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Personality Of The Week: Pioneer Takes On New Coaching Challenge
Glyn BricknellFemale pioneer takes on a new challenge

Glyn Bricknell, newly-appointed MD of Dogon Group Properties, has always been a pioneer. She was the first woman appointed to the construction industry board; the first female mayor of Hilton, a town outside Pietermaritzburg; and the first practicing female auctioneer in South Africa. And those achievements are just the tip of the iceberg.

Bricknell also rose to the rank of regional managing director at the large real estate group where she previously worked for 18 years, running an empire of 35 branches in the Boland and Overberg region, with an annual turnover of R1,4-billion and market share of 40%. This she did with “commitment, energy and success” according to the chairman of the group, which presented her with two prestigious awards during her tenure. Still filled with fire after reaching retirement, Bricknell has enthusiastically taken on the task of training and motivating the agents at Dogon Group Properties, where she aims to help each person reach measurable goals, earn rewards for effort, and achieve a sense of satisfaction from their work, as she did with her previous staff of 150.

She loves nurturing and growing people, and helping them to be more than they thought they could be. A born optimist, she believes that there is no such thing as a problem: it’s not what happens to you in life, but how you handle what happens. “Two men looked through prison bars: one saw mud and the other saw stars. I see the stars,” she says.

Her optimism and drive have stood her in good stead during her own career. At a time when women’s career choices were generally confined to becoming a secretary, nurse or teacher, Bricknell began making inroads into the male domain. When South Africa’s then largest home builder placed an advertisement seeking a man to fill a senior building surveying post, she cheekily started her application by saying, “I know I’m not a man but…..”. Her spirited reply appealed to the company’s decision-maker and, out of a field of 40 male applicants, she was chosen for the job. She later rose to the position of contracts director within the firm.

While at school, Bricknell had hoped to get a bursary to study teaching, but fate intervened. She had become seriously ill, spending three months in hospital just before her matric exams. While she achieved a first class pass with university exemption, she did not get enough A grades, and started working as a lab assistant in soils testing at the Department of Transport.

She put her heart and soul into her first job, as she does with everything she undertakes, and was later transferred to the trigonometrical survey office in Cape Town. Feeling that she “wanted to change the world” she then went to Canada to study at the Toronto Bible College. The college disillusioned her, and she returned to her home town of East London. Her dad eventually found her a job as a quantity surveying assistant, and she discovered a flair for cost estimation. “I took to it like a duck to water,” she says.

Yearning for Canada, she later decided to emigrate, and worked there for a quantity surveying company. Returning to South Africa several years later, she obtained a position with a QS firm, and then went into building surveying, “the practical application of quantity surveying.”
Soon after joining the home building company, a major newspaper in KwaZulu-Natal wrote an article on her building expertise, and she was soon inundated with requests to build homes and do alterations. She took in a partner in the interior design company she had bought, and also started a contracting company, which later undertook developments. Her sister then begged her to start a real estate company as she wanted to sell houses and, never daunted, Bricknell did.

While working in KZN, she was distressed to see how livestock were trampled and hurt while being transported in huge trucks to the abattoir. She wrote letters to the media, received a huge response, and formed an organisation to stop the inhumane long-distance transport of slaughter animals. Challenging the Meat Board head-on, her campaign was televised on 50/50 and she became the heroine of the people of Hilton, who persuaded her to stand in the 1987 municipal elections. She ended up as mayor.

Several years later, while watching the auction of a historical homestead in Stellenbosch, she again became convinced this was something she could do. After qualifying, she set up a small auction division at the real estate company where she worked, and also ran several auctions for Red Cross.

A multi-tasker of note, Bricknell, who has adopted Nike’s “Just do it!” slogan as her motto, will now be bringing all her experience in interior decorating, renovation and construction, as well as her people skills, to bear in her new position at the Dogon Group. The chances are that she will soon inspire her new staff to “see the stars,” too.

Written by Impti du Toit
Weekend Argus Saturday/Sunday, October 6th 2007
 
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