The Art of De-Escalating Situations with Tenants
When it comes to property management, there may be no more important a skill than being able to de-escalate a situation. To learn this skill, there is no better resource than Dale Carnegie's seminal book, How to Win Friends and Influence People.
In brief, when a tenant is angry about a maintenance issue, charge, deposit refund or whatever, the natural response is to argue with them and defend yourself. If they raise their voice, the natural response to raise your voice in return. If they insult you, the natural response is to at least defend yourself forcefully and perhaps insult them back. And on and on and on it goes.
This is escalating a situation.
The key, that Dale Carnegie discusses at length, is to do the opposite of what feels natural. If they're mad at you, don't get mad or defensive, instead sympathize with them. And by that, I don't mean blame yourself, but sympathize with them over the problem. We had a receptionist a few years back who was great at this. Someone would call in angry about a maintenance issue and she would respond as follows,
"Oh no! That's terrible. Let's make sure to get that taken care of. Could you please describe the problem in a little more detail? Thanks."
Or something like that. But notice, that she puts us and the tenant on the same team; "Let's make sure to get that taken care of." The enemy is the maintenance problem. We are the tenant's ally. Why would they be mad at their ally?
One corollary to this is the temptation to avoid contact with people who are mad at you. This is natural, but the worst way to deal with a situation. We had a mold issue that was actually rather small, but it blew up all out of proportion and we ended up letting the tenants out of their lease because the situation dragged on and they got so angry at us. Why did they get so angry? Well the mold issue was part of it, but we resolved it relatively quickly. The big problem was our property manager at the time refused to call them back and in their mind, she became an uncaring, inhuman monster who wanted them to die of some terrible pulmonary disease. In reality, she was just nervous to call because she was embarrassed about the situation. Suck it up and maintain contact with them.
With regards to collections, deposit refunds and things of that nature, the key is to be fair but firm while also having good documentation. If you can point to the documentation, you can explain why they owe what they owe. Don't get mad. Don't match their tone. Empathize with them (be on their side as much as possible), i.e. "I know it's a tough situation, but this is the amount it cost to do the repairs" or something to that effect.
I should note this principle goes with employees, partners, vendors, sellers, buyers, lenders, contractors as well as our friends and family. It's amazing how quickly someone will calm down when you don't match their anger and empathize with them. There's even a scientific term for it called social proof. Basically, people will generally match their surroundings. If you are calm, they may not start calm, but they will almost certainly become calm.
And it is so much easier to reach an amicable and favorable solution when someone is calm and feels like you empathize with them.
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