Update for those who have helped

Hi, I just wanted to give an update for those that have been so helpful with advice and feedback.

I finally was able to have all the board seats filled. We now have a 9 person board instead of the previous 5.

The property manager was fired. We are going to now search for a very qualified , certified property manager . No more trying to hire a real professional for 40,000 a year. It's impossible.

We also have instituted a centralized work order system that is online and available for all board members to monitor.
The new property manager will be required from day one to utilize this system for all on property work orders and projects.

We also created an executive committee so that property issues can be addressed by a sub group . This is ideal.. previously(last year) the president would make decisions without consulting the board and then get made when he was questioned. Also having three different board members all involved when a problem requires action will prevent the board being left high and dry if the president decides to leave.(which is what happened last year on several occasions)
The three executive committee members will have authority to approve emergency repairs. However, they will make sure not to approve "emergency" repairs(which usually incur overtime and after hours charges by vendors) , that aren't really emergencies.

The fired manager, I don't even know what to say. For all these months. she was not completing paperwork, recording chargebacks, filing documentation in the appropriate places. When she was first hired, I went out of my way to try and train her and assure she was successful. Unfortunately ,within about 6 weeks I realized she was simply not capable of the most simple tasks. She had an excuse for everything. When I finally notified the board , she accused me of harassment. Because of the existing animosity amongst certain board members, a few board members immediately believed what the property manager was saying. Despite no evidence to support the property managers claims, a single board member escalated the issue to the hoa attorney ,without board approval.
Then the attorney gave incorrect legal advice. (the quorum issue) which resulted in thousands of dollars being spent that were never properly approved. When the attorney finally corrected his previous interpretation, the board members who had approved expenditures and actions based on the bad information didn't stop the expenditures.

The full board of 9 members consists of owners who do not rubberstamp things. Only 2 of the current board members would I characterize as biased and not acting in good faith.

that's the update.. thanks for all of the help

Good job in getting the changes, but I also caution you to be careful of what you wish for, as Melissa said - you may get it.

Regarding the property manager, she may have been as inept as you say, but I also suspect your personality clashes with her didn't help - that could be why your colleagues asked that you not speak to her at one point. So, here are a few suggestions:

1 - get someone else to train the new person - you had too much of a personality clash with the last one, and so to ensure everyone gets off to a good start, I think it's best you stay out of it.

2 - Adding to #1, if you have an issue with him or her, go to the ENTIRE board FIRST to discuss the matter. Make your case based on job performance, which should be based on the job description. It's not about how YOU would or wouldn't approach the job and keep the personalities out of it. If you wanted the job done a certain way, you could have applied for it yourself and left the board.

3. If the board agrees there's a problem, someone else should speak to the property manager, not you.

4. The entire board, including you, should invest in some classes or books (or both) sponsored by the Community Association Institute (CAI). As you may know, the education section has a number of books and webinars on various HOA issues and best practices that could be adopted by your community. I'm a believer in education and perhaps if your colleagues (especially the new ones) got some background on how effective boards work or not, some of what happened could have been avoided. There are other resources on the web about leadership development dealing with things like b breaking the bad news or having difficult conversations with difficult people - all of you could likely stand to check out a few so you can work together more effectively.

5. You are one vote and people don't have to agree with you. When the board makes a decision, it's ok to prepare a one-page statement expressing your concerns if you feel strongly about an issue and ask that it be attached to the minutes. After that, part of your duty as a board member is to do what you can to make the decision work. Time will tell soon enough if the board made the right decision or not - until then, undermining a board decision by whining, spreading rumors or other bad behaviors - anything else is unprofessional and childish.

Congratulations on making the changes - now do your part in making them work.

Sheila,

All of the recommendations you gave are spot on. I just want to again state that , I did the things you suggested In number #2. My complaints were never about personality. They were always about job performance. Her job performance was terrible, but what was scary was the extent went to blame me for her inability to do her job . .. the following article I found a couple weeks ago, it's scary.

Sabotaged by an employee who plays the victim

Q: I supervise an employee who plays the perfect victim, and worse, my immediate manager believes her stories. He was brought into our company from outside and has only managed our department for a month, so he and I don’t yet have a strong relationship.

I admit it took me six months to figure this employee out. At first, I believed what she said when she told me how hard she worked. Since she fell behind on many of her projects, I pitched in and completed several myself when she told me that she’d run into circumstances beyond her control. I’ve always been a hard worker and I just added her jobs to my workload.

Her poor work habits bothered me. She had a reason for needing to leave early nearly every Friday afternoon. First it was that she had a roofer coming, then she had a dental appointment, and then her dog needed to go to the vet. It also seemed as if she was on her cell whenever I passed by her office. I don’t mind an employee occasionally using their phone, but she was on hers regularly. When I told her to cut it out, she got teary and said I just happened by the few times she received emergency calls. After two more weeks of regularly catching her using her cell, I wrote her up.

If she’d been a terrible employee, I could have fired her, but she did just enough work to meet minimum expectations. I tried to fix each problem. When she gave me the roofer excuse a second time I told her she couldn’t leave early any more Friday afternoons. That’s when she started to complain that I didn’t do enough to help her. This stunned me because it was absolutely untrue; I have spent more time assisting her than any other employee in my 15 years as a supervisor.

Worse, she expressed these criticisms to my manager and also went from person to person in our department grumbling that I was overly demanding and that she feared being fired. Since she is a likeable person, many of these employees felt sympathy for her.

This morning I sat down with my new manager and said I wanted to fire my employee. He told me she had come to him several times, that she really wanted to do a good job and he felt I judged her too harshly. When I told him the real story, he didn’t seem to believe me because it was so counter to what she’d been saying. He’s also a nice guy and wants to give everyone a fair chance.

I feel like I’m in a no-win situation here. How do I handle someone who plays the perfect victim card?

A: You may be supervising a perfectly false victim. While victims deserve empathy, false victims use others’ gullibility to skate through life avoiding accountability.

Here’s to spot a FV.

Nothing is ever an FV’s fault. FVs need to blame their failures on others. His coworkers aren’t helpful. Her supervisor is too demanding or doesn’t give clear direction and thus any mistakes are the supervisor’s fault. He could excel if given more training and if certain coworkers or his supervisor weren’t in the way. FVs expend so much effort blaming others that they have no time to succeed.

FVs excel at securing sympathy. Like a bully who kisses up and kicks down, a false victim endears herself to others even as she singles out one person, often her supervisor, with subtly voiced allegations of unfair treatment.

FVs use others. Your employee uses your manager’s kindness against him and you, forcing him to chart a middle ground between her earnest protestations that she wants to do a good job and your testimony. You take responsibility for the work coming out of your department and she used that to get you to finish her work. FVs thrive in jobs that feature shared responsibility, particularly when working for or with hard-working supervisors or coworkers who take on too much responsibility.

What to do now

Those who supervise or work with FVs can’t always fix an entrenched false victimhood behavior pattern. Further, FVs rarely respond to coaching because they want others to join them in self-denial.

To fix your situation, you need to tackle both parts of it. Forgive your manager for being buffaloed. If you take your irritation out on him, you risk becoming part of the problem. Instead, offer him the facts that will enable him to draw the correct conclusion.

Force your FV to take accountability by stating facts. “You’re say you’re working hard but you’re on your cell again. Leave it in your car.” Cut short his blaming by saying, “Please answer my questions from the point of view of your own responsibly.”

Finally, let your manager or your employee or both know, “We can’t go on this way.”