In October of 2022, four leaders across different sectors of the CRE industry were brought together to discuss and present on leadership.

This incredible panel spoke on investing in future leaders, growing teams, mental health, and much more. Here is some of what Carla Moule, General Manager with Lillibridge Healthcare Services Inc., spoke on.

Medical Offices

Lillibridge manages medical office real estate nationwide as well as seniors housing across the globe. My territory is Atlanta, Tennessee and the Florida Panhandle.  In medical, we look at things a little differently.

I have worked in residential, industrial, class A office, and now medical so I have experience in a few product types. And the main differences between Medical and Office or Industrial is what’s important to our tenants? Our tenants are doctors. They are there to administer patient care, they are not necessarily there to care about the building.

We work a lot with the practice manager, with the business office. The decision makers are going to be in the C-Suite those are the people that we kind of focus on and you know, we take care of our doctors we take everything away from them in terms of caring about the building.

They are concerned with safety they’re concerned with cleanliness. They’re concerned with the overall facility. The image of it. Our job is to deliver excellence and do our best to be keep the running of the facility out of the doctors’ minds. That and to provide exceptional service to them as best we can.

Leadership is an investment

Leadership isn’t something that I originally invested in myself. Gosh, I had so many leaders who invested in me through my career and finally I invested in myself fully with the Leadership Master’s program through BOMA, which was completely life changing for me professionally and personally. Medical office is a little bit different I guess from industrial and office and different product types that can manage but really, at leadership and management is just about taking care of the people, right?

The people within an organization. It doesn’t matter what type of product you’re managing or building you’re walking into. If you care about the people that work with your team and you invest the time in them then that’s going to be a benefit to you both professionally, your organization, and you personally.

I’m really open with my team so that they can hold me accountable too and that’s the kind of relationship that I work to build with my team. I’m a person. If I’m vulnerable and open with team members, then I want to know their cats’ names and I want to know what they did over the weekend. I want to take those 10 – 15 minutes to sit and have coffee with them. I’m going to do that because they’re also going to be accountable for me.

Investing in Yourself

I am really invested in both the personal and professional development of everyone on my team. Myself included. I think that we as leaders have to stop and invest in ourselves first so that we can show up and leave everything else at the door. I take a deep breath before I walk into the office every day and just check my stuff at the door so that I can be as present and accountable and show up for my team every single day.

I listen to a lot of podcasts, and I listen to a lot of audiobooks. I do a lot of work on self-help. mental health. Those things are really important to me, as a person, and I spend a lot of time to listen to my team. But I find it really important to feed myself with information that isn’t necessarily topical, and I listen to a lot of stuff about my industry too. I feel like, I need to be kind of a subject matter expert on that as well.

It’s my career. It’s what I enjoy.

It’s what I do.

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