Unspoken
It’s unspoken.
Daunting.
And not going away.
Property managers, we’re vulnerable.
Interchangeable.
Transferrable.
Expendable.
Nobody talks about the dangling sword of Damocles overhead.
About being “commoditized.”
The 30-day clause in the management agreement.
We all know it’s there.
We can fall victim to it.
We just don’t talk about it.
The Cloak of Denial
Our denial seems awkwardly comforting. We kid ourselves by believing if we just keep our heads down, put in the long hours, offer after-hour accessibility, and remain shackled to our properties, the sword may just fall on someone else. It doesn’t.
We don’t like to see ourselves as cogs in this wheel of management services. We prefer to see ourselves as hard-working, intelligent, professional, knowledgeable team leaders.
And we are. It’s just not enough.
We like to think we are indispensable––we’re not.
The sword always dangles above our heads. We can do 1,000 things “right,” yet it only takes one “wrong” to warrant our transfer or termination.
Those are pretty staggering odds against us, aren’t they?
Worse yet, there’s little if anything our employer can do to prevent it. The loyalty we demonstrate to our own firm will not be returned in kind if the client demands a change. Or corporate demands a down-size.
Have you ever been fired?
Have you ever been transferred “for cause”?
I have. Fired twice and transferred once. And each time, it was an eye-opening, surprising, and painful experience.
If you’ve never been fired or transferred, consider yourself fortunate. The nature of the property management industry is that we’re all interchangeable and dispensable. And with our departure, there’s rarely a warning. It descends upon our lives like a thief in the night.
The first time I was fired was from my very first job in property management. I was crushed. I was young so my gut reaction was to just try harder at my next job. That worked for a while. But again, it was never enough.
The second time, I was part of a mass layoff. That was corporate America at its finest. My company was telling the world it was doing some belt-tightening, so the market could be kinder to its shareholders.
It wasn’t personal, but I took it that way. My mind whirled with nagging questions––
But why wasn’t I spared? What could I have done better that would’ve allowed me to stay? What could I have done to show executive leadership that I was worth keeping?
I couldn’t come up with many answers. I didn’t have the visibility and interaction at the top of the organization to influence them one way or another.
My Epiphany
It wasn’t until the last time I faced termination that I changed my approach. It was five years ago, and it was the greatest gift I could have ever received.
It certainly didn’t feel like a gift at the time. I was devastated. I was devalued. I had been replaced by a younger, smarter, cheaper model.
I knew at that point things had to change.
I had to change.
So, I stepped back and looked critically at my work. My work—my contribution—was ordinary. Sure, I was “compliant.” I was doing what was expected. I was doing that the industry trained me to do. But there was nothing of note about my work to make me unique.
Nothing stood out. I didn’t stand out.
Anyone else could’ve done my job, and my employer would have received the same results. Since then, I’ve learned to make myself extraordinary, to stand out in the crowd, and “own” my work, find meaning in my sometimes ordinary days.
So now, I stand out. I’m no longer ordinary. I’m extra-ordinary––and so is my work, my contribution.
In the Part II of this blog, I’ll show you how you too can stand out in the crowd. In the meantime, contemplate how you’re “just” being compliant and “just one wrong move away from the door. Then consider the many ways you might strive to be extra-ordinary.
