By Aimee Winegar, CMCA, AMS, LSM, PCAM Aimee has worked in the field of community management for 30 years. She is currently a large-scale manager for Community Association Services, Inc. in Frederick, MD. She sits on the Quorum Editorial Committee of WMCCAI and is co-chair of the WMCCAI Maryland Legislative Committee.
Hurdling to
SUCCESS: Finding Your Inner Management Gold Medalist
H
urdle (noun): (1) one of a series of upright frames over which athletes in a race must jump; (2) an obstacle or difficulty. Hurtle (verb): move or cause to move at a great speed, often in an uncontrolled manner. If the coronavirus does not put a halt to the event, the 2020 Summer Olympic Games are planned for late July. It is truly thrilling to consider the many hours of effort that athletes put into preparing for this display: The Crowds! The Adventure! The Success! We gape in awe at the accomplishments of those who have mastered their events. With cheers filling their ears and surrounded by applause, the winners mount the podium to receive the distinction of a gold medal as a result of their efforts. We then turn away from the TV and look at our over-paper-piled desks and compare ourselves to them, often in despair. But in terms of day to day events, community management and the Olympics have more than a little in common. Consider for a moment:
16 | QUORUM
• The High Dive – Greg Louganis set the standard in this event. As managers we often find ourselves plummeting into the deep end of the pool, in over our heads and struggling to catch a breath, while being scored on style …when what really matters is that we are still swimming at all. • Gymnastics – from navigating a balance beam to bending over backward, managers have to be just as limber as Mary Lou Retton. If juggling were an Olympic sport, we would be bringing home medals for sure. • Weightlifting – weightlifters don’t have the easy name recognition of other sports, but as managers, we know the strain of dealing with dumbbells. • Track and Field – Usain Bolt, Carl Lewis, and Jesse Owens set the standard for sprinting. Our days often resemble sprintathons, racing as fast as we can for hours and hours. In a circle. With people yelling at us. And let’s not forget the Hurdles – a race that specifically requires the repeated surmounting of obstacles that have been deliberately left in the way, just to make things harder. What can we learn from Olympic gold
medalists to help us in our own day-to-day achievement events? Here are some ideas for reaching our own gold medal status: • Find a coach. Do you have someone in your life who can encourage you, urge you, and provide constructive criticism? If you don’t, now is the time to find one. This person might be a spouse, a coworker, or a mentor from another field. It is important to have a resource who can help you identify opportunities for growth, as well as step back and show you those areas where you are already strong and can really make an impact. • Build a strong team. By definition, every manager is a community leader. In an HOA or condo setting, our role is like being the captain of the team. Board member volunteers have their own individual strengths and sometimes need to learn to work together productively. It is an important part of the manager’s job to remind the board – sometimes very frequently – that managers are on the board’s team, and the whole group is on the community’s team. Our work is not a contest to see if we can do something better than the board – the
