This article discusses options when a strata chairperson is not leading effectively, including raising concerns or seeking their replacement.
Question: How can we address the absence of leadership from our chairperson and ensure effective committee operations?
Our chairperson has been delegating the role of chair to the body corporate manager for the past four years. The manager has to attend all meetings, while the chairperson’s involvement seems minimal. How can the committee address this situation to ensure effective leadership and meeting management?
Answer: If you’re not happy with the performance of the chair, you can nominate for the position at the next AGM.
If you are not happy with the performance of the chair, you can, of course, nominate for the position when the next AGM comes around. Or, if their performance in the role was causing sufficient issues for the body corporate, you could call a general meeting to have them removed.
For something less dramatic, you could raise the matter at the next committee meeting as a discussion point. This will indicate how the other committee members feel about the current processes. Maybe you could suggest a meeting without the body corporate manager or where the manager only takes a secretarial role. Managers don’t have to be at meetings. It is worth experimenting with to see if this suits your scheme.
However, regarding the chair deferring to the body corporate manager, I don’t see a problem. It’s an anachronism of Queensland’s legislation that the body corporate manager can’t just be appointed to chair meetings. After all, your manager should be trained in the legislation, have widespread knowledge of your scheme and would have attended (and chaired) hundreds if not thousands of similar meetings. Nine times out of ten, they are going to have better skills and capacity to help you run an organised and efficient meeting than a layperson, so why not just let them get on with it?
This post appears in the October 2024 edition of The QLD Strata Magazine.
William Marquand Tower Body Corporate E: willmarquand@towerbodycorporate.com.au P: 07 5609 4924