What separates a winning team from the rest? A former Red Bull F1 leader revealed the principles behind building a high-performance operation, with lessons the real estate sector can use to raise its game.
When Richard Hopkins took the reins of Red Bull’s Formula One (F1) team in 2007, the organisation had little racing success, yet under his leadership the team made a name for itself, winning over 50 Grand Prix wins and four consecutive championships.
Speaking at the recent Property Management Excellence Conference in Sydney, Hopkins said a key part of Red Bull’s racing success lay in building a cohesive team with clear messaging.
He said that building a high-performing business started with leadership understanding that no matter how small, every role had a part to play, similarly to an F1 car where all parts were working together in harmony to move forward.
“If we take those 20,000 individual components that have been designed correctly and assembled correctly into a race car, we have a pretty good chance of winning a race or a championship,” Hopkins said.
“But if we take that one bolt away, what we’re left with is just a collection of 19,999 other parts, and we can no longer run a car, and we have no chance of winning a race or a championship.”
During his time at Red Bull, Hopkins learned that the race began before reaching the starting line, as culture, shared goals, and innovation enabled performance across the board.
“We had a vision and an understanding that through development and through innovation, races could be won off the track,” he said.
Here are the lessons that property professionals can take from the highly competitive sporting environment.
What championship are you really fighting for?
According to Hopkins, similarly to sports teams, every successful real estate agency relied on staff being aligned and driving toward the same goal.
He said that when individual staff goals were aligned with the broader business, high performance became more achievable.
“One thing for me was to change the hearts and minds of everybody to allow them to believe that winning was possible.”
Hopkins said that when his team won their first Constructors’ Championship, the pinnacle of teamwork in F1, he displayed the trophy in the reception as a reminder of what the team was working toward.
The team went on to win four consecutively, but when they failed to do so in 2015, Hopkins set out to remind his team what was possible when they worked cohesively.
“When we lost that trophy, I left that cabinet there, empty. So everybody realised that they had to keep focus to try and win that trophy back again.”
Beyond a shared goal, Hopkins said real estate professionals needed to understand their individual roles and how they came together to support the business as a whole.
He said the best example of a team working in collaboration he had seen was in a pit stop.
“That’s 23 individuals who train and practice, practice, practice because they understand the importance of their role within that one moment in time,” Hopkins said
Communicate and be transparent with your team
In addition to having a clear goal for the company, Hopkins said clear and direct communication throughout the business was crucial to developing high performance.
He said that while many businesses believed a few emails or WhatsApp messages were enough, leaders needed clear communication processes to ensure nothing slipped through the cracks.
“What I’m talking about is what we communicate, who we communicate to and why we communicate.”
Hopkins said that one of the most successful communication strategies he encountered in his time in F1 was a full debrief after every race weekend.
He said it gave staff a platform to talk about what went well over the weekend and what could be improved.
“It’s so important to communicate to your entire team and be transparent and honest in that communication.”
With property managers responsible for managing the expectations of landlords, tenants and their business leaders, communication is a pivotal aspect of their day-to-day operations.
Adapt and overcome
With rule changes and reforms playing a significant role in both the real estate industry and F1, the ability to adjust to shifting circumstances is an important skill to develop in both fields.
Hopkins said that PMs should look for a silver lining rather than focusing on the negative impact.
“We embrace those rule changes because we believe there’s an opportunity and we are not in fear of them,” he said.
“We almost look forward to them because of the opportunity that could be created and how we push the limits.”
Similarly, while businesses needed to plan ahead, Hopkins said they also had to understand what they could control and what they couldn’t.
“You don’t really know what’s going to happen because there are so many things outside of your control, and we just try to control as much as we can.”
“But the one thing we didn’t do was try to control the future.”
Hopkins said many leaders came into a business looking to make a statement, when they should take time to understand staff needs first.
“Many CEOs arrive on Monday and by the time they finish their first day, they’ve made sweeping changes and made a hundred different decisions. Congratulations to them, but I don’t know how you do that without understanding the organisation.”
Celebrate your team’s success
While high performance is important, Hopkins said that teams needed to take a beat to celebrate and recognise when things were going well.
He said staff needed space to enjoy the win before moving on to chase the next goal.
Hopkins said that when celebrating a race win in his early days at Red Bull, he realised that moving straight on to the next objective didn’t do justice to what it took to achieve the goal.
“I just thought that after all this time, all this effort, blood, sweat and tears, not many have won more than one Grand Prix, and here we are, a moment of success, and we’ve celebrated it in this fashion.”
“Always celebrate your successes with champagne, not sparkling wine.”
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