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empathy for your situation, most will not. Remember that you are providing the service and you should always consider why they feel the way they do and utilise these tips to regain their confidence in you. • Embrace every difficult interaction with your customers and learn from them. Each incident is unique, but you will quickly see similarities. Share your experiences with colleagues – tell them what worked well and what worked less well. Listen to theirs too. • The chance of conflict reduces through developing self-awareness. This means understanding your own reactions when you’re stressed, frustrated or angry – and what works to diffuse your own internal conflicts! • Above all, you have the
case constantly – before he joined the board – and your attitude to him is now pretty negative. It’s going to take a lot for your attitude to change. But it is possible to change the way you behave when you need to deal with him. It’s an act, yes, but you can develop the ability to behave in a way that doesn’t reveal your true feelings. And passive aggressiveness is not the answer. Your negative attitude toward him is likely to lead to negative behaviour, and that in turn affects his attitude toward you (and the situation) which leads to his behaviour getting worse. This will make your attitude to him even more negative than before! Break the cycle and change your behaviour. The situation may well change for the better as he recognises the efforts you have made. Summing up • Conflicts start somewhere! Be aware of ‘flashpoints’ whether they occur on the phone, over email or in person. Through our conflict management training, we can show you how to diffuse them fast so that the conflict never arises in the first place. • But when they do arise, there is usually a compromise position to be found. There may be a cost of compromise but better to bear that small cost than to lose a client or risk becoming unhappy in your role. • Whilst some leaseholders may picture themselves in your shoes and display some
clear you are there to support the board and ultimately all shareholders. You care about doing a good job and you would like to take each point in turn. Your tone and body language are positive. You regain the trust of those in the room. Those who were pushing 70% emotional and 30% rational are coming back to the balanced position. Conflict averted! Attitude and behaviour The best way to explore this is through an example. A leaseholder has joined an RMC board of a block that you manage. He has been on your
The shareholders in the room are acting emotionally and you have a role to play to bring them back to 50-50 before they reach 80-20, where the situation may turn nasty. And the RMC directors are judging you, retaining this management instruction may rely on your ‘performance’ tonight. Take a deep breath, listen carefully, make eye contact with whoever is talking, nod in agreement and take some notes if you can. Speak at the right level – clearly so you can be heard at the back of the room. Make it
right to work in a safe environment and if a situation is becoming
worrying for you, it’s time to leave. We train a wide range of customer-facing people, many of who suffer awful abuse at the hands of the public. Safety is everything and our techniques apply to property managers as they do with nightclub security personnel.
Nick Regnier is managing director at Cledor
21 ISSUE 106
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