When you are the owner of a sober living home, your sober living home manager is your only eyes and ears inside your business. They know the good, the bad, and the ugly of what’s actually happening inside your sober living home. All the spreadsheets in the world can’t tell you the real status of your investment—but your sober living home manager can.
Too often, miscommunication between sober living home management and ownership leads to preventable operations problems. A little mutual trust and understanding can go a long way to ensuring that your sober living home operates optimally year after year.
Communication is a two-way street. Your sober living home manager may not feel safe to share every detail of life inside your sober living home if you don’t take the time to make them feel comfortable and secure in their position. After all—it’s easy for sober living home managers to see problems as admissions of defeat rather than challenges to be addressed as a team.
Today, we’ll look at the top 5 things your sober living home manager might be afraid to tell you. Not every item will apply to all sober living homes, but if you have questions about your sober living home manager’s candor, then it’s likely they’re withholding at least one of these issues from you.
Sober Living Manager Confession #1: The Neighbors Hate Us
NIMBYism is a major issue for most sober living homes. If your sober living home manager is afraid to talk to you about the NIMBYs at your sober living home, it may be because you don’t have policies in place for dealing with the issue.
Make sure that all residents are given the same “rules of engagement” for neighbors. Require that smoking occurs in designated areas only and that any butts are disposed of responsibly. Work to eliminate parking issues. Enforce a strict curfew. Limit or eliminate loitering outside the residence—especially if visitors aren’t allowed inside the home. Too often, visitors will congregate outside the home and create a nuisance for neighbors.
Sober Living Manager Confession #2: Sometimes I Wonder if I’m Cut Out for this Job
Being a sober living home manager is hard, lonely work. Most managers are working a program of recovery themselves and playing a supportive—and sometimes authoritarian—role to multiple residents in early recovery.
Go the extra mile in supporting your sober living home manager and you’ll see lower turnover and a higher standard of care put into managing your business. Make sure sober living home managers get adequate time off. Discover your sober living home manager’s long-term goals and figure out ways to help. Most importantly, ask them if there’s anything you can do to help them do their jobs. Often the best ideas for support come from sober living home managers themselves.
Sober Living Manager Confession #3: I’m Worried the House Needs a Big Fix
With all of the focus on managing people, it’s easy to forget that sober living home management is also property management. With property management comes repairs. Often, sober living home managers are chosen for their ability to relate to and manage people in early recovery. This means that it’s rare for sober living home managers to have a background in property management or home repairs.
If your sober living home manager feels uncomfortable bringing problems to you, or if they worry about “stressing you out,” then it’s possible that they will ignore home maintenance issues until they become big, expensive repairs. Slow drains become massive plumbing jobs. One leaky gutter leads to an entirely flooded basement.
Make sure your sober living home manager knows that you want them to spend money on maintenance and repairs for the home. Greet issues they bring to you with enthusiasm and gratitude so that they feel good about identifying problems early. Consider streamlining repairs with Sober Living App, which makes it easy to schedule routine maintenance before problems balloon into catastrophes.
Sober Living Manager Confession #4: I Have No Idea the Last Time I Changed the Oil on the Car
Like home maintenance, car maintenance can also be easily ignored by sober living home managers. When day-to-day life is dramatic and full of surprises—which is almost always the case when dealing with groups of people in early recovery—sober living home managers find themselves too busy putting out fires to take care of mundane tasks like oil changes.
Sober Living App makes car care easy. Your sober living home manager will get automatic notifications when it’s time to do an oil change. No planning necessary!
Sober Living Manager Confession #5: I Really Want Your Opinion—Sometimes
Knowing when to weigh in on a situation and when to just act as a sounding board for issues is an art form.
When your sober living home manager trusts you, you get access to layers of information about your business that you wouldn’t have otherwise. They’ll bring sticky situations to you when they’re looking for outside perspectives on how to handle particularly challenging issues at your sober living home. This can be a huge asset to you, but this candor doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Earning the trust that creates those conversations means understanding when to have an opinion and when to defer to your sober living home manager’s judgement.
If you find yourself second guessing your sober living home management often, consider replacing him or her. If you micromanage your sober living home manager, you’ll create a culture of mistrust. Expect the micromanaged sober living home manager to withhold things from you. If you feel like you are micromanaging your sober living home manager, know that your business is too important to be left in the hands of someone you don’t trust to do their job effectively. As an owner, you shouldn’t be “in the weeds” of managing your sober living home very often. Trust your sober living home manager to do their job or find someone who you do trust to replace them.
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Sometimes all your sober living home management needs is the right tool for the job.
Sober Living App is an all-in-one software solution that is especially designed to take the guesswork and chaos out of sober living home management. Access everything you need from any device, anywhere.