Cathleen Dunn: 0:00

The more connectivity you have with them. You make it personable, and you make it personal, and now they feel that connection, and then they start to have some self value, where maybe they did have these roadblocks, because they may have had some self doubt, and now you're overcoming that self doubt, and you explain to them, you know, listen, this is not a coffee clutch. This is a corporation. You know, we need to raise our association to the next level.

Announcer: 0:28

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Robert Nordlund: 0:44

Welcome back to HOA Insights: Common Sense for Common Areas. I'm Robert Nordlund, and I'm here today for episode number 137, with Cathleen Dunn, a manager from a large Association in Pennsylvania, who I heard speak on this important subject at the CAI national trade show and conference earlier this year. She's a CMCA, AMS, LSM and PCAM, so she has all the appropriate credentials for doing her job. But what captured my attention, and the reason for having her on the show, was her topic, recruiting new board members now, fresh board member talent regularly changing to reflect the ever changing makeup of the association. That's critical. It's critical to the health of the community, so get ready to hear her tips and best practices. Well, last week's episode number 136, was another conversation with regular co host Julie ademan on long standing committees at your association, specifically when it's time to retire the committee, it's an interesting problem. Committees take volunteer time, and in some cases, they've outlasted their purpose. So if you missed that episode or any other prior episode, take a moment after today's program to listen from our podcast, website, Hoa insights.org or watch our YouTube channel, but better yet, subscribe from any of the major podcast platforms so you don't miss any future episodes. Well, those of you watching on YouTube can see the HOA insights mug I have here that I got from our merch store, which you can browse through from our Hoa insights.org website, or at the link that we'll put in the show notes, you'll find we have some great free stuff there, like board member zoom backgrounds and some specialty items for sale, like mugs. So go to the merch store, download a free zoom background, take a moment, look around, find the mug you'd like, and email me at podcast@reservesday.com with your name, shipping address and mug choice, mentioning episode 137 mug giveaway, and if you're the 10th person to email me, I'll ship that mug to you free of charge. Well, we enjoy hearing from you responding to the issues you're facing at your association. So if you have a hot topic, a crazy story, or a question you'd like us to address, you can contact us at 805-203-3130, or email us at podcast at reserve study.com and this episode was prompted by Melinda from New Jersey, who wrote, I'm frankly Tired. We are supposed to have a five member board. It's now down to three because nobody wants to run we have 88 units, but nobody seems to care. What can I do? It's listener emails like this one that make me want to get an expert on the program, someone exactly like Kathy. So Cathleen, welcome to the program. How would you respond to Melinda,

Cathleen Dunn: 3:41

thank you. I'm so happy to be here. So you know, Melinda, you are not alone. That is something that I hear that echoes throughout our industry regularly. A lot of individuals have the same exact struggle. And it doesn't really matter if it's 20 units or if it's 5000 units, volunteerism overall has been down a lot of individuals, especially since post pandemic, they have gotten into kind of a less active role in their lives, where shelter in place almost exactly. And, you know, and I have suffered this myself with even Cai events, you know, I would travel two three hours for an event and now, and I would think nothing of it. Now, I'm like, wow, two, three hours in the car. I haven't spent that much time in the car, and how long so with everyone now, kind of having that more homebody feeling, it is definitely hard, and having a board that is short handed is very, very critical to the operation. So the first thing I would say is just start with transparency. You know, go out to your 88 members if you have to actually knock on doors and try multiple outreach tools. First and foremost, if you have a newsletter, go ahead and put something. The newsletter even make it a little snazzy, you know, kind of glorify the role of a board member a little bit on how they are volunteering for the betterment of your association and the betterment of everyone within the association and the industry, and even your neighboring communities, because I'm sure that you also have some neighboring communities around you, and, you know, even glorify onto their role, into being your neighbor, and have some just informal conversations, maybe even have just a small little coffee clutch and explain that you know that you have this board vacancy and you have an absenteeism issue with trying to fill those positions. But recruitment is definitely a process of engagement and not just announcement. So you want to make sure that you really are putting your best foot forward, and it is going to take a little bit of time of yourself and the current board members that are in that role, that you're going to have to kind of knock some of that pavement and knock on some of those doors to be able to have that one on one so they see that you're not just someone on a board dictating to them that you're a neighbor,

Robert Nordlund: 6:02

you know, let me follow up on that, because you said people are maybe more home buddies. In one sense, it seems like they might actually care more about their home and be more interested in having it be a good place. And I wish the landscaping was a little nicer, or I wish this, or wish the pool hours, almost as if that would encourage them to be involved with the association. But what you're saying is you're seeing the opposite effect.

Cathleen Dunn: 6:32

Yeah, and you know, they're kind of not going outside of their four walls. So if they're, if they're contained in their four little walls, and they can get everything that they need, and many people are still working remotely, and a lot of businesses have continued to stay remote, and so going outside of the world is a little scary for them, and they're not even going to be using the pool, or they're not even going to be potentially going to the mail pavilion, pick up their mail or walk the dog. So all of those things that they used to do and they used to enjoy. They've kind of really limited it, and they're not as far reaching, in my opinion. They're not kind of looking for that long end goal. They're kind of really just kind of right in front of them, what they have in front of them, what they see in front of them. And they're just kind of satisfied. So they might want to have additional pool hours, but they don't have them. So they're kind of like, Huh? I'm not going to complain about it, you know. Or you have on the other side of the fence where then you'll have somebody who does want different pool hours, and forget it.

Unknown: 7:33

They're going to be knocking down every

Robert Nordlund: 7:35

day. We'll hear the end of it. Yeah,

Unknown: 7:37

right, exactly. Yeah, that's a good point. You're not going to run for the board either, because they want to be part of the problem. Be part of the problem, not

Robert Nordlund: 7:44

the solution. Did you touch on something important there? Well, I caught a couple more things. One is you talked about the recruitment process. It's not just laying something out there and hoping you get candidates. I like your idea of maybe a special meeting to for interested parties. We're going to have a Q and A time about what's it like to be a board member. Maybe have some food there, make it attractive. But the whole idea that it is a recruitment process, I like that. Tell me you're a manager for a very large association. So is that fundamentally different than 100 unit condo you

Cathleen Dunn: 8:28

think in the sense that the 100 unit condo association is much easier, potentially, you're going to have less individuals to gather their attention. However, you're going to be able to have a more personable impact where, you know, I have 52 square miles of road, so knocking on everyone's door is not going to really be feasible. It's not going to be as one on one when you start to get into those larger numbers. So even though it's an engagement opportunity, turns into a little bit more of an announcement, instead of that personal connection with the neighbor. My houses are relatively close to each other, so with them being close neighbor to neighbor, they have some interaction. But as far as and we can up into four different sections, and so the larger you get, the more of that intimacy kind of dwindles where I think the smaller units have a better chance of being, you know, going to the mail, or maybe at the local publics, or at the local food store, running into their neighbor and saying, Hey, by the way, did you know we have some board seats that are currently open? We're looking actively for individuals who are like minded, who would like to support the association to make sure we have continued success.

Robert Nordlund: 9:43

I felt like there was a word or a phrase almost about to come out. And that's community spirit at a smaller place, 50 units, 100 units, 20 units, 200 units, compared to you have 1000s. Yeah, we have 4500 84,005. 183 and you, you love them all,

Unknown: 10:04

they go exactly, yes.

Robert Nordlund: 10:06

Let's just stereotype or simplify. Let's call it 100 unit condo, community spirit. It may be a lot easier to focus on community spirit, because it's a we you can sense that, you know, I'm on the second floor. They may be on the third floor or a different building, or a different view of the river instead of the view of the woods or whatever it is, but it's our community. Perhaps you all enter on the same driveway, and you enter in the lobby, the mailboxes are on your right. So maybe you do, you can tap into the community spirit, maybe a little bit easier there.

Cathleen Dunn: 10:45

And, you know, I also think, and it's really great that you said that. I mean, I am wearing a logoed shirt, and I wear a logo shirt of my association whenever I'm out representing my association, and a lot of my team members wear shirts. And I also have always encouraged the board to wear shirts and my committee members, and whenever I have individuals who volunteer, I provide them with a shirt that says volunteer. And so they tend to wear it, not only to my event, but they'll wear it on a Friday when they're going food shopping. And it also has another opportunity for other neighbors to say, hey, you live in a poke our own country, please. Wow. What do you do there? And it starts your branding without even really putting branding together, your marketing, without really marketing. And it ends up gathering individuals to have a conversation. And it kind of, instead of that cold conversation, it's now a warm conversation. And they'll say, Well, what do you do for the association? Oh, I'm a volunteer bingo. There you go. They can start right there, you know, they're farming, it's like, you know, triple A. They're bringing them up into the big leagues, and all off of a logo shirt that, you know, it has paid for itself 10 times over again.

Robert Nordlund: 11:56

Triple A, I'm guessing you're a baseball fan. So you go through the minors, and you finally get up to the big leagues, which is the board, and is that part of the recruitment process you talked about, maybe an information meeting, announcing the openness, being transparent, communicating effectively. But this idea of the progression. How important is it for there to be a good progression? So you have a volunteer to help on the something small that they can do and do successfully, and they can say, Oh, that wasn't that bad, and all of a sudden they feel like they're a little more involved. I have one client that we just finished working with. I'm looking at my map here because I know where it's at. They have seven, eight story building, and they have floor captains on each floor, and it's just almost a trivial rule, when the board wants to communicate to the association as a whole, they're the contact point on their floor. It's real simple. How important is it to have that progression of small assignments, going from volunteering something simple to gradually a progression to a board member?

Cathleen Dunn: 13:15

I think it's really critical. There's a lot of times when people jump into being a board member. Right off the bat, if you do encounter that, it's typically because they have a personal agenda. They received a citation, or maybe a family member received a citation, and they have a grudge against the association, but they don't understand the parliamentary rules, they don't understand the processes and really the rules and regulations, and they're just kind of a little displeased with the Association, so they jump in, and sometimes they turn out to be okay. Board members, sometimes not so good. But starting gradually, I think, is the most important because, and not even like having when you do have a meeting, don't label it even a board meeting. Board Member meet and greet. Make it something else. If you have a pond, make it environmental, but open it up, because they're going to say, Oh, I'm not interested in being a board member. So they're not even going to go to that event, because they've already resigned to the fact that they never want to be a board member. However, once you get them there and you have a conversation and you are talking about the lake or the bridge or the road, whatever the case may be, or street lights. You know, you can pick a topic. Every Association has at least one hot topic. So if you you know short term rentals, long term rentals, you know any of that. So you kind of pick that, make that the conversational piece. Make it very informal. Feed them, because food does bring people, and then, even if they're not willing to jump onto a committee. Have the committee forms, have the committee mission statements, have the board forms, the board mission statements, but started off more, and I've done this with a couple members, where they've told me that they they've been in a meeting and they're like, oh, you know, in my prior life, I did x, y, z, and I have one right now. He was an engineer for a biochemical company, and he dealt with tree treatments. And right now in our area, we have the lantern fly, and we have a couple other tree eating diseases, the beech tree and all of that. So I said to him, you know, you should really think about serving on the environmental committee. And he said, Oh no, no, no, no. I don't want to serve on a committee. I don't want to volunteer. I'm volunteer. I'm way too busy. I said, uh, you're retired. He goes, Oh, yeah, yeah. I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that. So I said, Okay, well, how about can you reach out to me? I'm going to give you a little project. Can you just write me a couple articles for my newsletter? And so I bridged him into writing some articles. And so then he started to come to a couple board meetings, and then he said to me the one day join the environmental committee. What exactly do they do? They said, Well, it's funny, you ask. And so I went through everything. So here it took me about 18 months, wow. So I was 18 months,

Unknown: 15:55

yes, exactly.

Cathleen Dunn: 15:56

And he was writing me these articles, and I was submitting them to the environmental committee, and they would proof them, and they would then send them on to myself for inclusion. And he started to see his newsletter articles there. So instead of writing one every other month, he was now writing one a month. And then it's really progression, exactly. So it's, you know, it's the long game. You're not going to always potentially get them right off the RIP, but he felt useful. He felt like he was providing value, and he is retired, so he kind of felt like he had another purpose, which he didn't realize 18 months ago, that he needed or wanted, and I had proved to him that he was valuable, he was respected, and his information was relevant to his neighbors, and so that kind of got him on board. And so the next phase will be getting him over to the board member realm, once he kind of gets his feet wet there and is comfortable. So, you know my saying, I'll say to my committee members at my annual volunteer dinner, is recruit one. You know, if everybody here can recruit one, just think how powerful we can be. So talk to that neighbor, talk to that individual that you you walk by every day, talk to that person wearing the shirt in the food store. You know, just recruit one. And so that's how we kind of keep it going, to make sure that, you know, we have that culture and we have individuals who are interested in participating without realizing that they're really going to be participating in the long run. You know, take that cruise ship instead of the speed boat. Yeah.

Robert Nordlund: 17:33

Well, I hear you telling this story, and in the back of my mind, I'm thinking she's going to reel him in to be a board member in the next 36 months. She's got a 36 month plan to get this guy from, I don't have enough time to he's going to be a great board member. And it all started out with what a little bit of kindness, a little bit of acknowledgement. Acknowledgement, yeah, I like that better. I was going to say flattery, but it's more acknowledgement. There's there are hot topics at every Association. Maybe we need more dog weigh stations, or they're always empty. Or how many people are interested in adding pickle ball striping to our tennis court or pool hours? Or in two years we expect to repaint, which is a little lead up to, yeah, we need to repaint. And that's reserves, which is always my fun topic. What about the color scheme? Or good the current color scheme? What about the logo? Do we need to freshen that up? What about our entry sign? There's always a hot topic, and if you can say, who wants to help, then you are building a pipeline, and you're building community. Is that a double,

Unknown: 18:49

a double win, total win build.

Cathleen Dunn: 18:53

And you know, I love what you're talking about, like even changing the logo. A lot of associations also have maybe a meeting room, or maybe a social room, or a cafe or, you know, or a coffee room, something so simple as renaming that and having a contest for a 25, $50 or $100 gift card that people love. Gift cards, you're pulling them in. You're like, you know, let's rebrand our, you know, our mahjon room or or a game room. Let's rename it. And everybody else submit names, and then you can have everybody vote on the names. You know, you can either have it silent, or you can have it out in the open, and that draws them in. And here you have an opportunity that you never even thought. You know, it's going to cost you 25 bucks, essentially, to name Kathy's Coffee Corner, you know, but somebody won 25 bucks on that, and they they're going to gloat about that, and now you have that warm conversation that you just opened up without even realizing it.

Robert Nordlund: 19:56

Yeah, and someone is now connected to the association. Because that's, that's my name. I'm Kathy, exactly. And then you made me think it was a site inspection I went on a year ago, high rise, and I walk in the lobby meet the person that we're the manager on site, and they had a box of donuts there, compliments of the board of XYZ, happy Tuesday. And, you know, it was from the donut place around the corner or whatever. And I thought, How wonderful is this? I'm going to like the site inspection. This place takes care of its people. It welcomes them. They know how to spend the right amount of a trivial amount of money to make people feel like they're coming home. And that's probably good for the donut shop around the corner, because people may want donuts more than just on Tuesday, you know, that kind of stuff. And there's lots of little things you can do to build community, build a pipeline, and make your association a place where people want to help them participate.

Cathleen Dunn: 21:02

And then what will also happen is that, you know, you're building not because any community you know, we're gated, and we are a community within our gates, but we are also a community outside of our gates, and we have all of those connections, not with just other associations, but township residents. And so now that donut company, you know, somebody like me had a donut. And I, I'll go into the donut shop and say, oh my goodness, I had your donuts over at my association. And they were so great. Thank you so much.

Robert Nordlund: 21:29

Sprinkles on we had, yeah, show me the one with the sprinkles on it, exactly.

Cathleen Dunn: 21:34

And so now they put the connection that, well, you just got me a customer. So then they're going to talk to other people. They're gonna say, hey, you know, so and so has our donuts in their association on every Tuesday. Well, what do you mean? And now that's another connection to the outside, and it continues to grow. And then they kind of see it in a different light, potentially also. And it again, it just brings that whole sense of community, which we're all trying to achieve, to the forefront,

Robert Nordlund: 22:01

yeah, to achieve or to get it back that we may have lost since the pandemic. Well, Kathy, look at the clock here. I've been enjoying this. It's time to hear, take a break and hear from one of our generous sponsors, after which we'll be back with more common sense for common areas, and we'll talk about some more practical steps for what you can do to recruit board members at your association,

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Robert Nordlund: 22:53

And we're back. Well, Kathy, we're talking during the break about this process and how there's like in so many things, there's multiple good things that start to happen when you're working the process you actually are effectively screening for. And did we say good candidates? Is that one way you can avoid the let me be careful here. Problem candidates

Cathleen Dunn: 23:19

Most definitely, because once you have a candidate that you've kind of brought up through the farm system, and you've kind of groomed them into being a great committee member, a great community member, someone who believes in the association Exactly. They're proud to be there. They're proud to represent. They glow when somebody talks about their association. And you know this day and age in social media, they will also be your cheerleader. They've had such a positive position where they never thought that they would be, and now they're on a different foot, and they're actually contributing. You're acknowledging them, and they're feeling very positive. And you know, they are now going to take that step forward where previously, they would not take that leap on their own, and they would just kind of push it off as too much work. They're not interested. They don't know enough about it. And they would have all these roadblocks to not make them a successful board member or committee member, real or imagined roadblocks, exactly, and they'll make those roadblocks very easily, because everybody says, Oh, I don't have enough time, you know, I don't have enough skill, I don't have enough patience. I or, you know, I hear a lot of people say, quite frankly, I don't like people, and that's

Unknown: 24:35

fine, right? And it's like, okay, well, that's okay, because, you know, you're not going to have

Robert Nordlund: 24:40

I don't like people either, exactly.

Unknown: 24:43

Boy, we already have something in common, you know, break the ice even with them. Yeah, then really, you take their guard down. Now they're like, now what do I say?

Robert Nordlund: 24:52

Yeah, we're talking about a business here, and the business of the association, and we need people like you who are not here just because it's all fun and games, because. Frankly, it is in front of games. Are you? Do you have a dog? I know you have a doc. Do we have enough pet waste stations? Whatever it is, you can link them in and get them is that what you're talking about here? Link them in and get them going

Cathleen Dunn: 25:11

exactly and and I think that's so important, because the more connectivity you have with them, you make it personable and you make it personal, and now they feel that connection, and then they start to have some self value, where maybe they did have these roadblocks, because they may have had some self doubt, and now you're overcoming that self doubt. And you explain to them, you know, listen, this is not a coffee clutch. This is a corporation. You know, we need to raise our association to the next level, whether that is esthetically, financially, through the organization level. Maybe you know, through management, through staffing, sometimes it's self managed, sometimes it is managed by association management company, or sometimes it's board managed. So all of those different situations, there's still that fiduciary responsibility, and you want them to realize their their decisions and their their skills, their values, their input. It's important you know their collaboration is really going to make a difference. And when they start to realize that in the small scale, they now start to kind of go to the watering hole more and more and get interested, and then you can actually groom them into being a great board member and a great team team leader, or even a team, you know, co supporter.

Robert Nordlund: 26:41

Yeah, this almost sounds like we're feeding them the Kool Aid and inviting them into a cult, but I heard you talking about things that don't require a particular skill once they have a bite of the apple. Hoa, gee. Now I'm doing it once they realize that, yeah, this is my community, and I can help by contributing an idea. The gentleman that you were talking about, who's an expert, care for the property, financially, organizationally, physically, you just need to be an average, I want to say, grown up, average, grown up human who loves their community. And that brings us to what we were talking about again during the break, how to avoid toxic board members, and the more you can do to populate the pipeline. Fill the pipeline with people who, like the community, who have skills, who have interest, rather than the complainer who is about ready to wage war. Help me finish that

Cathleen Dunn: 27:40

thought, yeah, and, you know, and that's really important, because every association is going to have a few dissidents, and, you know, they're going to have their personal agenda, and they don't necessarily understand the entire internal operations or maybe even the external. And the last thing you want to do is you want to, you don't want to get them on the board when they're tainted, because now the board's progress is actually going to be defeated and slowed down with quote, unquote, their personal agendas or their personal dissatisfaction. So you if you do have those individuals, I mean, most associations do have a code of conduct, but you really try to not go that route, because a it's embarrassing to the person and it's embarrassing to the organization. The last thing I want my board to do is to have to announce at a public meeting a board member who's being admonished because they didn't know how to play in the sandbox nicely. But it happens, you know, unfortunately, but it really hurts the credibility of the board, so the more that you can get them with. You know, some people just have a difficult personality, but if you can figure out what their difficult personality, great may be, maybe you can educate them more. And some people are never going to be educated, and they're never going to want to want to know anything different than what they feel. But if you can be transparent with them, you have a much better chance of having that board connection, that community connection, that they may not even make that leap to be a board member, but they now will at least pipe down a bit.

Robert Nordlund: 29:21

Yeah. You know, I was, I was thinking something my mom would say, She say, there are some people out there who will say, My mind is made up. Don't confuse me with the facts. And there may be the people who are dissidents, and you want to keep them away from running from the board. Would you, if that is a person challenging the board on financials. Would you have a meeting with them and say, here's the bank statements, here's the budget, be transparent and avoid that problem. Is that a possibility?

Cathleen Dunn: 29:51

Oh, most definitely. And that is worth its weight in gold. You know, when I have a homeowner who is completely dissatisfied, I say them, look at our last 30. 10 years of audits. We have had a clean audit every year for the last 13 years. And I always tell them, and a lot of them, many times, are prior to my arrival here at the association. And maybe they had an issue with the board, or maybe they had an issue with the management team. And I'll stop them right there, and I'll say, Listen, that's in the past. We're going to move forward. I understand that you had an issue then, but come meet with me. Let's go over this. Let's look at the monthly financials. We're transparent every month in the board packet. I just had someone recently who they said we need to spend money better. I went over to my waiting room, and I have a slots there with flyers and the monthly board packet that we put out. And I said, Have you ever seen this board packet? And he said, No. I said, you lived here for 13 years and you've never seen this board packet. And so I went through the board packet with him. I explained to him, read your email. We send it to you every month. Read the newsletter. I pulled out the newsletter. I gave him a copy of the newsletter. I went through the INE with him. I said, do you understand? You know this is where your money goes. When he left, my receptionist said to me, why did that just happen? And I said, What's that? And she said to me, he was so angry, and he was giving me a handful. And I thought when you came out that it was going to be fireworks. She goes, and he left shaking your hand and wanting to hug you and thanking you for everything. And I said, well, a lot of times it's about education, and he just wasn't educated because he did not want to be educated because he was angry. And so when I took away his

Robert Nordlund: 31:35

let the steam out. Yes, exactly, yeah. Well, and that took a little bit of your time. Are we talking 15 minutes? Yeah, probably 20 minutes. Okay, yeah, not a big investment of time. And I wonder if you could have dangled. Well, we're having a budget meeting next month. We would love to have you participate to make sure there's people like you who don't understand who can then help understand it better. Maybe you can help us spread the message. And then, which I did, the opportunity to not surprise, I gave my little

Cathleen Dunn: 32:10

board workshop. I said 2026, budgets upcoming. Here's the flyer, and here's the dates when we'll all be meeting. So you will be able to have that opportunity. You know, he's not ready to be a committee member, but he's at least ready to be educated. And so I said, here is our monthly, you know, our weekly meetings for the next two months that are up and coming with the budget committee as well as the board. And here's the information so that you can come. He said, You know, they're in person at the clubhouse, and you can come and meet some of your neighbors. So, and he left floating on air, you know? And I said, Okay, we got to win today.

Robert Nordlund: 32:44

Yep, yeah, because he had been too busy to read the stuff that had been provided, and a little bit of personal attention turned the corner. I want to talk about, let's say you're an association where you have five board members and there's one or two dissidents, and it's a regular three versus two or four versus one. How comfortable are you trusting the democratic process that if you try to stay ahead as much as possible, the dissidents will stay in the minority,

Cathleen Dunn: 33:15

you know? So the democratic process, you know, democracy overall, everybody wants to be heard, and it works best when everyone's informed. The more information that you can give them, the more communication that you can provide is going to be able to get them to be you know, I always tell my board members, and I have a board of nine, and we do sometimes have, you know, seven to two, seven to two, seven to two. And I will now focus on the two, not the seven. And I explained to them once you kind of and my board president is wonderful, and we'll say, once you get out of this meeting, you may have not been in favor of it, but as a board, we are one voice, so we now have unity Exactly. And so I will now focus on those two, and I'll kind of handle them with kid gloves and try to turn them on, and I will over educate them and over inform them so that they can understand more of the organization and more of the board role, to try to get them to understand how the board votes, why the board votes, you know, making sure that they have a focus on community rather than their personal agenda. Because a lot of times that's what it is, is they personally either don't like it, or they don't know enough about it, or they just want to be that kind of Hot Topic individual, and so now it's my job to kind of hone in on them and kind of manage them, even though they're not my staff and my board president will do the same. We kind of work to manage them and to make sure that we reduce that confusion and that. Attention and try to get them to be on the same page. You know, not everybody's gonna agree, and that's okay, because that's what's so beautiful about, you know, the democratic process. Democracy has given us all a choice and a voice, and as long as we do it respectfully and informed, I think that it can all play into it. And many times, I've seen even dissidents on the board who they provided input, and I've had others who have changed their votes because they've actually provided valuable information. But prior to they were maybe a yeller, or maybe they were boisterous, or maybe they would raise their hands and puff where. Now I've I've gotten them to be able to manage their emotion, and they have been able to verbally provide their either negative impact that it would be considered negative in a much different approach, because so many times it's on delivery, it's not on the content. And if I could get them even that much to soften their edges a little bit so they're not so Curt, somebody will listen to them and go, Oh, wow. You know, that was really Kathy. That was a great idea. Meanwhile, they disliked Kathy because Kathy was just yelling all the time. Well, Kathy didn't know how to properly communicate, and so that has really aided into making them more informed and making sure that they understand that that's why we're all here. You know, we have a job to do. I manage my staff members, and I take direction from my board, but ultimately, my board needs to be trained, just as I need to have continuing education and continued training

Robert Nordlund: 36:38

as well. Yeah. Well, I was written down some notes from that, and it made me think about how we run things here at our company. There are times when I hear from my partners, and they may want different things, but I tell them very clearly, I heard you. I appreciate your input, but we are going to go this direction, but that you're talking about the human dynamic, where you're dealing with people, dealing with the board members of seven versus two, or the five, or, excuse me, three versus two, or whatever it is, an association I heard you. Thank you for that. But we're going to be clear that together, we are moving the association this direction, but at least being clear make sure that they are heard, given that human dynamic, that they are valuable. It's not personal. It has nothing to do with you, being you, me, being me, but it's three to two and we move forward on this. And I think it is, yeah, I'm comfortable that we trust a democratic process. But Kathy, I got so much pleasure out of hearing that you took that 20 minutes with this dissident firebrand, and you turned him into someone who smiled and a potential candidate for at least coming to a financial meeting. That just sounds like what brings Well, that's that's why you're on the program, because that's how you tick. I think that's what

Cathleen Dunn: 37:59

brings you. If he doesn't show up, I'll message him and say, Hey, by the way, I didn't see any of the meetings, yeah, so he couldn't just blow me off.

Robert Nordlund: 38:07

And it's that open invite to participate, and that warmness, that welcomeness, I think, is so much about what we're talking about here. Well, to our audience, it's time to start wrapping this up. Kathy provided a volunteer information form that can help maybe formalize this process. We'll see if we can get that into the show notes, but Kathy was great talking with you and having you on the program. Any closing thoughts to add at this time?

Cathleen Dunn: 38:32

I just want to say, you know, when you live in an association, yes, we are corporations, yes, we are a business, but we are all about community and how we can together grow our organization. So regardless of whether or not you want your grass six inches or eight inches, we're all human. We all put our pants on one leg at a time, and at the end of the day, we're all here together to make our living environment the best that it can be. So you know, I encourage everyone to have more involvement, even if it is just a silence outside involvement of reading a newsletter or replying to a news blast, supporting your association at the food store or at the local gas station by just seeing a neighbor and saying, hello. You know the sense of civility and the sense of neighbor is so critical, and your board members are not here to hammer anyone and to remove their voice. They're here to be your voice. They're elected, or they step into the role to fill a very important role to move your association forward. So get involved, and more importantly, just let's be human to each other, and let's know that, you know we, we all coexist for the same positive purpose.

Robert Nordlund: 39:57

Couldn't have said it better. Cathleen, it's tremendous to. Have you on the program today? Well, if you'd like to get in touch with I said it, Cathleen, I'm elevating you in stature. Now, if you want to get in touch with Kathy or send her a follow up question, you can reach out to her at Via email at cm, think community manager at APC, ppoa.com and she was also bold enough to offer her and so careful, if you live close, she'll probably recruit you as a board member offer her cell number, which is 570-972-8505, so we hope you learned some HOA insights from our discussion today that helps you bring common sense to your common areas. We look forward to having you join us for another great episode next week.

Announcer: 40:47

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