Kelly Zibell: 0:00

being on the board is a privilege, you are representing your membership. And with that privilege comes responsibility. You have to read your board packets, you should know what you're supposed to be doing as a board member. I know a lot of us think that our managers should just be doing all the things and they should be telling us all the things, and we just rely on them to do that. But there is some education on your part that you should be doing so that you can make smart decisions. You're responsible for managing millions of dollars worth of assets for your community, in some cases, multi millions dollars of assets. So act is such an act like you're doing that.

Announcer: HOA Insights: 0:41

Common Sense for Common Areas, exists to help all 2 million volunteer board members nationwide have the right information at the right time to make the right decisions for their future. This podcast is sponsored by for companies that care about board members, association insights and marketplace, association reserves, community financials, and Kevin Davis Insurance Services. You'll find links to their websites and social media in the show notes.

Robert Nordlund: 1:11

Welcome back to Hoa insights common sense for common areas. I'm Robert Nordland. And I'm here today for episode number 64 with a special guest to talk about board member leadership. So what makes some boards and board members more effective than others. It's not background or education. Today we have a special guest who will share her experience working with board members for over 10 years, sharing her insights about the four essential traits crucial for leaders to embody to most effectively serve their association. Well, I hope you enjoyed last week's episode number 63 with regular co host Julie Adamen, where we had an important discussion about special assessment success. If you're facing a cashflow crisis at your association 30 minutes spent listening to that episode will be well worth your time. But if you missed that episode or any other prior episodes, you can find them on our podcast website, Hoa insights.org, on your favorite podcast platform, or on our YouTube channel. But better yet, subscribe to the podcast from any of the most popular podcast platforms to get every episode delivered right to your phone or mobile device. Well we do enjoy hearing from you. So if you have a question you'd like us to address, leave us a voicemail at 805-203-3130 Leave a comment on the YouTube video or send us an email at podcast@reservestudy.com. Now the question that prompted Today's episode was from Madison from Trenton, New Jersey, who wrote simply any help on how I can be better at my job of being a board member. And that's exactly why we have today's guest with us today. Kelly Zibell AMS PCAM is the Senior Vice President of Communitas management in Northern California. Kelly has extensive community association management experience and during those years, she has also served in leadership with Caapi on a local and national level and with other trade organizations. Over the years, Kelly has developed a keen eye for board members strengths and weaknesses. Spending time developing board member leadership skills in order to help them implement necessary change their association, Kelly recently spoke on leadership at the CAI national conference in Vegas in early May this year. And I knew our audience would love to hear from her directly. So Kelly, welcome to the program.

Kelly Zibell: 3:46

Thanks. I'm happy to be here. All right, well

Robert Nordlund: 3:48

tell us about the essential traits of effective board members that you've summarized as the four C's.

Kelly Zibell: 3:57

So earlier this year, I had the opportunity to hear a leadership speaker named Adam Markel. And he was actually speaking about the ability to be resilient and change proof, but he has a lot of other kind of leadership research. And as we were putting together the panel that spoke in Las Vegas, we were talking about what makes a good board member, or what makes a good manager and what skills are important for that. And Marco had really kind of summarized these up in an article that we thought was great, and I'll share with you so you can kind of post in the podcast notes. But the four C's that he talks about are confidence, commitment, courage and connection, confidence, which is and we really summarized and talked about as your ability to communicate because your ability to come off as confident to your audience and as a board member that the you are confident in the running of the community and you know what you're talking about and you know what you're doing and making decisions of the community is really the way in which you communicate with others. So What underlies the trait of competence is all of the communication skills. So body language, tone of voice, how you project yourself in a meeting, the words you use to communicate with how you handle a difficult situation, when there's a confrontation going on from the audience, and how you can use language to defuse those kinds of situations. So really, confidence is kind of we've equated it to communication in our industry. For board members, how you communicate is really your ability to be confident, that's kind of the foundational leadership skill

Robert Nordlund: 5:40

is that also maybe even being confident in your abilities enough, or where you stand that you can offer a smile in a tense situation, disarming smile, lowering the temperature of what's going on? Yeah,

Kelly Zibell: 5:54

all of those things can can see it in from a competence perspective. And knowing when to do those things, when you can use a smile, or when a smile might come off as a spark to somebody who's potentially already agitated. So when's the appropriate time to use those things are communication skills and but being the ability to communicate effectively makes you come off as more competent. The second trait that we've talked about was, is commitment. And this is the trait that I see most board members not necessarily understanding, or practicing, and commitment is creating a shared vision or being committed to a purpose. And what that looks like in our communities, or column owners associations, is the ability for the board to sit down on and do strategic planning, and to think about what is the long term needs and visions of the community? And how do we get there, because board members either have term limits, or they will leave the board or the board changes for whatever reason. But the strategic needs or plan for the community should largely remain the same over kind of a three to five year period. But a lot of board members don't spend time sitting down saying, who's moving into our community? What are the type of people that are moving in here? Is it young families? Is it active adults? What are the amenities we have today? And what are the amenities potentially, that we need to add or change? Right? Pickleball is a great example. We have a tennis court by people want to play pickleball, no one's using the tennis court. But pickleball might be an option. Well, asking your residents and kind of coming up with a strategic plan that then gets shared with the community gets shared with your manager. So even if your manager changes, or even as the board changes, there's sort of a Northstar and a guiding direction and a shared vision for the community. So we talk about creating commitment, or how you develop commitment as putting together a strategic plan for the community.

Robert Nordlund: 8:08

Got it? You got me thinking now. And it seems like that could help so many associations, because rather than me or you my way, your way, my opinion, your opinion, if you can focus on use the word, Northstar, what's best for the association? How can we come together and focus on Well, gee, I'd like garbage pickup on Wednesday rather than Tuesday, because I have bridge club on Tuesday in my living room, but and what's best for the community is the way it is now. And you're focusing less on myself, or your difference of opinion. But then again, the community in general, how can we serve the association? Is that a little bit of what you're talking about? Yeah, absolutely.

Kelly Zibell: 8:52

And so I had a consulting practice prior to the current role that I've been and most of the time, my consulting practice with my clients was spending time with them doing strategic planning, regardless of what they ended up hiring me for. We always started with strategic planning, because it was difficult for them to achieve their goals if they didn't have a bigger kind of overarching plan that all the board members felt like they had input into and gave everybody a direction to row the boat in the same in the same manner. So we're not you know, all rowing around trying to find our own thing. And then, you know, creating a strategic plan allows you to factor in a lot of things right? What are the building inspection needs? For the laws are changing throughout the country and a lot more building inspection laws, reserve studies are coming into play in some markets where they haven't come into play before in California, we've had him for years. So it's not a new thing for us. But in some markets, you're now having to do a reserve study or fund your reserves. So being able to factor those things in plus what your community looks like, from a demographic perspective, who's moving in? What are your amenities, what's your financial situation look like really evaluating all of that and going through a process to come up with a strategic plan. It takes a little bit of time in the beginning, but then you revisit it annually and kind of update it. And then you sort of have a roadmap and a set of strategic kind of overall big goals, and everybody knows what you're working on. So we don't get sucked into the day to day minutia of the dog poop letter, or the trash can violation. You know, you can point your manager towards saying, These are the big needs for the community. And I need you working on these things. Yes, those things are important. But they're not the most important thing. We have to make progress on these bigger kind of goals for the community. But they don't know what those goals are to challenge. And so I find the best board members and communities have this trait of commitment because it created a shared vision for the community. And that vision gets passed on from board to board to board and their manager follows along in that. So it provides a really big sense of continuity. And for new board members getting onto the board, it's really helpful for them to understand what those priorities are, and why things are working the way they're working from a board perspective. Yeah,

Robert Nordlund: 11:20

well, you said it just a moment ago, I wrote down two more C words based on you got my brain thinking on this, I wrote down consistency of bridging the the new board member transitions, bridging management transitions, and continuity. So those two things where all of a sudden, like you just mentioned, as a new board member, you're wondering, okay, I came here because I want to help the association's financial situation or I came here because at my last Association, I helped on the roof project. And we need a roof project here, when you realize what is the commitment of the board, these are overarching goals. And all of a sudden you can fit in. And it's more than just your pet project, or it's more than just your the particular skills that you bring to the board it all of a sudden, you're boarding a moving train that has momentum. And if those are written down, boy, I can see how that makes so much things smoother and easier at the association.

Kelly Zibell: 12:19

Though the other thirds trait, which I think is the most, the one that we're is resonating a lot these days is courage. And Marko kind of describes this as sort of challenging the status quo, embracing innovation kind of pushing back boundaries. But really, this is the ability to make tough decisions in the event, even in the face of adversity. And as a board member, you're called on especially now to make tough decisions. It's not fun to raise assessments to the community because your insurance has gone up or because you've gotten that building inspection report back and there's a ton of repairs that need to be done. But it's required that you do that it's part of your job, you have to make the decision. That's the best decision for the community, even if it's not the best decision for you personally. And it's tough as a manager, you know, to be able to give that advice to your clients. But it's really tough as a board member to have to make those decisions, but not making those decisions is it is showing a lot of courage, basically. And then when you make those tough decisions, being able to explain them to the community, so called being confident the decisions you make and pulling on those communication styles we talked about. That's where those two kind of really marry up together in terms of confidence and courage. But I think board members today are being called on to to act very courageously and make decisions that are are not popular within the community. Because someone just living in a community doesn't understand all the things that you're looking at from an input perspective. But you still have to make the decision, even if it's going to make your neighbor that you'll see at the mailbox a little bit frustrated with you and probably give you an earful about it.

Robert Nordlund: 14:05

Yeah, well, I think your audience knows these kinds of challenges. But I'm thinking that there's so many board members. And I think back to my experience, too, when I joined the board, it was because there was a problem that needed to be solved that the association, lack of board members, I just volunteered and I had really no idea what I was getting into. And I think there's a lot of board members in this similar situation that they did not fully appreciate the responsibility that they have in this role, that they're running a multimillion dollar not for profit Real Estate Organization. And that takes like you say, that takes courage to know, gee, we need the money, or gee, we need to fire our landscaper who has been with us for 15 years because frankly, good old Fred is not moving as fast as he used to and we need someone new whatever the If the decision is your response, you have a task to move the association, safely and successfully to the future. And sometimes that means change. And change takes courage to implement that change, whether it's financial personnel, oh, gee, we need to change the management company, or a minutes are always late, or the financials always need to be fixed, whatever it is, courage to see, and courage to make that change, or at least confront the issue. How can we make this better? So I, I like that. I think you're right. Yes, challenges everywhere we look, it's hard to be a board member. And again, our audiences first in line to know the answer to that question. It truly is.

Kelly Zibell: 15:45

So the last one, which I love is connection, and connection is, we can read into it as a more round number a number a different ways, but connection is taking the time to get connected with other homeowner leaders. So there are a lot of industry groups, CAI some of the other places where you can get connected to other homeowner leaders, there's forums and things like that, where you can ask questions and get answers to problems and challenges you are facing as a board member. And I think sometimes board members feel like they're alone, or the only person they're connected to is their manager, or management company. And there really is a lot of resources out there for you as a homeowner leader. The other thing is for owners to remember or board members to remember that they serve their ownership, they serve the members of the community. And so being able to as part of your strategic planning process, or just in general part of connecting with the community, we know not a lot of people make the time to come to board meetings unless you're upset about something. But a couple of things that I do with my clients, we always ask questions about when's the last time you surveyed the community? How things are going or what their needs are, or things they'd like to see happen? And the answer is usually, we've never done that. And it's a very simple process, you can use things like Survey Monkey or Microsoft arms, or Google Forms, or a lot of those tools are free, or very cheap and inexpensive. And you can put out a survey, it's not someone collecting paper, putting things together all these survey tools can really help you get some data and give your your homeowners feel more connected to the place that they land that builds community. And so So connection as a board member is really about connecting yourself with other homeowner leaders who are in the same situation, but also taking time to connect with the membership, who sort of elected you to this role to govern a community.

Robert Nordlund: 17:47

Kelly, I like that, just the way they all fit together. And they come together with another C word. And that's community. I've got a host of follow up questions. But let's take a quick break right now to hear from one of our sponsors. Before we follow up on those additional questions. Is

Russell Munz: 18:04

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Robert Nordlund: 18:35

Now we're back? Well, Kelly, how can board members develop these traits? How do they get better at doing these things that in the end will benefit their community?

Kelly Zibell: 18:45

Well, I think when we talk about, you know, confidence in the area of confidence, you know, it's about developing your communication skills. So if you think you're communicating oenough, you're probably not communicating enough. Especially if you're facing funding challenges as an association you're gonna go ask for more money until people start telling you you're you're communicating too much, you're probably not communicating enough because someone's not getting the message. So figuring out how we can better and more communicate things especially when there's a significant change coming from the or the community that will really help with the confidence and the membership having confidence in the decisions that the board is making. So really working on those those communication skills and making sure that we're pushing communications out to membership about what's the board's doing can really help kind of develop those skills or that trait of competence commitment is really about the board sitting down and doing some strategic planning and this can be really involved. You know, I've done multi day sessions with with clients with their consultant. Yeah, as a consultant or you know, can be Very simple as a board sitting down and saying, what are our top five priorities for the year? You know, at your first board meeting, or your your last board meeting of the year? You know, where are you at? You're doing your budget, what are our top, you know, three to five priorities? Where are the three to five most important things for us to get done in the next year, or three years or five years? I like to do a three or five year strategic plan with a client and then we back into Okay, what does that look like for one year kind of operational goals, some kind of overarching vision or plan, and maybe it's, we know, we need to reread the complex. And so our goal this year is we're going to do all the things that are associated with reworking the complex, we're going to hire a construction manager, we're going to figure out the budget for that project, we're going to then hire a contractor. So this is our goal for the year, and then we communicate that to the membership. So courage is just making the smart decisions, you'd have to listen to the experts that are advising you. And if you're nervous about what's the right decision, or the decision I have to make here, a lot of times your experts can help guide you or advise you, your attorney, your CPA, your reserve analyst can kind of tell you, and give you maybe an unbiased opinion about if you're looking at changing products, a lot of new technologies come out around building products. So do we add solar here where we didn't have solar before? Or can we add leak detection in because we're repiping the building? Do we add you know, leak detection systems and is that smart, you can have conversations about those things, which will help you make a decision that you then feel competent in, and you can then explain to the community and amendment is being a part of you know, things that you could develop there is making yourself aware and available of being of the resources that are, you know, available to you. So, sitting on the board, I know it feels like a lot of times you show up at a board meeting and you're appointed to the board and and now you're stuck because that timescales on my own board I've been on for years, I showed up at a meeting, they found out what I did, and they said, Here you go, you're on the board. Come on, you can help come on down. But you know, being on the board is a privilege, you are representing your membership. And with that privilege comes responsibility, you have to read your board packet, you should know what you're supposed to be doing as a board member. I know a lot of us think that our manager should just be doing all the things and they should be telling us all the things. And we just rely on them to do that. But there is some education on your part that you should be doing. So that you can make smart decisions. You're responsible for managing millions of dollars worth of assets for your community, in some cases, multi millions dollars of assets. So act is such an act like you're doing that. Yeah.

Robert Nordlund: 22:58

Well, I just thought of another C word. And that's curiosity, you need to take the time to say, Well, why is this the way it is? What doesn't sit right with me? How come we are in a good financial situation three years ago? And it's not that way. Now? Why did the referrer recommend this product? And the more you just let your curiosity flow, the more you're going to find the answers that are going to help you communicate and develop your own commitment about well, I know this now. And I can explain this to the homeowners that I meet the person that I parked next to the person that I see in the lobby, all these different traits, they seem like they feed on each other. And one trait leads to another now. Okay, we're talking about grownups, board members here. How long? Or how much? Can someone develop these skills over months? Or is it yours, it's

Kelly Zibell: 23:56

up to the individual person, right to your point, curiosity plays into this. So if someone's a naturally curious person who likes to learn, they're going to, you know, really want to learn and understand this role of being a board member and how to do it more effectively. And they're going to want to pursue developing these skills and learning the things that they don't know about their community. And it really depends on how driven the board is, if there's a lot of conflict on the border between different personalities, it can get hard to break through those conflicts to align on things like a strategic plan or a decision on an important issue, and so called functional aboard is and also sort of a person's individual innate sense of curiosity will really play into how they can develop these but a lot of people have, you know, have great communication skills depending on what their life journey has been. As they you know, it's a as been someone who has primarily worked in the home They may have amazing like task management skills, because they've been balancing the needs of their family and you know, all of those other things. And they may be using board member at managing a project, and communicating with the community because they can think of all of those things, if they've got a background in communications from a, you know, because that's what they did. As a, you know, as a profession, or they've been a teacher, a lot of times teachers make really great managers eventually, because they're, you know, really good at managing different personalities. So those kinds of people can be great as board members as well, because, you know, it just everybody brings something different from their background. And I think that's a great thing about being on a board member and working in our industry, there's such a diverse background that comes into this. And, and you can learn a lot about a field that you might not have known about as a board member, your background brings a lot of different things to your community that that, you know, we wouldn't have known, you know, if you have a law enforcement background or connections at from a civic perspective, those things can help your community as you're being a board member in terms of connecting with local officials and making decisions for, you know, safety, security of the community, some of those things, but, you know, you just, there's a lot of different skills that a board member could bring into the role. And I think, how they develop these traits and can connect with, you know, these traits, these traits are really more about how you apply the skills you already have.

Robert Nordlund: 26:40

Okay, I have two things I want to talk about yet. And you just touched on the second one. So first one is you spoke by and went kind of fast, you're talking about reducing conflict again. Now the C word that seems to be a theme here today. But the more you have commitment, the more you have a shared vision, the less conflict or your association, the less it's my opinion versus your opinion. And I don't think there's an association out there that wouldn't love to reduce conflict, if it doesn't increase property values, if it doesn't shorten up board meetings, all these other things that are likely to happen. If it reduces conflict. I'm in for the four C's I'm in with both feet. But we talked about this right before we started recording certificate, there's a difference. And I'd like you to kind of speak to this point, there's a difference between getting a certificate of board members basic education certificate, from a trade organization, from your state talking to me about the differences between getting a certificate and having these four essential traits. Yeah,

Kelly Zibell: 27:47

I mean, a certificate will largely give you this is the legal requirements for you as a board member related to your state. And sometimes it will give you things like how to read a financial or, you know, what set of board minutes should look like or how to find a professional to guide you. And that's a lot of what a certificate does. But it doesn't necessarily touch on some of the soft skills needed to be successful in in the role or were be a successful board member in a job in terms of being effective at creating that sense of community and, you know, working for the betterment of your community kind of keeping that shared goal in mind that a certificate doesn't teach you those things. It may talk about what judiciary duty isn't that kind of thing. But when you're in practice and having to create a shared vision for your community, or even put one in place, that can be something that's harder to do easier, you know, easier said than done. I guess it's better way to write that. Yeah, I like it this way. We get a lot of people who are who bring to the board, some sort of a business background to they've been a CPA and their former lives. They were in their former life, been an attorney and their current life, but they may not be the attorney that your association needs, right. And I've seen an association to use an attorney that lives in the community. And that person just ends up inherently conflicted because not acting in the best interest of the corporation with no interest as a as an owner for you know, providing advice around maybe not an area of expertise for them. Maybe they've been doing corporate law but not HOA law, which is very specific in some states. I think when we think about certificates certificates are helpful in terms of if you're a brand new board member, understanding what your responsibilities are, and helping you navigate those and also built connection with other people in the industry. but it is not. I don't think that saying that would make you be the best board member ever. It's not the only thing you can do. Right?

Robert Nordlund: 30:08

Well, let me see if I can wrap this up. The title of this is effective board members. And so not what you know, it's how effective you are leading your association. And it seems like through this conversation we've been talking about are using words that start with the word see. And I want to bring this to close with community. And these four traits of confidence, commitment, courage and connection. And working effectively with those things are going to bring a shared vision and do something great to improve your community at the end here. All I want to do is say thank you, Kelly, for taking the time to join us on today's program. Do you have any closing thoughts to share with our audience?

Kelly Zibell: 30:49

Mean board members? Thank you. This is not an easy job. I say this as a board member. But I'll say this as a longtime manager, it is really tough being a board member and to thank you for taking this volunteer non paid position learning all these things that you have to learn and doing it really just better your community to be a part of your community. So just thank you. Fantastic.

Robert Nordlund: 31:15

Well, for more information or if you have a follow up question, you can reach Kelly at K Savelle Zib e ll at Community toss dot live that's c o m m u n i t a s dot live. Well, we hope you learned some HOA insights from our discussion today that helps you be a more effective board member bringing common sense to your common areas. We look forward to having you join us for another great episode next week.

Announcer: 31:44

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