A “Leader” Is More Than a Title

Episode Blog

INTRO: on this week’s episode of CACM chat HOA life to hear exclusive insights and expert perspectives on community association management from leaders across California. This podcast is about the hard work that managers do to positively impact the lives of more than 15 million residents living in over 50,000 homeowner associations across California.

TOM: Welcome back to the CACM chat HOA life podcast where no HOA topic is off the table.

Hey, I get a lot of inquiries about what a leader is. What makes a person a leader? Leadership in general. A lot of people think that because you’re a CEO or a COO or anything that has a title of that magnitude behind it, that you’re automatically leader.

And I personally feel that there’s nothing further from the truth. A leader just isn’t a leader because you get a title. A leader has multiple different qualifications. We’ve all heard the saying, you know, if you’re the smartest person in the room, if you think you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re probably in the wrong room. I come from the school that if you think there’s the smartest person in the room, you’re definitely in the wrong room. No leader, no true leader that I’m aware of, believes that they’re the smartest person in the room.

I personally believe that everybody else in a room, I look to surround myself with everybody else in the room that is smarter than me. I think most leaders have that same quality. I think a leader is someone who’s assigned to guide a group. It’s not somebody who opens a company and gives themselves the title of a CEO and suddenly they’re a leader. That doesn’t work.

Leadership is a process. It’s a process of influencing individuals. It’s influencing a group of people to achieve a common goal. Leadership is found in so many different areas. It includes society, including business, politics. We won’t get down the political road, especially in today’s political world, but it is there. Leadership is within politics. It’s within religion.

It’s within community-based organizations. Leadership is everywhere. If you are listening to this podcast and you don’t think you are a leader, you’re wrong. You are a leader in some capacity. You could be a manager. You’re a leader simply because you are managing multiple different personalities from one board of directors times however many homes, homeowners are in that association times how many associations you manage, times how much staff interaction you have, times how many projects you’re trying to manage, how many industry partners that you’re working with to accomplish the goals of the community.

That’s a leader. The manager isn’t sitting back going, look at me. The manager’s sitting back going, no, I need help. And that’s one of the true traits of a leader is being willing and able to say you need help. Qualities of a leader.

You have to have a vision. Leaders have a clear vision for their organization and their team members. They can inspire others to follow that vision and become better versions of themselves and help the organization further down the road. Help the organization achieve those goals. You want to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. If you are the smartest person in the room, I can promise you, you are in the wrong room.

Leaders set goals. They create that achievable goal. They establish what that achievable goal is, and they provide their followers with the knowledge and tools to achieve that goal. You want as a leader to have an end goal. You can’t fly by the seat of your pants. It doesn’t work. You need to be able to have a goal. Managers have a goal.

Board members, if you’re a board member listening to this podcast of a board member of a homeowner association, you’re a leader. You’re trying to establish some kind of commonality in your community, some level of quality of living. Now, you at the same time, you can’t make those choices on your own. You have to abide by the governing documents. So ultimately you have a board of directors and colleagues or friends, neighbors that are helping you make some of these decisions.

But the fact remains that you work together or you should work together to be able to achieve these common goals. A leader is somebody that you need to trust. You want to, as a leader, create a team that trusts each other, not just a team of people. And you do this, this is your task. You do that, that’s your task. And then you as a, with the, with the acronym at the end of your name, you get to say, okay, I get to put it all together and look at me.

That’s not what a leader does. A leader creates that trust within their team and it builds that trust for the team. So, the team has that value and trust into that leader. A leader creates communication. A leader has to have strong communication skills that are clear and consistent in their decisions. You have to be able to clearly define your vision, clearly define that goal, clearly define how you need to get to that goal, and then get out of the way.

Let your team take care of that. A true leader is a decision maker, somebody who’s not afraid to put themselves on the line and say, no, this is what needs to get done. This is what I see as the best value. This is what I see as making sound decisions, even especially difficult decisions.

A leader is so hard to be able to make very, very tough choices. Most people, a lot of people will back away from making those types of decisions. You want to be able to explore those decisions. You want to be able to embrace that conflict. Disruption within both the industry, disruption within whatever industry you’re in, and disruption within your organization is okay if it’s done respectfully because disruption and change.

Well, change primarily is the only constant. Embrace it. I mean, there’s no reason not to, but a leader makes those decisions. A leader is a decision-making person. A leader is also somebody who helps create the motivation behind their team. They inspire their teams to grab opportunities and to grow. And in the CID industry, we all know that hiring people is very, very challenging because A, there’s not a lot of people out there that even know that this is an actual career.

And B, you want to be able to hire people that can manage personalities. Yes, sometimes you get to the place that you’re going to hire somebody, and you need a warm body to sit a site or warm body to take care of administrative tasks and so on. Train those people, be the leader to help those people achieve their personal goals. A true leader is going to understand or at least find out.

What’s those individual team members goals are, but not just on a corporate goal. You want to be able to find out what your team’s personal goals are. What did they want to do two years from now, four years from now? Where do they see themselves in the world? And then can you achieve, or can you help them achieve that goal? I’m a firm believer as a leader that we can. You want to be able to help people as a leader. So, the best way to help them get to know them, understand a little bit about it.

You want to create that motivation from your team, not just one person. You want to create that motivation from your team. And you have to be able to delegate. One of the things that most people don’t do very well is to be able to delegate because a lot of people think, well, if I delegate, that means I’m slacking off on my job or I’m supposed to do that, but I’m going to pass it off or pass the buck off to somebody else. That’s not necessarily true.

Leaders need to be able to delegate tasks to their team. As a team, you work together. So, the leader sets standards. They maintain high standards for themselves and their team members. A leader, you know, also should be without saying, but often not. Leaders have to have integrity, accountability, self-awareness. A leader has to be a creative thinker and they have to have perseverance and a willingness to take risks. You have to be able to take risks.

And that’s why going back to the earlier comment about decision-making, making difficult choices. Sometimes difficult choices include regretfully terminating a team member, but that’s not the only difficult choice that leaders have to make. Leaders have to make decisions on taking a risk, on moving forward. Well, yes, this is going to be a roll of the dice. Is it going to work? I believe it’s going to work, especially with the team that we have. That’s the commitment you want to make as a leader to your team.

You want to build that foundation of trust and respect that’s important in any relationship. Any relationship you’re in, personal or professional, friends, family, spouses, you need to be able to build a foundation of trust and respect between each other and as a group.

And if you’re able to do that, your team will be unstoppable. A leader also desperately has to have empathy. I mean, my God, you need to be able to understand how your decisions affect others and seeing both sides of every issue because there is always a different side. Every positive has a negative. However, every challenge has an opportunity.

There are always two sides. It’s like, like in accounting, there’s a credit and a debit, or there’s a debit and a credit. There’s always two. So, it’s the same thing as being a leader. When you identify that empathy, you want them to your team or whomever you’re working with, you want them to be able to see both sides of an issue. And you as a leader need to be willing to accept there are two sides to an issue, not just your way. And you need to be able to communicate that, that empathy.

You need to be able to communicate effectively. You need to be able to communicate expectations. You need to provide feedback. You need to accept feedback, including constructive criticism feedback. And you need to listen to your team. Good, really good quality leaders are skilled at both verbal and nonverbal communications. You have to be able to listen and you have to be able to guide, but you have to make those tough choices. You have to make those decisions.

And sometimes if you’re going down a path that you feel is 100 % accurate and suddenly you hear information, if you’re a leader, true leader, you’re going to open yourself up to a different thought process. All of a sudden you find yourself on a different path because the information you’ve just been provided makes you rethink the path that you were going down. Why? Because you have the empathy to listen to other people. You have that communication skills and you can make that difficult choice.

Like I said earlier, difficult choices have all kinds of meanings. One of those difficult choices could be accepting the fact that you’re going down the wrong path based on the information that you’re being provided. And therefore, you’re willing to make a change to a different path. You always have to be willing to accept an alternate thought process.

A good leader is obviously, I shouldn’t say obviously, should I? A good leader, I believe, has to have a lot of resilience. Our industry, the CID industry, for managers and industry partners, but especially for managers. You guys really, really, really deal with a lot of problems. It’s like one of the requirements of being able to be in the CID management industry is being able to multitask and handle problems. And that’s kind of what we do. So, in order to handle problems, however, you catch a lot of shit from people. You need to be able to just take a breath.

Okay, I’m resilient. I’m able to learn from my mistakes if you’ve actually made a mistake. But if you have, be willing to accept it. That’s called resilience. Accept the fact that maybe you made a mistake. But learn. Every mistake is a learning opportunity. If people beat themselves up over mistakes, true leaders will help you understand, no, no. Mistakes are going to happen. Stuff happens every day. But you learn from that stuff. That’s how we grow. That’s why we have light bulbs. That’s why I’m talking to you from my office on a podcast. And that’s why you’re listening to this podcast wherever you’re listening to the podcast, because somebody tried it and screwed it up 4 million times. Well, here we are, because somebody was resilient to move past that. It’s important when your team looks to you for guidance that they understand that you have that resilience. You have to, as a leader, have self-awareness.

To me, that’s very, very important. I know it kind of goes along with everything else, but self-awareness defines your ethical stances. It defines that relationship with your employees. You want to have that self-awareness that leaders may be more likely to manipulate their followers. You don’t want to manipulate the followers. You want to have the self-awareness to be able to have your followers follow. Not through manipulation, but through trust and respect.

Really good leader absolutely has to have accountability, guys. mean, that’s really taking responsibility for your actions and your decisions, difficult decisions, easy decisions, all decisions. But it goes beyond that. You have to take accountability for the decisions that you make for your team and the decisions that your team makes because ultimately their decisions are your decisions. Their decisions are trying to achieve and help you achieve your goal. So as a leader, you need to be able to take a step back and take accountability for all the decisions that are making and following through on all of your commitments.

100 % follow through and be accountable for your commitments. That sets a positive example for your team and helps build, like I said earlier, that level of trust and respect,

Confidence. If a leader doesn’t have confidence, you’re going to stumble and fumble. yet ultimately you could learn through all of that, through all those mistakes. you’re really a confident leader, makes tough decisions and leads through with authority. And that’s super, super important. Confidence can help you reassure and inspire others and encourages that teamwork, that frame of teamwork within your environment.

Now, other qualities that make good leaderships include courage and respect and compassion, learning ability and agility. So, learning ability and agility, showing gratitude and collaborating effectively. Again, you’re as a leader, if it’s your way or the highway, it’s the wrong highway. You need to get a new road. You need to change your way of thinking.

If you’re losing staff, you have a tremendous amount of turnover in your organization, sometimes self-reflection is important. You need to be able to look in the mirror and go, okay, so what am I doing? Is it something that I am doing right? Or is it something I’m doing wrong? Is it a dollar issue? I can assure you, no team members leaving you an executive leader for $1,000 a year difference or 2,000 or even 5,000 because when you break that down to a paycheck, that’s 50 bucks.

They’re not going to, nobody’s going to move under those terms, but they will leave good leaders or will not leave good leaders. They will leave poor leadership. Think that through guys. I mean, we’re in a tough industry. You want to be able to retain as a leader, retain the teams that you can. If you’re a manager, you want to retain those clients. You want everything I’ve just explained as a leader and reference as teams is the exact same perspective you should, as a manager, you should have for your clients.

I think the leadership in your organization would appreciate that. So, I’m going end that there. Feel free to email me comments. Feel free to email me your thoughts on leaders and leadership. Email me your ideas for future episodes to podcast at cacm.org. Till then, I look forward to talking to you soon.

OUTRO: And that concludes this week’s episode of CACM Chat HOA Life. Have questions you want answered? Send them to podcast@cacm.org and we’ll address them in an upcoming episode. Make sure to regularly check out our website at cacm.org. And don’t forget to join our rapidly expanding social media community. Just follow @CACMchat on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and X. Thanks for joining me.