Amanda Fajak | CEO, Walking The Talk
11/06/2023
Amanda Fajak, CEO of ZRG culture consulting group, Walking the Talk, and Larry Krema, Managing Director in the Real Estate Practice of ZRG, discuss how to create an actionable strategy for company culture.
In September, ZRG hosted a half-day symposium for real estate HR leaders in New York City, consisting of two panels. I was honored to lead the first panel, a conversation between Stephanie Biernbaum, Chief People Officer at Hines, and Jill Kissack, the America’s Head of HR for Cushman & Wakefield. We discussed the opportunities, challenges and dynamics, from the human capital side of two global, but two very different real estate businesses, one a global investor and developer and the other a real estate services business. The sound quality did not cooperate to release that conversation, but to get the gist of that discussion, listen to two prior Leading Voices episodes: Stephanie Biernbaum and Doug Holte of Hines and Brett White, Chairman of Cushman and Wakefield.
The second panel, presented in this podcast, with Amanda and Larry Krema, dives into culture, taking the discussion from squishy and intangible to practical and actionable. Amanda’s insights into culture, how leaders must “walk the talk”, and the impact of remote working on culture is fascinating. She also describes ZRG’s proprietary Taylor Assessment, a tool to both identify a company’s cultural paradigm and a tool to assess fit for candidates and existing leadership. Larry offers lessons he learned from the titans in real estate in his former roles as head of HR for both Sam Zell’s Equity Office and Simon Properties.
Leading Voices is a show that is for and about leaders in the real estate industry. This episode, although we are talking about real estate companies throughout the conversation, is universal in terms of its applicability to both leadership and corporate culture across industries. I invite you to share this episode with your friends outside the industry. From my perspective, so many of the conversations on Leading Voices transcend industry - think Rick Caruso in the last episode and so many of our guests whose pathways to leadership, success, and impact transcend the business, but this conversation especially has lessons for us all.
Thank you Amanda and Walking the Talk for spending time with us and coming into our real estate world. You can visit Walking the Talk for more information.
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