Beyond the Legal Battle

In this article, Chris Irons, a respected expert in strata mediation, offers his valuable insights on resolving conflicts within strata communities.

With extensive experience as Queensland’s former Commissioner for Body Corporate and Community Management, Chris brings a deep understanding of strata dynamics. He founded Strata Solve, a mediation service that provides alternative solutions to strata disputes, focusing on resolutions outside the traditional legal framework.

As a Board member of OCN, a member of the Mediation and Conciliation Panel with the Queensland Building and Construction Commission, and a tutor in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution at QUT, Chris’s perspective is highly regarded. Impressed by Chris’s insights we invited him to contribute an article. Here’s what Chris has to say about strata disputes:

Strata Disputes

We were wrong. Leopards can, and do, change their spots.

For starters, they are not even spots. Technically, they are ‘rosettes’. Moreover, the ‘spots’ a young leopard has are different from the adult version. Hence, the changing of spots.

What does this have to do with strata and interacting with people in your strata scheme?

Like the leopard, people can and do change. Our personal lives are littered with examples of how someone is not the same today as they were last month or last year.

Very few of us would be the same person we were as a teenager, for example.

The same applies to people in strata. That owner who carried on in an undignified fashion at the annual general meeting, or whose 10-page email rant you had the misfortune of having to wade through as part of your role on the committee, has not been that way forever and absolutely can be a different person again in future.

The problem with labels

Strata tells us many life lessons. I saw and experienced many of them as Queensland’s Commissioner for Body Corporate and Community Management (fun fact: the only role of its type in the world, and yes, that includes NSW’s Strata Commissioner – it’s not the same job) and continue to see and experience them as part of my business, Strata Solve.

One of the strongest of those lessons, and a message I try to give as respectfully yet bluntly as I can to all clients I deal with, is that the instant we label another owner, committee member, tenant (aka, occupier), caretaker or strata manager, we have lost most of the battle.

Labels pigeonhole the individual and make it increasingly difficult to view them as an individual with whom we have a necessary, businesslike relationship within strata.

Labels also stop us from the shared objective of any strata owner, be they in NSW, Queensland, or an owner-occupier or investor-owner: namely, the desire to protect and enhance property values. If we think of Bill from Unit 1 (apologies to all the Bills reading this) as ‘crazy’ or an ‘idiot’ because of how he presented his recent motion to a meeting, then that is all Bill will ever be to us: crazy, idiotic Bill.

We lose the ability to permit Bill to change and simply become Bill who is someone who pays his levies and votes like every other owner. We also can overlook the fact that in amongst his allegedly crazed, idiotic ramblings, Bill might have a salient point or two that we need to take on board and which also has an impact on our interests.

To me, this is the unique, nuanced nature of strata in a nutshell: it should – must – be about objective, fact-based decision-making to achieve a shared financial goal. And yet frequently it is not because subjectivity intrudes and we are humans, not robots. We react to things and people.

The need to be objective

Strata disputes escalate from simple things into significant, hugely costly and time-consuming proceedings because we forget about the need to be objective and transact in the most businesslike way possible. People in strata often do things which run completely contrary to their own interests, because the emotion of dealing with the investments, and their homes, overrides logic.

It is at this point that we come back to leopard. Scientists generally agree the leopard’s ‘spots’ exist as a kind of camouflage, protecting the leopard against enemies in dense terrain. How many of us have wanted to protect and camouflage ourselves against a challenging, stressful strata situation by putting up a wall and using emotions as a shield? It happens a lot, in my experience, and is often accompanied by the discomfort of not knowing strata rules and regulations (hint: they are really, really hard) and not always knowing how to solve the inevitable problems which arise in strata.

The work I do is about getting people to step back from these entrenched positions and take another look, to put on the lens of objectivity and start thinking about strata as a series of intertwined relationships.

Focusing on relationships with people in strata is a key step in being able to navigate through strata’s sometimes overwhelming complexity. My oft-repeated strata is this: you do not need to be friends with the people in your strata scheme. In fact, you should avoid that. Instead, focus on having the most professional working relationships you can. By keeping your strata interests focused this way, you stand a much better chance of being as adaptable as the leopard – and avoiding prey that may lurk.

About the author

Chris Irons holds an Honours degree in Communications and has held senior roles in Queensland’s public sector. He served as Queensland’s Commissioner for Body Corporate and Community Management for over 5 years. As Director and Founder of Strata Solve in Brisbane, Chris provides strategic advice on strata problems, focusing on dispute prevention, resolution, and effective communication. He is also a Member of the Mediation and Conciliation Panel with the Queensland Building and Construction Commission and a tutor at Queensland University of Technology.

Chris serves on the Board of the Owners Corporation Network (OCN) and is President of Northside Connect, a community legal centre. He has personal experience as both a strata lot owner and tenant, and is a Brisbane Lions supporter.