To display your ethical standing proudly is to prominently tip your hand of your vulnerabilities and may feel risky. THIS is where I stand. THIS is right and THAT is wrong. It may help your adversaries calibrate to detect your weaknesses. Your soft spots. In this competitive and controversial climate, soft spots are perceived as detrimental.

But this is an article about teaching ethics through example, not my insecurities. Displaying and outwardly exhibiting your ethical standing is also very rewarding to those you lead and those you serve. The foundational professional tenants of “ethics” I have selected to focus on is Integrity, Respect, and Compassion. I am newer to leadership in the Association Management realm, and have spent most of my Management career collaborating with Homeowner Leaders.

You name ‘em, we managers and business partners have worked with them! Military leaders, software engineers, OB/GYNs, actors, pastors, homemakers, and real estate brokers. Offering their energy and expertise gratis for the good of their community. Often, they enter this form of selfless servitude with a healthy suspicion and distrust of the one PAID party to this party…the dreaded HOA Manager.

This distrust is sometimes guised as contempt-which makes it very hard to grow collaborative relationships with people.

How do we break through this shell and get to business? Get to productivity? Get to greatness for their community they are exhausting countless hours volunteering for?

Show them your underbelly.

Show them who you are. BOLDLY tip your hand through your words and your ethical actions that firm up your ethical standing:

You are a person of Integrity. “I deserve the benefit of the doubt; I am always doing what I am supposed to be doing in a quality manner and I have the humility to come forward to the team with a solution when I have made a mistake in the midst of my productivity.”

You are a person of Respect. “I am here to execute my duties to the best of my abilities and will unquestionably and intentionally treat everyone with equity and dignity at all times.”

You are a person of Compassion. “I care about the people that I serve with and those they call ‘neighbor.’ I want to contribute to making this a good place to live, and I do my best to nurture community over contempt.”

Consider stating your professional, ethical standing to those you collaborate with, serve, and lead to nurture a working relationship of trust and respect. And then show them with every interaction, every email, every hardship, that those are your hard lines.

When a Homeowner Leader sees their Community Association Manager consistently act within ethical boundary, it promotes this as the standard culture for their community. If we have an irate homeowner at a meeting, and the manager meets that owner’s anger with compassion and respect, it nurtures an environment in which they can trust that all owners are being treated equitably and respectably. It builds a clear vision to operate under mutual professionalism and partnership, and opens our Homeowner Leaders to being brave and displaying their professional ethics as well.

This bold, ethical environment is not only exclusive to our relationships with Homeowner Leaders; it can be a benefit to the TEAM that Community Association Management is comprised of. Colleagues from management companies we do not work at but continue to learn from via platforms like our CAI SoCo Chapter’s quarterly magazine and luncheon presentations; contractors that we may partner with to accomplish big and small feats; and volunteers directing and navigating their community needs will all benefit from setting an elevated ideal for our industry team’s ethics.

Embrace and exhibit your professional ethics proudly and consistently and watch your collaborations strongly bloom into the most beautiful garden you are proud to come to work in.

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