Contributed by David J. Graf, Esq. 

Governing, managing, and serving community associations has become increasingly demanding and stressful. Volunteers, managers, and business partners are attempting to outrun burnout, but it’s no easy task.

Burnout means different things to different people. Trying to solve the vaguely defined problem of burnout is far more difficult than addressing specific aspects of your career and understanding how those aspects make you think and feel. If you dont do this specific work, you allow your career and mental state to be ruled by others. There is so much more that can be gained by addressing burnout through conscious thought and action. 

Community association managers and volunteer leaders get burned out for many different reasons. I’ve outlined the six most common reasons and offered a few solutions below. 

Being Busy 

One antidote to being mentally busy is to calm the mind through things like meditation, mindfulness practices, breath work, exercise, and practiced awareness. Recognizing that busyness is a state of mind is the takeaway. That doesn’t immediately eliminate the feeling of burnout, but it might make you take some ownership of the feeling created by your thoughts and reinforced by your actions. 

Being Exhausted 

There are a few types of exhaustion that can be mistaken for each other, so it is important to break them down. People are either physically exhausted, mentally exhausted, or emotionally exhausted. Each has different causes and solutions, and they are common across many industries. 

Lacking Passion or Being in the Wrong Career 

I’ve coached and trained community managers around the country for 19 years. No career manager could adequately explain what it means to be a manager to someone outside the industry. It is unique. As much as we complain about the conflicts and dealing with crazy situations, most of us would miss it if the adventure was not there. 

Being in the Wrong Employment Situation 

People who feel burned out can solve their problem by making changes within their current company or by going to another company. They have a vague grass is greener” belief that things will get better with a change of employer. Never change employers voluntarily unless you can articulate exactly why you feel the need to do this and what specifically would be achieved beyond short-term excitement. 

Most community managers who change employers occasionally do so because they believe their situation will be improved by a change. However, these reasons rarely seem to make the manager better off. When looking for a job, we focus on the benefits and when working the job, we fixate on the drawbacks.  

Some managers burn out, need a break, and come back to a different employer after time off. Really good community managers make it look easy, and they are usually taken for granted. Managers need time to decompress from the hostility they absorb, and it can’t be done in fragmented bits of time away from the desk.  

Feeling Unable to Deal with Aspects of the Job 

Something in a manager’s daily work life is intolerable, and it continues to drag them away from a satisfying job in community management.  

The obvious issue is dealing with difficult people. Following that is attending night meetings. Coming in third is a surplus of emails. Then add a lack of appreciation by bosses, colleagues, or clients. To adequately address burnout, it is important to get absolute clarity on why the job is so difficult. It is crucial to identify the stressor so we can pick apart why it bothers us so deeply.  

Being a Workaholic or Numbing Undesirable Feelings Through Work 

A lack of mental peace and the feeling you must work constantly can morph into a feeling of burnout. It can fuel career success to the exclusion of everything else in a person’s life. Our society rewards and honors hard work. But the toll it takes on health, relationships, and general quality of life is staggering. Get a grip on this before it kills you. A good therapist could help you manage acute thoughts and feelings that keep you from functioning optimally in life. If you routinely avoid uncomfortable feelings by being a workaholic and don’t want to continue doing that, a coach may be able to help you develop awareness and clarity on the thoughts causing issues.  

David Graf, a past president of CAI’s College of Community Association Lawyers Board of Governors, is with Moeller Graf in Englewood, Colo. He also is a CAI faculty member and coaches professionals on outrunning burnout and chasing happiness.

>>Read more about outrunning burnout and chasing happiness in “Mind Over Matter” from the January February 2025 issue of CAI’s Common Ground magazine. 

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