so that they can succeed. Consider what juniors will think about you in the future. What will the future ULI young leaders thank you for – what’s your legacy? It starts sooner than you think!

Bohill Partners started a social impact initiative, Run Kids Run, to help connect the industry with the communities it invests in, and address underfunding in schools. It’s raised over £1m, encouraged 12,500 children and their families to run, supported 60 schools in the UK and Ireland, mobilised 350 volunteers, and spun off the Read Kids Read initiative for free school libraries. However, none of this would have been possible without a great, empowered team around me.

4) Embracing a Growth Mindset

A growth mindset is the belief that your intelligence and abilities can be developed, as opposed to a fixed mindset. It embraces challenges, see’s failure as a learning opportunity, and is resilient. Mastery isn’t in the arriving. It’s in the reaching. Transpose this to a real estate staple, the Excel formula, and you get:

Talent × Effort = Skill
Skill × Effort = Achievement

Skill isn’t what you’re born with, you build it with effort, while achievement is skill multiplied even more by effort. Without effort, your skill is just what you could have done but didn’t.

Real estate is evolving. Twenty years ago, data centres and PBSA didn’t exist. Place-making wasn’t a thing. Our leaders of tomorrow will shape what comes next. Thankfully, our young leaders are emotionally intelligent, inclusive, have redefined success, hold power accountable, are innovative, digitally curious and fluent, and adaptable. Deloitte’s 2024 survey found that 86% of Gen Zs say purpose is key to job satisfaction. They are not afraid to walk away from what doesn’t align. That’s powerful.

How do you embrace the growth mindset? Begin by finding a mentor or coach. Then build and nurture your industry relationships through networking. Always say ‘yes’ more than ‘no’ to opportunities (give your time and talent to something to make a difference and learn from it).

And finally……read! Harry Truman said, “Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.” Make time for it. Every year, we ask leaders what books inspired them. We publish this on LinkedIn – you might like to seek it out.

What kind of leader will you be?

The skills that future leaders will need are hard to predict, but integrity, adaptability and moral courage will be key, and leaders will need to keep learning, growing, and embracing change.

However, the glue of humanity is empathy.

As we move into an uncertain future, those with empathy, resilience, and ethics will shape it.

ULI Young Leaders – Leadership Education: Over the past year, the ULI team and the ULI Europe Young Leaders Executive Committee have collaborated to set up a ULI Young Leaders – Leadership Education programme for young professionals, filling an important educational gap. This hybrid training programme, delivered by top experts, will upskill the talent in our industry to become the most inclusive, impactful, and responsible people leaders – directly aligned with our mission priority to educate the next generation of real estate leaders.

Register your interest by leaving your email. Scan the QR code:

For further information on ULI Europe Young Leaders visit https://europe.uli.org/councils/young-leaders/

See you next year! The 2026 ULI Europe Conference will take place in Berlin. Further details coming soon. 

All photography: Karla Gowlett/ULI