A community association manager is always on the go and deals with many tasks simultaneously. Reporting to several stakeholders and ensuring their satisfaction can be a lot to deal with.

A good way to overcome this feeling is to learn new practices and improve them. Sadly, many feel overwhelmed by their daily responsibilities and can’t allocate time to nurture important habits. 

In this article, we’ll share 9 key attributes that we have spotted in excelling professionals. These traits are essential to managing communities and dealing with a heavy workload. 

On top of that, we’ll also give tips to help you nurture these habits and turn them into second nature. 

1. Be easily reachable and responsive

There’s nothing more frustrating than a community manager who never answers emails and phone calls. This leaves board members and residents left out and it delays processes. Community association managers often have to work outside the 9:00 to 5:00 range. Of course, that doesn’t mean they should be available all the time. It’s important to have a work-life balance. However, it’s crucial for this role to be able to respond quickly to any stakeholder. By not being accessible, you make yourself unaware of possible problems happening in the community. If you don’t know about some issues, you certainly can’t find a solution for them. When people can easily reach out to you, you can react to whatever the matter is. This is the only way to avoid tough situations and consequences. 

To help you be more accessible, you can use several communication tools. You can also set daily or weekly meetings so you have a dedicated time to clear doubts. This will give you more time to focus on other tasks during the day. 

2. Communicate effectively and efficiently

There’s a subtle difference between effectiveness and efficiency. In this case, efficient communication could be described as the ability to deliver a message in a short amount of time. On the other hand, effective communication is when a message is delivered, received, and understood by all parties. This is easier said than done. Community managers communicate all day long through many different channels. If the communication is poor, it can quickly lead to tensions between different stakeholders. Worse than that, it can have detrimental impacts on deadlines, finances, and residents’ retention. One of the primary factors that make a community disengaged is not being informed clearly and regularly. The board and residents need to know their community is in good hands. Community association managers are often very busy. A good way to save time is to create and publish key information on a property management website for example.

3. Be tech-savvy (or at least try to be)

No one is born a technology expert. What you need to know is that technology means convenience and it’s made for everyone. A lot of people give up on technology before even having started. This is because they believe they’re not tech-savvy. Sadly, they’re missing out on a lot of life-changing innovations. Nowadays, many professionals can delegate tedious tasks to online software and focus on more fulfilling chores. 

A community association manager is always going from a place to another. Either to attend a board meeting or to inspect amenities. While on the go, you can use an app to quickly reach anyone and boost productivity. You also can keep up with maintenance requests, which is a very useful tool for managers. 

Using platforms that ease up some of the administrative processes makes everything more convenient and efficient for all parties involved.

4. Know how to engage the community

Community association managers often deal with disengaged board members and residents. This is mainly because of a lack of initiatives and also poor communication. The board and management company often forget that part of their role is to create a sense of community belonging. This can easily be done through a creative HOA Newsletter where residents can participate in. Organizing thematic events either in-person or virtually is also a good way to get to know each other. Investing in original amenities with minimal spending is a great way too. As well as managing existing community amenities efficiently to trigger residents to use them.

5. Stay informed

A great community association manager is up to date with the industry and current trends. State law often changes and it’s the responsibility of the manager to be aware and notify all the parties involved. The pandemic taught us that a crisis can happen at any moment. Being informed in such situations helps to be proactive and find solutions quickly. A community association manager is the point of contact for many. The board usually reaches out when in doubt, but also vendors or even residents. In this case, if the community manager doesn’t have the answer, then who does? 

It doesn’t mean that knowing all the answers makes you a better professional. It means that you should constantly inform yourself to make sure you know something before it’s even asked. Or else, when you don’t know the answer you know exactly where you can find specific information. To be updated, you can sign up on companies’ blogs or subscribe to communities association journals.

6. Educate yourself and raise awareness

A mistake some community association managers make is to think expertise only comes with experience. As we saw above, staying informed is crucial in any role. Yet, what’s even more important is to be committed to continuous learning. In some states, community association managers must follow courses every year. In Florida for example, community association managers must attend classes and earn CE credits to keep their license. 

Even if it’s not mandatory in your state being eager to learn is what makes you great at managing communities. There’s always more to know. It doesn’t have only through courses. There are many resources available on the internet. You can search for best practices, download ebooks and guides, or even look for infographics. 

The good thing about gathering knowledge is that you can share it with others. For example, you can raise awareness among residents, share best practices with the board. You can even motivate vendors to deliver great services. All of this benefits the whole community. 

Vinteum is a company seeking to simplify community association management. We organize webinars monthly for community associations. Some are CE Class and some are just best practice sharing. Click here to learn more about our webinars. 

7. Be organized and responsible

As a community association manager, you’re responsible for the well-being of one or several communities. That’s a huge responsibility to take on so being unorganized is not an option here. Thankfully, a lot of tools are available now to organize ourselves at work. Excel spreadsheets are a life-saver, for example. Although, we don’t recommend creating your own. You’d save a lot of time if you download ready-made free templates. Another great way to have everything centralized and automated is through property management software. In such a platform, you can store documents and delegate tasks in a few clicks.

8. Financial acumen 

A community association manager is in charge of monitoring the community’s budget and forecasting expenses and income. This is why being at ease with numbers is essential. Analytical skills are also required for this position. The ability to collect and analyze financial data smoothly indeed helps with problem-solving and decision-making. Luckily, these skills can be learned and improved over time. Besides, a lot of tools are now available to make financial analysis easier. Downloading an excel budget calculator template is a great help for example. You don’t spend hours trying to figure out how to create a function excel. You can also easily find balance sheet templates. Many platforms also allow you to easily create colored graphs. This is a great way for you to visualize financial data and explain it to your stakeholders.

9. Work with a competent and motivated team

A community association manager works with several stakeholders who can be considered as team members. First, it’s important to know how to carefully select vendors that are competent and result-driven. It’s also essential to keep the board of directors engaged and motivated. If you work for a community association management company, then you also have colleagues. Fostering a good relationship with your colleagues improves the company’s well-being. Besides, sharing best practices and tips benefits all and turns everyone more competent. 

Applying all the habits mentioned in the above points will help you be a great team member but will also help you motivate your team members.

Don’t Forget

Working as a community association manager can be challenging. Yet with the right habits and skills, it can be one of the most rewarding professions. There’s nothing like being part of an engaged community and contributing to residents’ satisfaction. Nowadays, efficient communication and management tools are here to empower community managers. This is the greatest asset to regulate workload and be an excellent professional. Learn more about these tools by clicking on the image below.