3 Ways to Increase Team Work In Your HOA

Legendary football coach Vince Lombardi once said "Individual commitment to a group effort -- that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work." Simply put, Team Work is the key to a successful organization.

Promoting team work is one of the most effective strategies you can foster in your Community Association. When Board members are all focused towards accomplishing the same goals, those goals are more likely to happen. When the Board Members are not focused or focused in different directions, those goals will flounder and sometimes fail.

The question is how to make team work happen, especially among volunteer Board Members. Here are three easy ways to increase team work in your association.

Be a model for good leadership and promote it in others. All good teams have a strong leader who is passionate about their role and their responsibility to the team. That leader, many times the Board President, helps shape community goals and encourages Board Members to work towards those goals. The leader is not to be a dictator, but someone who engages the other Board Members, builds relationships with the residents and manager, and gets everyone on board with what needs to happen. Every Board Member should be encouraged to develop their own leadership skills and be given opportunities to use them.

Create common goals that everyone can support. A good leader needs to share goals with the team and not just every once in a while. A leader needs to keep people focused on the goals by communicating the goals often. Be sure everyone knows the goals and commits to accomplishing them. For the best results, a good leader will help everyone make a personal connection to the goal by demonstrating how it benefits each member of the community.

Have clear rules and roles. This is one of the most critical and often the most overlooked strategy for successful volunteer Board’s. You need to have clear and simple rules that everyone can be held accountable to. When someone breaks the rules or stops playing by the rules, the leader and other members should be able to address it with them. The same goes for roles. Everyone should have a role in the organization with a clear understanding of exactly what they will be held accountable for. By establishing clear rules and roles, all members have plenty of freedom to accomplish their tasks, but only within the rules set by the members.

By making team work a priority in your Community Association, it will become easier to achieve the associations’ goals and any differences between Board Members or residents will be set aside. That is the power of bringing Team Work to your Board of Directors.

Marc Rodriguez, LCAM, CMCA
Director of Management Services
Association Services of Florida