Buckingham employees just wrapped up another amazing leadership conference in the month of May with a mission to ‘Expand Your Horizons’. With motivational speakers like WNBA star Tamika Catchings, dreamer and entrepreneur Jim Hallett, relationship builder Deseri Garcia, and customer service extraordinaire Jay Baer, our team members were engaged and inspired. Check out more from our annual conference and highlights from our speakers!
For the first year ever, Platinum Sales Club members were invited to the conference as an opportunity for professional development. Here were some comments from their experience -
"Annual conference this year was an awesome opportunity to experience such great people from different backgrounds come as one to celebrate the good work that we do together as a company." - Rayanna Allen, Leasing Consultant at Fieldstone at Glenwood Crossing
"1, 2, 3, set... SWOOSH! Thanks for the reset, Buckingham Conference 2018. I enjoyed hearing the speakers, thinking about focus, customer first, and being memorable. I sincerely enjoyed getting to connect with other Buckingham employees, especially putting a face to a name at the corporate office. The highlight for me was watching the joy on Mary's face as she described the reaction she would receive from the children at her property when they receive the birthday boxes that our Foundation activity was centered around, and Jeff Henry's excitement getting to meet his idol, Tamika Catchings. It's refreshing to see a company encourage development and giving back to their communities." - Tinsley Dempsey, Resident Concierge at Aertson Midtown
Operations Gathering:
We welcomed our out of town team members to Plat 99 at The Alexander Hotel for dinner and drinks, and a chance to catch up before the conference kick-off. Thanks to all who attended!
Blue Door Society:
The Blue Door Society was established in 2015 as a special recognition program for employees who have achieved more than five years of service. Essential to the growth and development of our company is the ability to hire and retain employees who embody our mission, vision, values and key success qualities. This program gives us an additional opportunity to celebrate those team members at certain milestones in their Buckingham career. Each year, at the Buckingham Leadership Conference, we will induct new members and recognize employees who have achieved five years; 10 years; 15 years; 20 years; and 25 years of service.
Please congratulate our 2018 inductees with five years of service:
Johanna Bastin
Derrick Black
Carolyn Bullard
Matt Cooper
Evan Corcoran
Amanda Corey
Ryan Gallmeyer
Amy Grubbs
Mark Johnson
Chris Kiel
Kellie Linzner
Rachel Miller
Scott Noll
Ashley Parker
Jason Reitzel
Alvaro Villanueva
Roy Whited
Samantha Young
Please congratulate inductees with 10 years of service:
Stefanie Cord
Bill Chambers
Jason Hertenstein
Andrew Klineman
Please congratulate inductees with 15 years of service:
Linda Ferrill
Chris Jackowiak
Nick Santi
It’s with great honor that we congratulate Carmen Sporleder on her 25 years of service to Buckingham. She’s devoted her time and talent to the company and is an avid supporter of Buckingham Foundation. Enjoy this video celebrating Carmen!
As a member of the Blue Door Society, each employee receives a vested bonus, name plate recognition, apparel, and additional time off.
Jim Hallett, CEO of KAR Auction Services, Inc., kicked off our conference by sharing his story of being a dreamer, coming to the U.S. from Canada, and working his way up in the automotive industry. Some of his key takeaways include acting with urgency, having a vision, knowing when to walk away and be willing to take advice.
Tamika Catchings, WNBA Fever All-Star and the ultimate team player challenged us with a simple task – assembling a puzzle. The main takeaway was working together to do so, asking the right questions, focusing on communication and not giving up. The mission here was to discover each person’s strength to put together a masterpiece. From this keynote speaker, we learned to be open to new opportunities, go above and beyond and always be learning.
With Deseri Garcia, our team had to follow directions and also have the ability to listen, while performing the task at hand. Our hands-on experience was to join team members in a large circle, each having a note card with a mission attached to it. While telling a story, we listened to key terms telling us what to do with the notecard. In the end, it was a struggle for our team to recite the story back to Dereri since we were so focused on completing the task at hand. We also learned the importance of care and kindness towards one of our important stakeholders, our colleagues.
Day one of conference ended with a presentation by author and customer experience extraordinaire, Jay Baer. Having already implemented customer service tactics presented by Baer in his book, Hug your Haters, our team was excited to learn more from him thanks to his upcoming book, Talk Triggers. Our team was challenged to discover a memorable experience that we can provide our customers to keep our brand top of mind. With relevant examples from our industry, Buckingham now has a commitment to creating a talkable experience for our residents since word of mouth marketing is responsible for 50% of all purchases.
During the awards ceremony, we had the opportunity to recognize and congratulate team members that went above and beyond the call of duty, were nominated by their peers and selected as our Awards of Excellence winners. Congratulations!
Customer First
Operations: Jennifer Macaluso
Production: Shane Wells
Sites: Doug Hart
Teamwork
Operations: Alex Cox
Production: Brian Haley
Sites: Brad Reed
Positive Attitude
Operations: Jessica Foster
Production: Leslie Rich
Sites: Larry Dudek
Community Involvement
Operations: Mike Hassell
Production: Lynda Weaver
Sites: Jeff Henry
Exceptional Leadership
Operations: Joanna Elpers
Production: Ryan Gallmeyer
Sites: Rachel Miller
Outstanding Performance
Operations: Justin Brown
Production: Drew Fishbaugh
Sites: Evan Corcoran
Buckingham Foundation Initiative
Birthday celebrations, for most, seems like an easy task to accomplish. Purchase balloons, send out the invite, grab a cake and party. But for most of the families at our affordable communities, this isn’t something they can afford to do for their children. That’s when Buckingham Foundation decided to step in. With help and support from United Way of Central Indiana, our team members completed the conference with a true birthday celebration by assembling and wrapping 466 birthday boxes that our affordable communities will distribute to the children at their properties throughout the year. These boxes included cake mix, balloons, confetti, birthday hat, and so much more wrapped up with a personalized birthday card attached. Our team members agreed that this conference went a step further in allowing us to do something impactful for our own people. We can’t wait to see pictures showing the surprise and joy from these kids this year!
Kudos to our Leadership Planning Committee for the time, energy, ideas and flawless execution to make it an exciting experience for all. We’ve already begun planning for 2019 so if you have any ideas or want to be involved, please contact Becca Manolov.
With another successful conference under our belt, our team is ready to put into place key takeaways we learned from our guest speakers and executive leaders. We enjoyed celebrating wins and look forward to the bright future of Buckingham. Some say, ‘the best is yet to come’ and we couldn’t agree more!
