 Good afternoon, everyone and happy holidays. My name is Jane Sugimura and I'm your host for today's condo insider program and condo insider is a YouTube show for people who live in condos and work and deal with condos and and we try to give you relevant and important information. That makes your lives and work easier, more enjoyable, and I'm really proud to have with me as my guest today, Gerald Clay, and he's the founder and partner of the law firm of Clay Chapman, Eomora, who is a novel, and I have to make a disclosure. I am a member of the firm. So, thank you for joining me today Jerry. It is my pleasure Jane. And you specialize in why don't you tell us about yourself you specialize in construction law and litigation and dispute prevention and resolution. And you've been doing that for how long. Well, this is my 56 year in law practice, but I learned about partnering facilitation a little more than 25 years ago, and been doing some of that since. What we're going to be talking about today is proud to be talking about it with you. Okay. Well, by the way, why don't you tell us what partnering is all about partnering is about changing the mindset of how people solve problems. What partnering is, is the opposite of dispute resolution dispute resolution means a problem has grown to the point where the people can't work it out with each other. So they need to bring in a judge or a jury or an arbitrator or a mediator. They have a problem and they can't work it out. What partnering is the opposite. It is dispute prevention. There will always be problems, but there's a systematic way that people can learn to work problems out before they begin to fester and grow into disputes. So this partnering process that we're going to be talking today. Is it something that you've worked with with entities here in Hawaii. Absolutely chain chain, going back to the 1980s. I used to extensively in the visitor industry. We used it for more than a year's process to help the visitor industry organize and be on the same page to accomplish their goals. I have used it for the Hawaii State Power Association incoming president wanted to partner his board of directors is incoming board of directors, along with their office staff partnered them and at the end of the year. Wrote me a letter that said all the goals they established in the partnering retreat were actually accomplished during that year. I have partnered a division of the state of Hawaii Department of Human Services, where they had a new director coming in. And that new director was having personality problems with some of the staff and so we went through a partnering process, after which they then began holding meetings weekly to work through problems that were occurring. The answer is, I have used it in a number of various types of situations. I have done many many partnerings of new boards of directors of both nonprofit corporations and profit making corporations. Yeah, and in fact you're going to be, you've been engaged by a condo organization. I'm sorry homeowners or association to partner with their new board. I'll be doing that in March, looking forward to it. And so how would, how, how, how would, how does this partnering process how would that apply to condominium associations or boards. I mean how would it apply to them. Well let me use an analogy. And my analogy would be a football game. Let's focus on one of the teams. You have 11 members who go on the field. And I believe that is 53 members in total. And every member who goes on the field has a position, and that position has a job to do. In a football team, you want to be able to have everybody carry out their jobs. And so what the football team does is it hires somebody to organize those folks, and that person is called the coach. In a condominium project, you likewise have various players. Obviously, a new board of directors, it's hard to do this. And unless you start at the beginning with an organization that's going to be looking forward together. So you have a new board of directors or trustees. You then have the managing agent. You then have, most likely, a site manager, or a resident manager. You have the owners. You have non-owner residents, renters. You probably would want to say who's an important member would be an insurance agent or other very important vendors. And like the example of the football team, it is the job of a partnering facilitator to organize those folks so that they're not doing their jobs in a vacuum, or doing their jobs in opposition to one another, but a good football coach makes everybody recognize they're all better because they're on a team. And that's what partnering facilitation does, is it brings in a partnering facilitator, a coach, who puts people through a process so that when they come out the other side of the process, they think of each other as teammates, people that they're going to work with, and each accomplish their jobs together so that the project, the team will accomplish what they want in the next year. I think that's the analogy I would give to how to look at what partnering does for a condominium project. So with the condominium, I mean, you've got a board, you've got a board and it's usually made up of nine members, and they come from various walks of life. I mean, because each condominium is different. They're all, the board members come from the ownership pool. And so, and they come with, you know, different backgrounds and, you know, they're different professions and, and so how do you get these people to work together to, you know, and what they have to do is they, they're there, you know, they have to have to maintain and, and they're in charge of maintaining and repairing the facility. They established policies. They have to resolve disputes between different factions that, you know, live in the condominium and so these are some of the issues that they have to deal with so, you know, how would you be able to work with this nine member board to get them to do their jobs. Good question I'm going to answer it for you. Okay. The answer is that the University of Texas invented a process to help people think in terms of one another as team members. The process, as I said before, needs a coach, a facilitator to make the process operate so that people begin to see one another as team members, rather than as the opposition who they have to best. So, what Texas did is they devised an interdisciplinary team to set up a program or process to have people go through. And the process really has a number of components. Number component number one is, it requires that there is going to be buy in from the people who's going to be leading the directors. And that would usually be the president who says, we're going to go into this next year as a partnering team. And we're going to hire a facilitator to assist us to do that. And you're going to have to commit to do two things to assist the facilitator. Number one, you're going to have to agree that you will be serious about this process. And the facilitator will be devising a survey. And you will commit to spend time and complete the survey as honestly and completely as you care. Number two, the facilitator will use the survey answers to set up an agenda for usually a one full day retreat. And the retreat will do the following things. It usually starts out by recognizing that you've got to have some ground rules as you're going to go through the day, because you've got a number of players on this team as I said before, owners site managers, management companies, the board members. And so you set up some ground rules. And rule number one is usually the most important. I have to get agreement on it. And that is every member of this team is equal. Nobody is more important. Nobody takes precedence, and you will respect one another. And I get everybody to buy into that rule. That is the most important rule to get by. And since everybody is equal, and everybody has a say, you agree that you'll respect somebody when they are speaking. And particularly, there is going to be no interruptions. I will not tolerate that as your facilitator as your coach. Number three, everybody will be limited to two minutes and I am going to enforce that. And then I get everybody to buy in. They all agree to abide by the rules. And then we actually start the retreat by having some fun games so that people can solve problems together. Fun problems. I mean, partnering is fun, and it's about having the future be fun. The only thing we do is have people solve problems together. Like, how do you find a certain geographical location nearby? It's much better when everybody works together than works individually. We do a number of other games so that people get to know one another one on one as human beings, not just as players in the game. After that, we do a number of exercises talking about what the next year is going to be like. The process, not again the university in Texas invented where we use something that you probably heard of called brainstorming. What do you see as the biggest problems to come up in the next year? It's going to be brainstorming. Get 50 problems. Work with 50. Work with everybody to reduce different wordings, different phrases into one another until I get it down to maybe the 10 bigger problems. Work with 10, but I can work with five. So I say to the group, every member has five votes. As I go through each of the 10, you'll vote five times for one of these. Five biggest problems. I divide the group up and say, if your problem comes up, brainstorm, point a facilitator, brainstorm, what are the best ways to solve it? And then again, reduce the number of solutions to the best three. And we do that all day long. So that by the end of the day, everybody has worked with brainstorming problems and brainstorming solutions. Second day, we start again by having fun with some new games with everybody. And then the second day is dedicated to making an agreement between everyone, all the different stakeholders that I mentioned before. And this is not a legal type of agreement. This is an agreement where you give your word. It's a morally finding agreement to each person saying, as I go through the year, I will respect everybody else on this team. As we go through the year, and I want to talk about something. I agree not to magnify or exaggerate something, but to give it strength. So we go through and develop that agreement. And then after we have it all developed, I have it printed out from a computer that I bring on site. And I have everybody sign it so that this is an agreement that's going to be posted throughout the project so that everybody knows this is a partner condominium. We think differently. We act differently. And this is how we will act with everyone involved in this project. That's my overview. Wow. That's how you know that that sounds very ambitious. I mean, and you've actually seen this work in in in with local groups. Absolutely. Nice about the process that the university in Texas invented is it's fun. So many condominium projects have have people who are opposed to one another. They have people who actually get so emotional they hate one another. The idea is, can we change all that by having a one day retreat, where everybody is going to say I recognize everybody else as a team member. And the answer is it works. And so, you know, instead of having nine people who come to the board meetings with their separate agendas, you're basically saying that this process will change them into a member of one team working for the common good of the association, so to speak. Yes, that's what the goal is and that's what the process produces. Somebody wanted to engage you to do to assist them and be the facilitator in a partnering process. I mean, what, what is the process they contact you and then how does it work. Well, also being a lawyer I have them sign a contract. Okay. And I usually charge $5,000 for the service. It will mean I come in, identify the stakeholders. Invite the stakeholders to participate. And that invitation comes with the commitment that they will do this seriously. And then I draft the survey, get answers back. And it's an interesting survey, by the way, let me tell you a little bit about it. It's not a looking back survey. It's a looking forward survey. So I ask questions like you are going to answer this sitting alone thinking about it sitting alone thinking about it. What do you see as the five biggest problems facing this project during the next 12 months. Question number two, taking each of those five. What would you see as the best solution. If that problem actually did manifest itself in the manner you just, you just mentioned. Question number three, confidentially. If somebody amongst the stakeholders, you think is a problem personality. If so, who and tell me why you think that I might also ask, do you think there's any way that person could be a, a member of a team with you that could work together. Survey question me, maybe what would you like to see as the goal to come out of this partnering. Then we have a one day retreat, which I just described to you before, after which we come out with this moral agreement in partnering parlance that's called a compact, a moral agreement. I will respect every other stakeholder in this project, and you go through these moral commitments. And it does change how people think and interact with one another. And so how long does it take to implement this process like once you have, you know, the, the survey, and then you get your answers back. And then, you know, you go on the retreat, and you finish with the retreat. And, and, and what does that mean that the process will then be implemented after the retreat is over. The answer is yes, but I have an additional to the extent during the year that stakeholders feel that they have fallen off the compact. They can bring the facilitator back. So that the facilitator does what we call a tune up. Where were we at the time that the treat treat finishes. Where are we today. Are we cooperative. Or are we adversarial. And those are the kinds of questions we work on a tune up so that everybody hopefully will be back. A team where everybody is working together with the goal of having the most fun, the best project, and the best design to solve problems. Okay, can I just say one more thing. Yes, we have. We have something called dispute resolution. That's basically the lawsuit system. And we also have arbitration. That is to solve a problem that has grown into a dispute. We also have now recently the idea of not necessarily using who's right. Which is what a dispute resolution process by lawsuit or arbitration is, but rather finding out what's in everybody's best interest. That's mediation. Those two things mediation and lawsuit arbitration are with existing disputes. Partnering is dispute avoidance dispute prevention. To the extent of problems growing, you bring the facilitator back for a tune up. And so the this process that that that you know we've been discussing today. I mean, this would probably be of benefit to condominiums because right now, according to Sue Savio, we've got the highest number of claims under the no policies of any state, you know, in the country. So, you know, this is an issue that is of concern to many, many, many condominiums. I mean, we're not talking only lawsuits we're talking about mediation and arbitration. They're all counted as disputes, you know, as well as a lawsuit. I mean, that's the ultimate, you know, dispute. But anyway, you know, if they want to avoid those, those, those types of situations, then they would then the condominium, it would benefit them to get involved in partnering right because that's dispute avoidance. Absolutely. I mean, this is a different way of interacting. This is a different way of having a team approach to everything in the condominium project. It would absolutely benefit by going through the process. You asked me before how long from the time that I signed on to be a facilitator to be the coach. It would take time to identify the stakeholders. I would do that usually with the president. Once I get the buy-in, I would send out invitations and ask for responses within maybe three, four business days. I would then send out the survey and ask for responses back within a week. Once I get the responses, I would design a partnering retreat, which might be about, oh, 10 days later, the whole thing can be done in a period of less than a month. And that would save, you know, and that might, you know, save, you know, a one association, you know, many, many hours and probably thousands of dollars in dealing with a dispute resolution if they didn't go through this process. Yes. Let me just make one other point. Dispute resolution is all about the past. In the past, we've gotten this problem. Partnering is only concerned about the future. How are we going to act together as a team going forward? So it's past thinking, dispute resolution. It's forward thinking, partnering facilitation. Okay, well, that's, you know, I want to leave our viewers with that thought, because we've reached the end of our time and thank you so much, Jerry, for being my guest on today's show. You know, for those of you who are interested, you can call Jerry at the law firm. And, and, you know, the law firm's name again is Clay Chapman, Iwa Mora, Polis, and Naval. And I want to thank the viewers for joining us for another episode of condo insider. And please join us next week Thursday at three o'clock for another episode of condo insider and this is a show for people who live and work in condos. And, and we're getting to the end of the year, which is and this has been a very, very eventful year. And so I want to say happy holidays to our viewers, and please join us for our show next week Thursday. Thank you. And Mahalo.