A 5 Step Guide to Help Board Members Deal with Difficult Homeowners that Approach You with a Problem or Concern
Maintaining harmony among homeowners in your community may be one of the most difficult tasks you are faced with as a board member. Too often you may become the focal point for complaints and concerns and frequently you are put in a difficult position of enforcing association rules and regulations much to the anger of your neighbors who may be on the receiving end of a rules infraction. You may also find yourself in the undesirable position of trying to referee disputes between neighbors. While there is no perfect answer on how to handle difficult people in your community, below is a five step guide to help navigate difficult homeowners that approach you with a problem or concern:
1. Listen and Demonstrate Empathy - You need to demonstrate patience and be able to listen to someone's concerns to begin to help them. This frequently means allowing them to vent. It is important that you don't let them get to you and don't talk down to them. Be aware of your body language and tone of voice. Attempt to express empathy. Your empathy expresses your personal concern and demonstrates that someone genuinely cares about them and their problem. Empathy alone can go a long way to remove the anger from difficult homeowners.
2. Get All the Pertinent Facts - Get the salient points that involve their problem. Write them down if necessary. Repeat back the problem to ensure your understanding and to let the other person know that you are listening. Try to see the problem from the other person's perspective.
3. Offer to Help and Attempt to Build Rapport - Once you believe you understand the root of the problem, offer to help. Sometimes the best approach is to simply repeat the following question: "Tell me how I can help you? You came to me for help; I want to help you; How I can help you?" More often or not, simply asking this question will help focus the conversation on what steps can be taken at this stage.
4. Determine How Best to Offer a Solution With a Roadmap of the Next Steps - Offer a solution to the problem and attempt to gain a verbal agreement. It is best to under-promise a solution and then over-deliver on it. It is helpful to summarize the next steps and define the successful solution to avoid any confusion. Difficult homeowners generally want resolution of their problem or at least some type of success or a win.
5. Explain What You Plan to Do and Why - Make sure you explain your actions and reasoning. Above all, make sure you react to the homeowner's concerns by taking into account what is in the best interest of the community and association. While in some cases you might be able to resolve the entire issue and give homeowners exactly what they want, in others you won't have this ability. For example: homeowners might want something that is outside your ability to deliver (a change in policy, an unfair exception to a rule). Even though difficult homeowners want a resolution, they are often satisfied with signs that tell them that the resolution is coming or sound reason why the resolution is not possible. The important thing is that "reasonable" people walk away from their interaction with you believing that they are better off now than they were before they talked with you.
To modify Abraham Lincoln's famous quote that equally applies to making people happy: You can make some of the people happy all the time, all of the people happy some of the time but you can't make all of the people happy all of the time. As long as you follow a process similar to the one described above and you are acting on what is in the best interest of the association and community, you can feel content that you have professionally represented yourself in your board responsibilities and have done the best that you can.
Thank you for reading the Imagineers Board Newsletter. If you have any question or need any additional information on any articles provided in this newsletter, please contact us at 1-800-560-7268.
Imagineers LLCEmail: Gpassacantando@imagineersllc.com
Phone: 1-800-560-7268
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