Condo Media - December 2014 - 26

COVER STORY
COLUMN NAME
But 'most' doesn't mean all. You really have to listen all the time to be
sure you're hearing what a client is
saying and not what you think you've
heard before."

we often forget to tell people what's
going on around them, and we don't
always notice that they don't understand what we're telling them. You
can't just tell people a tree is diseased

In the rules enforcement area, you want to try to
communicate with owners and work with them if you
can. In most cases, the first communication about a
violation shouldn't be confrontational.
Thinking before acting. Abel says
he approaches problems more analytically than he did in his early years as a
manager. "I'm more aware of thinking
things through - peeling back the
layers to get to the core issue. What
is it I have to decide? What is my
responsibility? Is this my issue?" Those
are questions he didn't always ask. "As
managers, we are wired to go out and
help. Our instinct is to say, 'I'll take
care of it.' But when we do that, we
sometimes dig ourselves into a hole by
taking on responsibilities that aren't
ours or by doing things we're not really qualified to do."
Mentoring boards. Mentoring a
board means telling board members
what they need to know, which may
not be what they want to hear. "You
want to be customer friendly and do
what your client wants, but sometimes,
you have to tell a board that it is functioning poorly or heading in the wrong
direction. I always felt an obligation to
do that," Abel says, but as a younger
manager, "I didn't have the confidence
it required."
Pat Brawley, CMCA,
AMS, PCAM, Owner of
Central Management &
Consulting Services LLC
Communication is
key. "I've learned
there are people
behind those doors. As managers, we
get so caught up in solving problems,
26

Condo Media * December 2014

and must be removed," she says.
"You have to anticipate how they will
respond once a tree they've been looking at for 20 years is gone."
Managing expectations. Brawley is
talking primarily about the expectations of owners who think the response
time to e-mail and voicemail messages
should be measured in minutes, if not
seconds. "I can tell people I'll respond
to voicemails between 3 and 5 every
day," she says, "but that only works if I
don't have too many phone calls." Telling an owner or a board member with
a concern, "I'll get back to you," can
also be problematic, Brawley has found.
"You may have other, more pressing
priorities," she says, "but that's not an
excuse anyone wants to hear. How do
you tell owners that you'll get to them
later, without conveying the impression
that their problems aren't important or
are less important than others?"
Learning to say no. Most managers
learn from experience that, "We aren't
superheroes. We can't do everything
for everyone. We can't fix everything.
We have to be well-versed in all aspects
of association operations," Brawley
says. "But we aren't a jack of all trades,
we are facilitators." Professional growth
(and self-preservation) teaches this lesson, Brawley says, but personal growth
pushes in the same direction. "I have
very different attitudes today about
work time and personal time and how I
want to balance them." While she will

still work nights and weekends when
necessary for clients, Brawley says, she
"won't put my personal goals and plans
aside" as automatically or as often as
she did in the past. "I think I've become wiser," she says. "I've learned to
value other things."
Charles Perkins, Esq.,
Principal, Perkins & Anctil, P.C.
The value of transparency. Experience has
taught Perkins that
owners angry about
a board decision will
be even angrier if they're surprised by
it. "I've learned to advise boards to be
more open, to communicate more effectively with owners, and to use committees, where possible, to get ideas from
them." He's also learned that it's much
easier to affect change by galvanizing
community support. Perkins says he is
more likely to advise boards to spend
time explaining initiatives to owners
before undertaking them. Even if the
board has the authority to act, Perkins
says, "it's a lot better if owners understand and support what they're doing."
Ellen Shapiro, Esq.,
Principal, Goodman,
Shapiro & Lombardi, LLC
Dealing with nuance
and complexity. In the
early days, Shapiro says,
there weren't many
issues confronting condominiums, and
there were virtually no court decisions
addressing them. The answers to most
questions depended on what the condominium documents said or didn't say.
"It was a lot easier to say 'yes you can'
or 'no you can't.'" Today, the courts
here and elsewhere have addressed some
issues, but they haven't addressed others. And decisions answering some questions have raised others. "We have to say
'maybe' more often than clients want to
hear it. This frustrates my clients, and it
frustrates me as an attorney."
Avoiding litigation. Earlier in her
career, Shapiro says, she tended to be

Condo Media - December 2014

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