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.”

The Fifteen Percent Rule
Managers say most condominium owners and board members are reasonable and many are delightful. But then, there are the other ones. “Fifteen percent of a community’s residents occupy 80 percent of your time,” Dan Rivers, CMCA, AMS, vice president and team leader for The Dartmouth Group, Inc., AMO, AAMC, observes. Sometimes, he admits, “I wish we had enough money to buy them houses.”
The manager’s job “isn’t easy, but it’s doable,” adds Rivers, who has been in the industry for about five years. “It’s the effort to please people who won’t be pleased no matter what you do” that makes the job so frustrating. “I’ve turned around accounts that were a mess – money missing, budget items allocated improperly,” essential documents disorganized or missing. “I’ve made things 100 percent better.” The response, he says, has been a list of priorities he hasn’t yet addressed. The criticism is constant, the thank-you’s rare.
Managers themselves are at least partly responsible for the pressure they feel to be everything and do everything for clients who are difficult and sometimes impossible, to satisfy. A Google search for “condominium manager and stress” produces thousands of listings, most of them the Web sites of management companies promising “we’ll take-care-of-everything” service that will eliminate stress for their clients. Owners who are told to expect a stress-free lifestyle will tend to put a lot of pressure on the managers who make that promise.
New owners and retirees tend to be the most demanding, Robert Keegan, CMCA, AMS, PCAM, at R&E Associates, Inc. in Kennebunk, Maine, has found – new owners, because they often “don’t understand what living in a community association entails” and retirees, because they “don’t want to hear that some things are their responsibility” and have plenty of time to focus on the things they think managers should be doing, or doing better than they are.
Board members who think their job is to find fault with everything a manager does in order to demonstrate that they are providing necessary oversight, are another common stress point. The constant criticism “can really bring a manager down,” Gerald Meaney, a vice president at Barkan Management Company, says.
More often than not, the board members who lash out at managers are feeling pressure themselves because their lack of experience with association management makes them insecure, David Abel, CMCA, at First Realty Management Corporation in Boston, suggests. “These are usually good people who are struggling with issues they don’t fully understand.” But the result is another source of stress for managers.
Financial Pressures
Managers also struggle with the financial pressures that weigh on their communities. Those pressures are more problematic in some associations and at some times than others, but they are particularly intense in the current challenging economic climate. Many managers attribute their high blood pressure to boards whose demand for services exceeds, often by several orders of magnitude, the price they are willing to pay for it. Abel notes the “constant pressure to do more with less” in communities that are struggling with tight budgets and collection shortfalls.
Some boards, determined to cut costs and avoid dues increases, will start “cutting things out of the contract,” taking on some management tasks, such as scheduling and overseeing the work of vendors, and handling more maintenance and repair tasks themselves instead of hiring professionals to do the work. “This always comes back at you,” Marian Servidio, CMCA, AMS, principal in Park Place Management in Burlington, Vermont, says. “It’s fine for the first month or two, when everyone is gung-ho. But then, [enthusiasm lags], or someone goes on vacation or there’s an emergency,” and that almost always means more stress for the manager.
Managers deal not only with their clients’ financial pressures, but with their own, primary among them, the pressure created by competitors who offer rock-bottom prices (and services to match), making it difficult for managers to charge the fees required to deliver the quality services they want to provide. There is also the ever-present concern about losing existing clients – a very real threat in Massachusetts, where state law allows associations to cancel a contract without cause, on 90 days’ notice. The knowledge that they could lose clients at any time for any reason can intensify the effort to please, which is itself a major source of stress for many managers.
And then there is the work load, immense, unrelenting and at times overwhelming. At the end of the day, whenever that comes, there are always more e-mails to answer, more problems to solve, and multiple assignments requiring attention. It’s not the multi-tasking that bothers Meaney, who is currently juggling flood damage at one client, fire damage at another, and a $4 million renovation project at a third. “I enjoy dealing with big problems,” Meaney says. “It’s the minutiae that can drag you down” – the complaints about someone hanging laundry on a balcony or failing to pick up after their dog. “Putting together loan packages, dealing with insurance claims and power outages – those are interesting and challenging things,” Meaney says. “But you have to deal with the little problems too. It’s all part of the job.”

It Never Ends
Long hours are also part of the job, and another major source of stress. “There aren’t enough hours in the day” is a common refrain for managers who see three new items added to their to-do lists for every one they manage to check off. E-mail, smart phones and other technology solutions have made managers more efficient and more productive, but they have also, arguably, made their jobs more difficult and more stressful. While an e-mail message usually requires less time than a telephone call, Keegan notes, “People send a lot more e-mail messages,” and they send them at all hours of the day and night.
The technology that enables managers to respond instantly to questions and concerns also creates the expectation that they will do that, adding another pressure to the list. “If I don’t respond to a message in an hour,” Rivers says, “I’ll get two or three more messages from the same person on the same topic.” A portfolio manager responsible for five or six properties “could easily get 100 e-mails a day,” he adds, and the pressure to respond quickly if not instantly “really takes away from focusing on the job.”
To avoid drowning in the e-mail sea, many managers set aside time early in the morning and/or late at night to respond to messages that accumulate overnight and during the day. This extends an already long work-day and threatens to blur the line between work life and home life, if managers allow that to happen.
The operative phrase is, “if managers allow it.” Community association managers can’t avoid stress, but they can and must control it. “If you don’t learn to manage the stress,” one industry executive noted, “it’s going to manage you.” The managers interviewed for this article offered a number of suggestions:
1. Manage clients’ expectations, starting with the expectation that you will respond immediately to every phone call and every e-mail. Just because a beep announces an incoming e-mail doesn’t mean you have to read or respond to it at that moment. Rivers says he used to set his phone to vibrate when an e-mail arrived, but he turned that function off, so he’s no longer tempted to monitor every incoming message. Servidio, similarly, turns the e-mail function on her blackberry off on weekends, although she can be reached by phone for emergencies. “People are generally respectful,” she has found. “They won’t call unless there’s a crisis, but they will e-mail any time. If I don’t see the message,” she says, “it doesn’t bother me.”
2. Prioritize. Recognize the difference between an important issue that needs attention, and a crisis that needs attention now. If every task has equal weight, managers will be pulled perpetually in different directions, wildly busy, but not necessarily productive, and frustrated as a result.
3. Take the time required to complete essential tasks. “I never get anything done,” is a common complaint, and a major source of stress, for managers, who must be able to jump quickly and frequently from task to task in the course of a day. The ability to multi-task is essential, but there are times when you have to turn off the phone, close the open door, and focus single-mindedly on the task at hand, in order to meet an imminent deadline —the budget that must be reviewed or the financial reports that must be completed before an upcoming board meeting. Of course, while ignoring the phone for a while may be necessary it will also bring pressure from a different direction. “People will complain that no one is answering the phone,” Servidio sighs. “It’s a constant struggle to find the right balance,” she says. “Which techniques work best depends on the day.”
4. Delegate. Some board members or residents will insist that you are the only one in the company (or on the planet) who can solve their problem. Don’t get sucked into that vortex, industry executives caution. “There is always someone else who can answer a question or solve a problem,” Keegan notes. “Let them do their jobs.”
5. Create a supportive environment. This is directed more at management companies than at individual managers, but in order for managers to delegate (as suggested above) there must be others on whom they can rely. Equally important, the managers must feel comfortable asking for help if they need it. If working 18-hour days without complaint is a requirement for success in a company, or perceived to be, high stress and high turnover will be endemic.
At The Dartmouth Group, Rivers says, if one manager “has a lot going on,” the company will shift support services from areas that aren’t as busy. Managers also know the company has “an open door” policy, Rivers says. “They can go in and talk to the president of the company any time.” Sometimes, Rivers notes, “just talking about stress will help to relieve it.”
Keegan says he tries to watch for signs of stress in other managers. “If I see that someone’s eyes are crossed or their hair is standing straight up from pulling it so much, I see what I can do.” Keegan and other managers also emphasize the need to provide as much flexibility as the job will allow. One manager in Keegan’s firm, who lives some distance from the office, works from home three days a week. “We don’t have any problem with that as long as she’s getting her job done,” Keegan says. “We’ll work with employees as much as possible” to make it easier for them to do their jobs.
Servidio also “tries to be flexible” with her staff. “If someone needs personal time off, we try to be reasonable. It’s a way of showing respect and appreciation for what they do,” she notes, “and it creates a lot of loyalty in return.”
Some companies try to reduce or eliminate night meetings, by charging clients more for them. Others find ways to compensate managers for the long hours. At Keegan’s firm, managers who attend a night meeting “aren’t expected to be in the office at 8 the next morning.” Barkan gives its managers “out” days — one day a month when, Meaney explains, “they can do whatever they want.”
6. Control the work load. Recognize that there are limits to what any individual, however capable and energetic, can handle. Overload is a particular problem for portfolio managers, some of whom oversee 10 or 15 properties. “We won’t [allow] that,” David Abel, CMCA, at First Realty Management Corporation, says. In making assignments, he explains, “We look at the manager’s experience and the complexity of the property. An experienced manager might manage three properties – one large and complex, the others smaller and less complex.”
Barkan seeks a similar balance. “The maximum load [for a portfolio manager] depends on the size of the properties and how they’re staffed,” Meaney says. “A large community with a full-time manager, an assistant manager and a maintenance staff on site obviously isn’t nearly as difficult as a 200-unit community with one maintenance man on site and an outside cleaning company [under contract]. You can’t manage many of those and survive in this industry,” he observes.
7. Turn out the light. When you go home at the end of the day, leave the job behind. That’s easier said than done – a little like obeying an order to stand in a corner and not think of a white elephant. “You have to care about your clients to do a good job,” one industry veteran said, “but you have to care about yourself as well.” And drawing a line between home and work is essential. “We stress family first,” Keegan says. “No matter how busy someone is, if they have a family commitment, that comes first and we’ll support that. You can’t let the job become your life.”
8. Don’t take it personally. This is also easier to say than do. Being on the receiving end of a tirade from an angry board member or resident who is blaming the manager for everything that is, has been or ever will be wrong in the community can feel very personal, indeed. “You know that sometimes people just need to vent and it’s not directed at you personally,” Meaney says, “but it does hurt. You just have to try to let it go.”
Abel says he’s learned over time how to “disengage” the personal from these situations. Effective communication helps – and so does a solid relationship with clients. “Having faith in each other and in your relationship enables you to have honest, non-threatening conversations,” he says. “Maybe that’s the underpinning to avoiding stress.”
9. Recognize stress in yourself and do what you need to do to relieve it. Getting out of the office for a short walk, a bike ride, or a long lunch can give you distance from a difficult situation and some perspective on it. “If I’m feeling burned out, I take a vacation day,” Rivers says. Ice cream breaks and chocolate work for Servidio and her staff. “Silly little things like that keep us from going crazy.”
Talking to industry colleagues at CAI events also helps, Servidio has found. “Hearing what others are experiencing, I realize it’s not just that I have a bad attitude or am not operating properly; others are dealing with the same things.”
Exercise is another widely recommended de-stresser and vacation time, just about everyone agrees, is essential. Servidio structures her contracts so there are no scheduled meetings in July and December. “Everyone needs a break,” she says. If a board wants to schedule a meeting during that black-out period, she’ll comply, “but we charge extra for it. Otherwise, everyone would have urgent issues that have to be addressed.”
“When you go on vacation, really go on vacation,” Rivers advises. “Even if you don’t go away, don’t monitor e-mail, don’t spend time at your computer.”
10. Learn to say no. The instinct to please others is no doubt an essential characteristic for association managers, but it can also push stress to unmanageable levels. Sometimes managers simply have to tell a client, politely, that what they’re asking is either unreasonable, beyond the scope of the contract, or both. “We try to work these things out,” Meaney says, but sometimes, you just have to part company. It doesn’t happen often,” he adds, but there are some clients who won’t be pleased regardless of what a manager does, “and we try to weed those out.”
Like most managers, Abel has encountered a few of those clients that had to be “weeded out.” But he’s learned, “I won’t die if I lose this contract.” He has also learned to manage difficult situations more effectively, so they don’t become stressful. “I’ve become more empathetic,” Able says. “I’m not as quick to explain what I know; I listen more.”
He actually thinks his job has become less stressful over the years, partly because he’s matured, but also because association boards have matured, as well. Board members, he has found, are somewhat more informed about their responsibilities, less likely than in the past to adopt unreasonable rules, and more likely to respect the expertise of the manager.
Many issues that provoked bitter battles in the past are now accepted, Able says, eliminating those conflicts and the stress related to them. “We don’t fight with boards any more over extra fees for managing construction projects – that’s pretty much [the industry norm],” he notes. “And you don’t hear many board members say, ‘we can hire my Uncle Bill, who knows something about construction,’” to prepare the specs for a renovation project. “They know they need to hire an engineer.” These changes are “subtle,” Able admits, but the effects are “cumulative,” and they translate directly into a reduction in stress. “If you eliminate some of the garbage” that distracted managers in the past, he says, “you enable them to devote more quality time to getting things done.”

It’s Just a Job
While different managers practice different stress management techniques, most agree that a sense of perspective on the job is essential. There are few association managers who have not been compelled to remind themselves on occasion – and probably on several occasions —that “this is just a job” — a demanding job, to be sure, and time consuming, without question, but not all-consuming. That awareness, too, comes with experience, and experience, ultimately, is probably the most valuable stress management tool.
Able remembers being in a bar in his 20s, new to the association management industry, and overwhelmed with a bulging portfolio. The cash register sounded a lot like the pager he carried at the time, he recalls, and “every time the register drawer opened, I twitched.” After 25 years in the business, he says, “I don’t twitch anymore.”