Business

How technology can help you improve your ability to lead a team in the business

Published

5 years ago

April 19, 2021

Leadership can be one of the hardest things to get right when it comes to business. When lots of people come looking to you for an answer, it is important you can come up with the most effective solution to a problem as quickly as possible. The only problem is while lots of people are relying on you to tell them what to do, there are probably very few people you can turn to for help in a situation like this if you are towards the top of the management structure. Luckily, there is a lot of ways technology can help you out of a lot of these situations and help you become a better leader. Here is a look at some of the ways technology can help you improve your business leadership skills such as taking a masters in leadership online course.

Further your education

Once you have left school or college, you might think that is the end of your time in education. You can easily return to college and study many different degrees online without attending any physical classes. For example, you can take a masters in leadership online course from anywhere in the country by simply attending classes and completing assignments online. If you already feel like you have got a lot on your plate leading a team, you might think that you simply do not have time to complete a masters in leadership online course alongside your work and personal life. The reality is these courses do not take too long to complete, with many of them simply taking an academic year to teach you everything you need to know and get you qualified. Another great thing about a masters in leadership online course is you can learn in your own time. Unlike traditional college, with a masters in leadership online you do not have to attend any classes in person at awkward times of the way. Instead, you choose when you complete many of the aspects of the degree, where you complete them, and even what you are doing while you complete them. If you have a long commute on public transport every morning, you could find you could better use this time completing this course while sitting on a train or a bus rather than simply flicking through social media.

By completing a masters in leadership online course, you will learn lots of skills, including how to mentor new recruits, keep on top of what your employees are doing, and even work with teams remotely. The latter of those tasks is seemingly becoming increasingly important as business becomes global and more and more of us are working in offices or even our different homes across the world. On top of this, these degrees will teach you more about how to gain trust, work ethically, and motivate a team. One of the big advantages of learning these skills through a degree program is that you will have something to show for it once you have completed the course. If you decide you want to change jobs in the future or apply for a promotion, a masters in leadership online course will look impressive on any resume. It will show that you are passionate about furthering your skills and will happily put the effort in to improve your productivity within a team. While many degrees like basic qualifications in Math and English are necessary for most jobs, a degree like this could be the cherry on top of the cake that makes you stand out from other candidates when going for a new job.

Keep on track of your team’s progress

When you are leading a team, it is important not just to keep an eye on your own workload. It is also important to keep an eye on the workload of the colleagues that you manage. If they get behind on their work, it will cause you just as many problems as if you got behind on one of your many assignments. That is why it is so important to keep track of your teams’ progress as often as possible. The earlier you catch any potential problems or delays that might mean your team may fail to complete a task effectively before a deadline, the more chance you have of being able to do something about it. If you simply leave it until a few days until the deadline, or you even leave it up to your employees to contact you to say there is a problem, you might find that simply too much time has passed to go back and correct the problem before a set deadline.

To make sure this never happens, there are lots of ways you can monitor your teams progress quickly while using technology. For example, if your colleagues are all working on one shared hard drive, whether that be a physical device or an online cloud system, make sure you also have access to that device. That way, you can simply open any files in progress to check that enough work is being completed that you are confident they will reach the deadline. You will also be able to check that you are happy with the quality of the work being completed, so you can stop any time being spent on any bad ideas that you would have ended up telling your team to redo once they presented the final product.

You can also keep track of the individual progress of each employee from the comfort of your desk. For example, if you work in sales, make sure each employee records the sales they have made at the end of a certain period, whether every week or even every day. That way, as long as you can access that document and as long as it is updated regularly, you can spot which employees are selling enough to reach their targets by the end of the month and which are going to struggle. Of course, if you spot someone who is lagging on their sales target, it’s important to meet with them to see how you can help them improve their sales tactics to make sure they achieve their goals. It is also important that you keep an eye on your best-performing employees as well, as if they reach their monthly goal within a few weeks, they may be tempted to take their foot off the gas and be less productive at work. As you are still paying them for the whole month, even if they achieve their goal within a few weeks, it is important that you can check that they are putting as much effort into every single day. Encourage them to further their skills by taking a masters in leadership online if they have the potential and drive to advance their careers.

Drop-in on as many meetings as possible

Another way technology is having a big impact on the way we work is how we meet up and collaborate with other colleagues and clients. In the offices of most big businesses, there would be boardrooms dedicated to important meetings. They would be set up with enough chairs, enough desk space, and maybe even a sound system and big display to make sure everyone in the room can see and hear every presentation being given. For years, most people have presumed the best and only way to have these meetings are to get everyone together in the same big room. Over the last few years, many people have been ditching the physical meeting room to favor a lot more modern option.

Instead of meeting face to face, encourage your team to hold more meetings on web conferencing software like Zoom, Skype, or Microsoft Teams. The major advantage of this system is you can quickly meet with anybody, no matter where they are in the world and how busy their schedule is. Instead of wasting time traveling to a different office, people can simply join the meeting with a simple click of a button from their laptop or smartphone. Another big advantage to this is that you do not need any of the microphones, large screens or even a big enough room to be able to hold this meeting, saving any business a lot of money in the process.

Once your colleagues are set up on a video conferencing software, it also means that it is a lot easier for you to drop in on meetings to check the progress of your teams. All you need is the code for the room, and you can be in the meeting within seconds. Make sure you attend as many meetings in this way as possible. Not only will it allow you to check that your colleagues are doing what they are supposed to be doing, it also allows you to help shape any ideas from the very beginning of the process. This makes it a lot easier to influence the project than trying to salvage a good compromise from what they have been doing unsupervised.

Allow them an easy way to contact you with concerns

One of the hardest parts of leading a team is that you feel like you have to be in multiple places simultaneously. While things like a masters in leadership online course can teach you all the ways in which you can help your team complete work to the very best of their ability, it cannot allow you to be in two places at once. That means when you are spending time with one section of your team, it can quite easily feel like you are neglecting another part of your team. You may even worry that something might go wrong with that team you are not spending time with, which could, in turn, cause big disruptions to your business.

If you tried to spend time overseeing every one of your colleagues every day, it is highly likely that you simply would not have enough time to delve deep into conversation and discussion about what they are doing. There will also be times where you simply need to complete your own work in your office and do not have time to monitor any of your team’s progress. That is why it is so important to make sure your team has lots of easy options to contact you in case of an emergency. Ensure they know the easiest way to contact you, whether that is ringing the landline on your desk, ringing your smartphone, dropping you an email, or even messaging you via text or WhatsApp.

Ensure they feel confident in contacting you no matter how minor the problem may seem. If a colleague is reluctant to tell you about something over concerns about how you will react, whether it is out of anger that an incident has happened or out of annoyance that they havecontacted you over something so silly, it could mean that you do not learn about important incidents. When problems like this happen, no matter how small they are, it is important to know about them as soon as possible. When picking up the phone or replying to a message from a colleague, always let them know that you appreciate them letting you know and that they should get in touch again if they have any concerns in the future.

Check they are keeping up with the very basics

When it comes to leading a team, one of the most frustrating yet most important parts of being a manager is to make sure your team is well disciplined. You can learn how to manage this through taking a masters in leadership online. To make sure your team are completing work to the best of their ability at their job, it is first important to make sure that they are showing up on time for their job. Software like Microsoft Outlook can show you exactly when a colleague has logged on. This means if your team are all supposed to be logged on at 9am in the morning, you can easily see exactly who has not made it to their desk on time by looking through the color-coded statuses in your contact’s book. This system will let you know if one of your employees has been away from their desk for a long time, whether that is because they are taking extra-long lunch breaks or doing something else, which means they avoid completing their important tasks for the day.

Business

Royal York Property Management And Nathan Levinson On Building Stable Rental Portfolios In A Volatile Market

Published

3 days ago

December 11, 2025

Matthew Wiles

Across North America, Europe, and much of the world, rental housing is caught between two pressures. On one side are tenants facing record affordability challenges. On the other side are landlords seeing operating costs, interest payments, and regulatory complexity move in the opposite direction.

Recent analysis from Canada’s national housing agency shows how tight conditions still are. The average vacancy rate for purpose-built rentals in major Canadian centres rose to about 2.2 percent in 2024, up from 1.5 percent a year earlier, but still below the 10-year average despite the strongest growth in rental supply in more than three decades.

At the same time, higher interest rates have pushed up the cost of acquiring and financing rental buildings, which has slowed transactions and made many projects harder to pencil out.

In this environment, the question for landlords and investors is less about chasing maximum rent and more about building stability. That is where Royal York Property Management and its founder, president, and CEO Nathan Levinson have drawn attention.

From a base in Toronto, Royal York Property Management manages more than 25,000 rental properties, representing over 10 billion dollars in real estate value, and operates across Canada, the United States, and parts of Europe. Levinson also sits on a Bank of Canada policy panel focused on the rental market, where he provides data and on-the-ground insights about rent trends and landlord stress.

For many smaller property owners, his model has become a reference point for how to treat rental housing as a structured financial asset rather than a side project.

Rental housing under pressure from both sides of the balance sheet

In many countries, the basic rental story is the same. Construction of new rental housing has climbed, yet demand still runs ahead of supply in most major cities. In Canada, overall rental supply grew by more than 4 percent in 2024, the strongest increase in over thirty years, while vacancy rose only modestly.

At the same time, borrowing costs have moved sharply higher compared with the pre-pandemic period. Research shows that elevated interest rates have reduced the profitability of new multifamily deals and slowed investment activity, even as structural demand for rental housing stays strong.

For small and mid-sized landlords, that tension shows up in a simple way. Mortgage payments, taxes, insurance, and maintenance rarely move down. Rents move up more slowly, and in many jurisdictions they are constrained by regulation or market realities.

Levinson’s view is that this gap will not close on its own. Landlords who want to stay in the market need more predictable income, tighter control of costs, and clearer systems for dealing with risk.

A property management model built for volatility

Royal York Property Management did not start as an institutional platform. Levinson’s early clients were owners of single condominiums, duplexes, or small buildings who were struggling with irregular rent payments, surprise repairs, and complex rental rules.

Instead of handling each property ad hoc, he built a standardized operating model that treats every door as part of a wider portfolio. Each unit sits on a centralized platform that records rent, arrears, lease expiries, maintenance tickets, and legal actions. Owners see real-time statements and performance metrics rather than waiting for year-end reports.

That structure, combined with an internal maintenance and legal team, is designed to handle stress rather than avoid it. When markets are calm, the system may look conservative. When conditions worsen, it is what keeps owners in the black.

“Execution is everything” is how Levinson often frames it in interviews.

Turning rent into a more predictable income stream

The feature that first drew many investors to Royal York Property Management is its rental guarantee program in Ontario. Under this model, landlords receive their rent even if a tenant stops paying. RYPM takes responsibility for legal proceedings, arrears recovery, and re-leasing the unit, while the owner continues to receive income.

Independent profiles of the company describe this as one of the first large-scale rental guarantee frameworks in the Canadian market, and note that the firm manages tens of thousands of units under this structure.

The guarantee itself is closely tied to local law and does not transfer directly into every jurisdiction. The underlying logic, however, is straightforward:

Treat unpaid rent as a recurring and manageable risk rather than an occasional shock.
Price that risk into a clear product instead of handling each case informally.
Use scale, legal expertise, and data to keep default rates low and resolution times shorter.

For landlords who are facing mortgage renewals at higher interest rates, having a more stable rent stream can be the difference between holding a property and being forced to sell. That is one reason rental guarantee models have started to attract interest from investors outside Canada who are watching RYPM’s approach.

Using technology to see risk earlier

Behind the guarantee and the day-to-day operations is a technology stack that tries to surface problems before they become crises. Royal York Property Management’s internal platform uses data from payments, maintenance, and tenant behavior to flag risk signals and operational bottlenecks.

Examples include:

Tenants who move from on-time payments to repeated short delays.
Units where small repair tickets point to a larger capital issue ahead.
Buildings where complaint volumes suggest service gaps or staffing problems.

Rather than treating these as isolated events, the system aggregates patterns across thousands of units. That allows management to decide whether a problem is individual, building-specific, or systemic.

Levinson has also pushed this data outward. As a member of the Bank of Canada’s rental policy panel, he provides anonymized information on rent collection, defaults, and renewal behavior, which feeds into broader discussions about financial stability and housing policy.

The same data that protects a landlord’s cash flow in one building helps central bankers understand how higher rates are affecting thousands of households.

Why the Canadian case matters for global landlords

Several recent reports underline how closely rental markets are now tied to national economic performance. Tight rental supply and high rents are feeding inflation in many economies. At the same time, higher borrowing costs are discouraging new construction, which risks prolonging shortages.

This feedback loop is especially hard on small landlords. Many own only one or two properties and have limited room to absorb higher mortgage payments or extended vacancies. Analysts in Canada and abroad have warned that some owners are at risk of default as their loans reset at higher rates.

In that context, the Royal York Property Management model offers three lessons that travel across borders:

Standardization protects both sides. Clear processes for screening, rent collection, maintenance, and legal steps reduce surprises for owners and tenants at the same time.
Risk pooling is more efficient than one-off crises. Handling arrears, legal disputes, and vacancies inside a structured system is less costly than improvising each time.
Operational data belongs in policy conversations. When policymakers have access to real rental data rather than only mortgage statistics, interventions can be better targeted.

It is not an accident that Levinson’s work now sits at the intersection of private property management and public financial policy.

What everyday landlords can borrow from the Royal York playbook

Most landlords will not build a 25,000-unit management platform. Many will never interact with a central bank. The core ideas behind Nathan Levinson’s approach are still accessible to smaller owners that manage a handful of properties.

Three practices stand out.

First, treat every rental unit as part of a simple portfolio. That means using a consistent template to track rent, arrears, expenses, and vacancy days for each property, then reviewing it on a schedule instead of only when something goes wrong.

Second, write down the rules for risk in advance. Late-payment steps, repayment plans, documentation standards, and maintenance response times should exist on paper, not only in memory. Royal York’s experience suggests that clear rules reduce conflict, because everyone knows what will happen next.

Third, invest in service as a protective layer. Multiple independent profiles of RYPM point out that faster response times and transparent communication reduce tenant turnover and protect building condition, which in turn supports long-term returns.

For landlords and investors trying to navigate today’s volatile rental markets, the message from Royal York Property Management and Nathan Levinson is surprisingly simple. You cannot control interest rates or national housing policy. You can control how organized your portfolio is, how clearly you manage risk, and how consistent your operations feel to the people who live in your buildings.

For many, that shift from improvisation to structure is what will decide whether their rental properties remain a source of wealth or turn into a source of stress.