By Geoffrey James

Being a know-it-all is a great way to make people question your common sense.

When it comes to credibility-building, the three most powerful words in the English language are: “I don’t know.”

Many salespeople and most managers think that they’ll lose credibility if they admit ignorance, especially about something about which they “ought” to know. However, the exact opposite is the case.

Admitting ignorance makes everything else you say more credible. Admitting ignorance marks you as a person who’s not afraid to speak the truth, even when that truth might reflect poorly on you.

Needless to say, the “I don’t know” should be followed by a plan to discover the information that’s required, if the issue is truly important. And you WILL be judged on whether you deliver on that promise.

But here’s the thing: people dislike a know-it-all. They can often sense, at a gut level, when they’re being BSed. Even if they’re taken in, when they find out (as usually happens) that they’ve been BSed, they never trust the BSer again.

Geoffrey James writes the Sales Source column on Inc.com, the world’s most visited sales-oriented blog. His newly published book is Business to Business Selling: Power Words and Strategies From the World’s Top Sales Experts. @Sales_Source

April 1 is just around the corner for those of you who still need CE credits for CMCA recertification.  You’re in luck!  CAI has created and launched the M-300: Ethics and the Community Manager. 

This interactive, online course discusses the nature of ethics and how it applies to community management. Registrants will learn to apply CAI’s Professional Manager Code of Ethics, examine the fundamental ethical responsibilities of a professional manager, resolve potential conflicts of interest, identify the appropriate response to the potential receipt of gifts and other remuneration and accurately identify situations where disclosure is necessary. Topics include:

• Codes of ethics
• Duty of care and duty of loyalty
• Common ethical challenges faced by community managers
• Consequences of unethical behavior
• Ethical relationships with fellow managers, including competitors

The course is worth 6 CE credits.  Check it out here.  As always, you can find more continuing education opportunities on the NBC-CAM website.

By Suzanne Lucas

Did you know that the IRS and the Department of Labor have teamed up to audit businesses? If that doesn’t make you shake in your boots, you either don’t employ any contractors or you are hopelessly naive about what a fun and exciting thing it is to have the IRS and the DOL descend upon your business at the same time.

Many small businesses use contractors, and it’s fine if you do. But, you need to make sure that your contractors are actually contractors and not, what the IRS calls, “common-law employees.”

If the relationship looks like and acts like an employer-employee relationship, it is an employer-employee relationship, regardless of whether either one of you intended it to be so. And trust me, the IRS wants your head on a platter–er, back taxes–if you have anybody classified as a contractor who should really be classified as an employee.

Here are 5 things you should know before you classify someone as a contractor. Please remember that I am not an attorney and am not offering legal advice here. If you have any questions, consult an employment attorney.

Who controls their work? If you recently gave a lecture to a contractor on how he must be to the office no later than 8:32 and, furthermore, long lunches will not be tolerated, chances are this is not a contractor. If you control how, when, and where your contractor does his work, he’s most likely classifiable as an employee. Contractors must be independent. While you can certainly require that the contractor meet deadlines and come to appropriate meetings, how he accomplishes that deadline needs to be up to the contractor.

Who owns that computer? I’m a contractor. My computer is on its last leg and I ordered a new one last week. Is Inc.com paying for it? I only wish. But, as a contractor, my equipment is my responsibility. I buy my own stapler as well. This isn’t a hard and fast rule. If you’ve hired someone to come set up your new server, of course she’ll be working on your server. But, if you want to argue that the drywall installer you’ve hired is a contractor, while she’s driving your truck and using your tools, it’s going to be an uphill climb.

Are you in a targeted industry? Connecticut based employment attorney Daniel Schwartz says that not all industries are created equal when it comes to audits. The following industries are audited at a higher rate:

• drywall
• property management
• landscaping
• security guards
• restaurants
• cleaning companies
• nail salons

It doesn’t mean you are definitely in violation if you work in one of these industries, but expect to be looked at. If you use contractors, it’s worth your time and money to make sure you’re in compliance with the law and to fix anything–before you get a knock at the door. At the very least, line up a lawyer so that you can call that person immediately upon being contacted by the IRS or DOL. (My non-legal advice is that you offer your government visitor a bottle of water or cup of coffee and a chair to sit in while you wait for your attorney’s advice on how to proceed.)

Are you treating your contractor as an employee? Performance appraisals? Health insurance? Is this person’s work a key part of your business? No written contract? Very few employees are under contract while most contractors should be. Start dates, end dates, responsibilities, etc, should be clearly spelled out. What should not be spelled out is how the person will accomplish the task at hand.

Is your contractor free to work for other people? Your graphic designer cannot be classified as a contractor if she needs your permission to design a logo for another business. This doesn’t mean that your contractor has to have other clients, but it will certainly help your argument if she does. What she does for other people is none of your business.

A failure to meet any one of these qualifications doesn’t mean an automatic classification as an employee. But, it does call for a closer audit. Don’t just assume that because you’ve said, “Karen’s a contractor” and Karen agrees that the government will see it the same way. For more information, the IRS has contract/employee guidelines posted.

Suzanne Lucas spent 10 years in corporate human resources, where she hired, fired, managed the numbers, and double-checked with the lawyers. Follow her at Twitter, connect with her at LinkedIn, read her blog, or send her an email.

You know how some people are always late but tend up spending way more time in a meeting than you think is necessary? And how some people are always prompt? An easy way to recognize someone’s personality style is looking at how they spend their time. Review these descriptions and see if you recognize yourself and your coworkers.
Direct Style Time Management
People with a Direct style don’t waste time. They are almost always in a hurry, and they get impatient with you if you aren’t. They are action-oriented, making quick decisions and implementing them rapidly. They stay focused on their goals and are seldom tempted to stray off course.

If you are working with someone who says, “I want it yesterday!” you are probably working with someone with a Direct style. To work effectively with this style, be on time for meetings and appointments. Stick to the topic at hand, and get to the point quickly. Deadlines are firm, so make sure you can meet any deadline to which you agree.
Spirited Style Time Management
People with a Spirited style are multitaskers. They enjoy handling a variety of tasks and projects at once, although doing so doesn’t necessarily make them more productive. They are easily distracted, finding it much easier to begin a new project than to finish an existing one. They prefer to spend their time brainstorming rather than implementing decisions.

If you are working with someone who says, “While we’re at it, let’s consider…” then you’re probably working with someone with a Spirited style. To work effectively with this style, block out extra time for meetings so you’re not surprised or frustrated when they go long. Be prepared to stray off topic and guide this person back to making a decision. Build in extra time for projects because this style doesn’t always adhere to deadlines.

Considerate Style Time Management
People with a Considerate style put people before time. They will interrupt their own work in order to help others complete their work. They often take on more than they can handle in the interest of helping others. Or, in other words, they can’t say no! They may also jeopardize their deadlines by not being forceful enough in asking for what they need.

If you’re working with someone who often asks what he can do to help you, you’re probably working with someone with a Considerate style. To work effectively with this style, be aware of their tendency to overcommit, and make sure they haven’t taken on more than they can complete. Find a way for them to share their concerns before they become a problem that delays a project or causes a deadline to be missed.

Systemic Style Time Management
People with a Systematic style are deadline-driven. You can count on them to meet their deadlines, as long as you give them enough lead time. They often deliberate before making decisions, and they can get bogged down in details. They prefer to spend their time analyzing and evaluating rather than jumping in and taking action on a project.

If you’re working with someone who seems preoccupied with details and analysis and insists on having enough time to do the job right, then you are probably working with a person with a Systematic style. To work effectively with this style, give them the time they need. They will do an excellent job when they don’t feel pressured. However, if they seem stuck and unable to make progress on a project, be prepared to help them make decisions to move forward on a project.

6 Ways to Get Noticed by Dr. Shelley Prevost

Effective self-promotion lies somewhere between being a wallflower and a flaming narcissist. Find the sweet spot with these tips.

I suck at self-promotion. I think most of us do. We teeter between talking too little about ourselves or coming across as a flaming narcissist. Somewhere in the middle is the sweet spot–the subtle art of promoting yourself that invites others to take notice.

Here are some tips on how to get to that sweet spot.

Let your results speak for you.

People care about what you’ve done, not what you’re going to do. Who hasn’t heard this a bazillion times? There is nothing quite like good old-fashioned results to get people’s attention. And I’m not even necessarily talking about a robust bottom line. What problem have you solved? What movement have you started? How have you led others to achieve something great? Accomplishing something of value is how you earn the right to promote yourself.

Promote others.

One of my partners, Ted Alling, is a master at promoting other people. He is eager to tell people how founders in our incubator are crushing it or how Chattanooga is evolving into a vibrant ecosystem where entrepreneurs are flocking.

What he won’t tell you is how he inspires scads of people to think bigger than they thought possible, how he is leading a start-up movement with grit and tenacity, or how he is one of the most determined and passionate people you will ever meet.

He doesn’t have to.

The more Ted talks about other people and their successes, the more confident and connected to him they feel, and the more they endorse him.

Ted is a living example of Maya Angelou’s great quote, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” He rarely talks about his own accomplishments. Yet, he is one of the most respected and catalyzing figures in this city.

People will promote you if you promote them.

Talk about what you believe.

“I believe in creating jobs and empowering people to feel useful at work every day” is very different from “I’ve started three manufacturing companies, employing 200 people.” It’s subtle, but do you hear it?

Talking about what you believe gives a nod to your accomplishments without explicitly saying what they are. If people are really interested, they’ll ask.

Admit your failures.

Admitting failure is a sign of vulnerability, which is one of the greatest leadership skills there is. Failure humanizes the path to success. And when we feel connected to another person on a human level, we are much more likely to advance their cause.

Logic and intellectualization can only get you so far. Authenticity and a little humility can take you farther.  

Decide what you want to be known for.

Hone the skills that differentiate you from the pack, then let others brag on you. If you are too much of a dilettante, people will be confused about who you are and how to promote you. Instead, they’ll just say nothing.

Your job is to figure out your super power–what sets you apart–and do it better than anyone else. If you’re really good at something, people will flock to you for that skill. It may not be verbalized to you, but it will be evident by the sheer number of people you have knocking on your door.

Put yourself out there.

Then there are times when you just have to brag on yourself a little bit. If you do something really great, talk about it. Just talk about it to the right people and make sure it is, in fact, remarkable. The right people will be energized by your success, not turned off by your obvious self-promotion.

Dr. Shelley Prevost is a co-founder of Lamp Post Group, a venture incubator in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She curates kick-ass cultures by infusing principles of positive psychology in her role as Director of Happiness. @thegladlab

Did you take the CMCA paper-and-pencil examination?  If so, we need your help! NBC-CAM wants know about your CMCA examination experience.  We need your feedback to improve the CMCA paper-and-pencil examination.  Please take this easy, 3 minute survey.  Your responses will be kept confidential. 

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NBC-CAM hosts a listserv for community association managers. The listserv is intended to create a powerful, on-line community for community management professionals to share information. Recently, some questions have been sent to the listserv. Are you able to help? Leave and answer in the comment section below and NBC-CAM staff will post your answer to the listserv.  If you’ve got your own question, leave that in the comment section as well.

Question 1:  Jerry from New Jersey

This question comes up every budget season and is the source of disagreement between owners every year.  “Does maintaining a healthy Reserve fund, which increases fee collections, help or hurt property values?”  Or conversely, “does keeping fees as low as possible, by not adequately funding the reserve, and instead relying on future special assessments for repairs and replacements, help or hurt property values?”

Question 2:  Tom from Arizona

Can anyone provide input and/or verbiage about introducing a “No Loitering” rule for a community?  There is a mixed reaction on this issue, as some Board Members are pushing for it while other believe that persons have a right to “hang out” in the common areas.  Some Residents just sit on walls with no purpose, or hang out in the parking lots with no apparent purpose.  Any thoughts?

Question 3:  Julia from Mississippi

For those who manage condominiums – if a unit (in this case a lower unit, partially below grade) tested high for radon have you paid for the abatement as a common expense or have you left the individual unit owner responsible? My thinking is that the radon itself originates below the slab from ground that technically is owned by the Association. Any thoughts or experience on this would be appreciated.

By: Elizabeth Grace Saunders

How does he find time to meet with 10 customers a week and make his yearly quota in the first quarter?, a salesman wonders about his top producing coworker. I can barely find time to have five appointments a week and get all my paperwork done correctly and turned in on time.

How does she manage to champion strategic initiatives, network with executives, and only work 40 hours a week?, a manager ponders about his colleague on the corporate fast track. After a day full of project meetings, the best I can do is reactively respond to e-mail at night instead of proactively developing my department.

Here’s the secret: Your colleagues that zoom ahead of you with seemingly less effort have learned to recognize and excel in what really counts — and to aim for less than perfect in everything else.

Most likely the highest producing salesman on your team spends less than half the amount of time that you do on filling out paperwork. Yes, it may be sloppy, but no one really cares because he’s skyrocketing the revenue numbers. The manager who has caught the eye of upper management may send e-mails with imperfect grammatical structure and decline invites to tactical meetings. But when a project or meeting really matters, she outshines everyone.

If you’re shocked and feel like this seems completely unfair, I’m guessing that you probably performed very well in school where perfectionism is encouraged.

I know. I was a straight-A student from sixth grade through college graduation who did whatever it took to produce work at a level that would please my professors. Admittedly, this strategy paid off as a student. My perfect GPA signified an exceptional level of achievement, and I was fortunate that in my case, it was rewarded with scholarships and job offers.

The rules changed when I started my own business over seven years ago. I realized that doing A-work in everything limited my success. At that point I realized that I needed to focus more on my strengths. As Tom Rath wisely explains in his StrengthsFinder books, you can achieve more success by fully leveraging your strengths instead of constantly trying to shore up your weaknesses. Realizing the importance of purposely deciding where I will invest more time and energy to produce stellar quality work and where less-than-perfect execution has a bigger payoff has had a profound impact on my own approach to success and my ability to empower clients who feel overwhelmed.

As I talk with time coaching clients struggling with overwhelm whether they be professors, executives, or lawyers, a common theme comes up — they can’t find time to do everything. And, they’re right: no one has time for everything. Given the pace of work and the level of input in modern society, time management is dead. You can no longer fit everything in — no matter how efficient you become. (This conundrum is what inspired me to write a book on time investment).

In my time investment philosophy, I encourage individuals to see time as the limited resource it is and to allocate it in alignment with their personal definition of success. That leads to a number of practical ramifications:

•        Decide where you will not spend time: Given that you have a limited time budget, you will not have the ability to do everything you would like to do regardless of your efficiency. The moment you embrace that truth, you instantly reduce your stress and feelings of inadequacy. For example, professionally this could look like reducing your involvement in committees, and personally this could look like hiring someone else to do lawn maintenance or finish up a house project.
•        Strategically allocate your time: Boundaries on how and when you invest time in work and in your personal life help to ensure that you have the proper investment in each category. As a time coach, I see one of the most compelling reasons for not working extremely long hours is that this investment of time resources leaves you with insufficient funds for activities like exercise, sleep, and relationships.
•        Set up automatic time investment: Just like you set up automatic financial investment to mutual funds in your retirement account, your daily and weekly routines should make your time investment close to automatic. For example, at work you could have a recurring appointment with yourself two afternoons a week to move forward on key projects, and outside of work you could sign up for a fitness boot camp where you would feel bad if you didn’t show up and sweat three times a week.
•        Aim for a consistently balanced time budget: Given the ebbs and flows of life, you can’t expect that you will have a constantly balanced time budget but you can aim for having a consistently balanced one. Over the course of a one- to two-week period, your time investment should reflect your priorities.

Once you have allocated your time properly, you also need to approach the work within each category differently. As I explained above, trying to “get As in everything” keeps you from investing the maximum amount of time in what will bring the highest return on your investment.

Elizabeth Grace Saunders is author of The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment: How to Achieve More Success With Less Stress, a time coach, the founder of Real Life E Time Coaching & Training, and the author of The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment: How to Achieve More Success With Less Stress. Find out more at www.ScheduleMakeover.com.

By: Jeffrey Van Grack

As the middle of the country endures another round of blizzard conditions, Jeffrey Van Grack takes on the issue of snow in community associations.

From Thanksgiving until the end of winter (and sometimes even later), snow may fall in area community associations and create issues of safety and parking that can escalate and become dangerous. The biggest concern and perhaps the biggest complaint that boards struggle with is snow removal. This is usually a no-win situation for the manager (think Snowmaggedon).

Despite what individual owners may think, boards of directors have no control of the snow, but they are responsible for snow removal (or lack thereof). In an effort to meet their legal obligation and to diminish the amount of callers, the board and management should hire a competent, properly insured snow removal company that is reliable. Hiring at the last minute the guy who shows up with the plow at the end of his truck is a mistake waiting to happen. Hiring someone who you are assured will show up as required pursuant to a written contract will go a long way towards goodwill of the owners for the entire year. Aside from the inconvenience and chaos it creates in the community, the removal of snow can be filled with liability issues, so having a competent properly insured contractor in place before the first snowfall is vital.

My favorite issue in a blizzard is when an owner (especially in townhouse communities) cleans a parking space and returns 20 minutes later to see a neighbor has taken over the “common area” parking space. Wars sometime start with this process. Your association may wish to send a reminder at the beginning of the season that all spaces are common spaces and that they may not be reserved.

Jeff Van Grack is a community association attorney whose practice has been devoted exclusively to representing community and homeowners associations, condominiums and co-operatives for more than 30 years. For more information visit www.lerchearly.com/team/jeffrey-van-grack.