‘As an employee, I’d want to know everything'

In October 2016, the leadership team at property consultancy Knight Frank had what the company’s CEO, Stephen Ellis, describes as a “confronting” and “challenging” personal development session.

Engaging renowned author and leadership development expert Michael Bunting, Ellis and his team were warned that the 360 degree feedback sessions they were about to undertake would be unlike any other they’d previously done.

“You have to talk about the issues in front of everybody and then explain what you’re going to do about it,” said Ellis.

“It was quite confronting to me when Michael outlined what my biggest fault was, and how I might address it.”

In Ellis’ case, the main criticism from colleagues was that there were too many three-way conversations going on around him – in other words, they felt that Ellis would talk to one person about someone else, and then talk to another person about that person, as opposed to having total transparency and talking to everybody at the same time.

The exercise sparked not just a period of self-reflection for Ellis and his senior team, but also triggered a renewed interest in the importance of transparency in business. “It was quite enlightening for the whole group,” Ellis said.

“We filtered it right the way through the business. From what people have told me, it was one of those watershed moments. Of course, that was only eight months ago, but it’s amazing how changes like that can have quite a big impact on the business.”

With corporate scandals and wrong-doing constantly hogging the headlines, it’s refreshing to hear a CEO of a leading company talk about the importance of leadership transparency. “I’m not going to sugarcoat facts,” said Ellis.

“It would be very easy to go along and say ‘we’ve got this amount of market share, it has increased by X percent, and our turnover has changed to this’, and gloss over the downsides. But I don’t believe in that. I read all these public company reports and they are all about showing how well the company has done.

“My feeling is that, as an employee, I’d want to know everything, warts and all. I think you get more respect if you share the pluses, the minuses and you demonstrate that you know what you’re doing.”

Knight Frank Australia and its predecessor businesses began operations in Melbourne in 1885 and expanded nationally through the acquisition of interstate businesses to develop a network of state-based entities.

Major events in the evolution of the Knight Frank brand in Australia and the ownership of Knight Frank Australia Pty Ltd include the creation in 1994 of Knight Frank Hooker Australia, which was created out of the merger of Baillieu Knight Frank and Hooker Corporate, a wholly owned division of the Suncorp Group (use of the Hooker name ceased in 1996), and the subsequent UK Knight Frank entity taking 100% acquisition of Knight Frank Australia.

These various incarnations, in addition to the tumult of the GFC, had taken a toll on the standing of the Australian operations, both from a business standpoint, and an employer standpoint. Ellis was bought as on board in 2010, following 23 years at what eventually became CB Richard Ellis, including a stint as the property giant’s CEO and chairman.

“I joined Knight Frank in 2010 as much for the challenge as much as anything else,” said Ellis.

“When I arrived in Australia some 30 years ago, I thought the company was one of the top two brands in the country when it came to commercial real estate and I had seen the brand slip away. I thought there was an opportunity to do something with a business that was struggling in certain ways to find its own identity and what the business was really about.”

While Knight Frank’s major competitors such as CB Richard Ellis and Colliers are publically listed companies, Knight Frank remains private. Ellis says this has its challenges – not least of which are limits on the amount of available capital. However, he also believes that being private has certain advantages.

“We can present ourselves as being slightly different to the competition,” he says. “The market is all about ‘big is beautiful’, which is very much the aspiration of those other organisations. Of course, that’s an easy sell. It’s a simple vision that everyone can grasp.”