The Neighborhood Association President: Lead Recruiter/Trainer

For almost ten years, I have served as the president of our neighborhood association, and recently, I was asked to share some thoughts about what that role entails. More specifically, I was told that I would have ten minutes to summarize what a neighborhood association president does and why it is important. I was also supposed to come up with some “perks” of the position. As I reflected upon the last ten years, I quickly realized that the job is far more than what the official job description describes. Indeed, the job description in our association bylaws is a single paragraph filled with weighty words which only barely scratch the surface. Therefore, I thought I would record some thoughts in a series of blog posts about the four major roles of the neighborhood association president.

The third major role of the neighborhood association president is that of lead recruiter and trainer. In this role, the president is responsible for developing a pipeline of leaders and volunteers that will ensure the association is effective today and will continue to work long after their tenure ends. Ideally, other leaders will join in shouldering the responsibility for recruiting and training, and the pipeline will grow and develop so that the association’s capacity increases over time. Yet, the president must always take the lead in this role. Specifically, there are three types of people that must be recruited and trained.

Volunteers. The president must take point in recruiting and training volunteers. Indeed, neighborhood associations are, at their heart, volunteer organizations, and without volunteers, the whole thing collapses. In our neighborhood, volunteers monitor the condition of our parks, help with spring cleanup days, organize and execute events, and much more. In short, neighbors doing neighborly things are the lifeblood of the organization. The president must therefore identify roles that people can fill, publicize those service opportunities, and then equip people with whatever they need to accomplish them. They get used to making pitches at every meeting and in every newsletter. They develop job descriptions for the different roles that they are regularly recruiting for, even if the description is only a sentence or two. And they are constantly asking, “How can I help?”

Leaders. The president must also take point in recruiting and training leaders for the organization. Of course, most association leaders will be volunteers themselves, but leaders are to be distinguished from regular volunteers by their capability and willingness to take responsibility for accomplishing the association’s vision, and the president must take responsibility for recruiting, vetting, and training both prospective and established leaders. For the sake of clarity, let us examine each of these phases more closely.

• Recruiting leaders involves identifying prospective leaders and inviting them to consider stepping into a larger role in the association’s vision. In the past, this has generally taken the form of a public announcement that the association is seeking leaders, or through an open nomination process. These things still have a place in the modern neighborhood association, but changes in our culture have made them less effective than they were in the past. Far more effective in today’s culture is a direct, personal invitation. That is, the president is always looking for people who could help advance the vision of the association, and when they see someone who can do that, they approach that person and invite them directly.
• Vetting leaders is an ongoing process which begins even before the invitation is extended and continues throughout the duration of the leader’s relationship with the association. The president must do everything possible to reasonably ensure that this leader will lead and represent the association well, and if at any time there is cause to doubt these things, the president must move to either correct the situation or remove that person from (consideration for) leadership. To this end, I have made it a practice to at least sit down for coffee with a prospective leader and run a quick Google search. As they are doing these things, the president is looking for three things in a leader:
  • Availability to assume a larger role in the association. Leaders will have more meetings, and their responsibilities will extend beyond just showing up for an hour or two per month. To be clear, we do not disqualify people for temporary unavailability. For instance, our association has allowed people to continue in leadership roles even as their availability is reduced by family matters or health conditions. Conversely, we have allowed people to bow out when their family, professional, or health situation necessitates that they focus on other things.
  • Capability to take responsibility. This may mean that the potential leader has specific skills to do a job. For instance, the president is looking for someone who can manage money and use a spreadsheet to serve as treasurer. (Pro tip: A bona fide CPA is even better!) At the very least, though, the potential leader should exhibit maturity, organization, and reliability.
  • Character to represent the association well. Essentially, the president must seek leaders who demonstrate integrity, maturity, and grace. Seek leaders who have an established, positive reputation in the community, who are not prone to wild irresponsibility, and who will not fly off the handle at the drop of a hat. In short, seek the type of person who, if they are identified in the newspaper, it will not make you cringe.
• Training leaders is also an ongoing process which begins even before the invitation is extended and continues throughout the duration of the leader’s relationship with the association. This may seem counterintuitive because we often assume that, if a person is a leader, they have got things figured out. However, the president should constantly aim to help the association’s leaders become even better than they already are. Help them to be better people by exposing them to different ways of thinking and seeing the world. Help them be better at their jobs by giving them opportunities to learn and develop skills. Help them be better with their families. In our association, this happens through a regular “leadership moment” incorporated into our board meetings. It also happens in conversations that I have with our leaders and little things I do that set an example for others to follow.

Self. The notion of leading oneself is foreign to some people, but it essentially means that the neighborhood association president must be constantly striving to learn and grow themself. This involves making a point of regular self-examination. What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? What have you done well? Where have you struggled or even failed? Are you still the right person to lead the association? It involves learning. There is an old axiom that says real leaders are readers, but I would suggest it is much more than that. Real leaders are voracious in their hunger to grow in their knowledge and skill, relentless in their pursuit of excellence. Therefore, they read books and articles, they attend conferences and workshops, and they do far more asking than answering. They grow in their understanding of their specific discipline, but they also expand their horizons to learn about a wide variety of other things as well. And it involves improving. After all, learning does little good if it is not actually applied. Therefore, as the president learns new things about themselves, their vocations, leadership, and any number of other things, they will incorporate those things into their daily lives.

To be honest, the person most often overlooked when it comes to recruiting and training is the self. Indeed, many leaders relish the ability to tell others what to do, and neighborhood associations are, unfortunately, prime opportunities for little narcissists to start their kingdoms. Many presidents, therefore, are too busy or too proud to lead themselves. However, the best neighborhood association presidents recognize that, if they do not deliberately train and develop themselves, they will inevitably become the lid that keeps the association from growing.