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Stress Is Unavoidable — Managing it Is Essential
By: Nena Groskind
Close your eyes. Breathe deeply. Relax your white-knuckled-grip on the telephone. Take a walk. Take a vacation. Eat chocolate. Eat more chocolate. Now, repeat after me: “If I strangle the board member who is screaming at me, I will go to jail. My kids will miss me. This is just a job. This is just a job.”
Feel better now? These are some of the techniques association managers use to reduce the stress that makes burn-out an occupational hazard, turnover a constant problem and finding new managers a perpetual challenge.
Most of the pressure managers feel is baked into the job. It comes from the long hours, the night meetings, the tasks that fill and re-fill ‘to-do’ lists, the competing and often conflicting demands on energy and time, the constant effort to please, and, of course, the feeling, widely shared and largely justified, that managers are underpaid and underappreciated.
The sources of stress are many and varied, but for most managers, it is people – the board members and owners with whom they deal – who produce much of the pressure managers feel. “Managing condominium communities would be easy,” one manager observed wryly, “if it weren’t for the people living in them.”
Other Feature Articles:
- CAI-NE Annual Condo Conference & Expo
- FHA Approval Process Not the Nightmare
- Fuel Economy - Community Associations Feel the Pinch as Gas Costs Continue to Rise
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