Category: Ethics

When I went to Chair my first committee meeting at my local association of REALTORS, I asked my Broker, what I should do. I had never served in any capacity in an organization like this, and being really young, I was a little nervous about doing well. He told me to remember that all I had to do was the best job I could and that it was my responsibility to try to leave the organization in better shape when I left than it was when I started.

Decades, and literally hundreds of appointments and elections later, it still seems a simple matter to me. When I serve as an officer or director of an organization, it is my job to consider how my votes impact the organization I serve – not my company, not any other organization where I serve, but the specific needs of the group that I am an officer or director of.

Sometimes it requires deeper thoughts than others. In the case of NAR directors, who also serve as officers or directors of other groups, a number of articles in Inman news recently seem to be confusing the issue for some people, and a recent one spoke to the issue directly.

NAR has clear guidelines for its officers and directors. The NAR Leadership Integrity Policy, states ”NAR leaders are charged with advancing the interests of the National Association of REALTORS®. As NAR leaders, they are required to act in the best interests of NAR, rather than in their own personal interests or the interests of another person or entity. Regardless of whether NAR leaders are appointed to their positions by a state or local association, or serve as a consequence of a position with some other entity, the duties are owed to NAR and NAR leaders should act based on their judgment as to what serves the best interests of NAR.”

Simply put, when you’re acting as an NAR director, you need to wear your “NAR hat” when you’re making NAR decisions”. Just as you should consider your state association’s best interest when you vote on issues as a state director, and you should consider your local associations best interest when you’re voting on local issues. You don’t vote on local issues considering what’s best for NAR, nor do you do that when you vote on state association issues.
That doesn’t mean that you live in a vacuum, or that others may not try to influence you, it just means you need to do what you think is in the best interests of the group, and not what you think another organization you belong to would want you to do.

In the Inman article, a CEO of a local association asked “State and local associations can still voice their support or nonsupport of a NAR-level issue, correct?” and, according to Inman, Katie Johnson, NAR’s chief attorney responded, that local associations “can do whatever they want to do” but “doing that puts your directors in a very difficult position.” And, not surprisingly, she’s absolutely correct – the state an local associations are independent organizations, But what she also pointed out is that puts the director in a difficult position, and that the director needs to examine, and then vote their conscience. No one “owns” a Director’s vote but the Director and no one but the Director should decide how the vote is cast.

It’s no different than if the Director’s broker wanted to influence their vote, or the Director’s spouse, or partner, football coach, or bookie wanted them to vote for or against a certain matter. None of those organizations or people should be considered by a Director when they cast their vote on an issue, except as additional information in their decision-making process. Those pressures should not influence them to vote in a manner that they do not feel is best for the group. The obligation they took when they accepted the position was to act in the best interests of the organization, and their vote should reflect the outcome they feel is best for the group. Putting such pressure on the DIrector creates a conflict of interest, and it is the Director’s job to handle the ethical and moral challenges of that conflict. If the outside influencer is asking the director to take a position that they would have taken without the request, no conflict, but in the event that the outside influence is asking the Director to do something that they know, down deep, isn’t the position they would take without that influence, in my opinion, they need to dismiss that influence.

In the final analysis, it doesn’t matter if the individual votes for or against an item at the meeting, it only matters that they do so remembering that obligation to do what’s best for the group, and not for any special interest. And by doing that, they discharge their obligation to the group and to their conscience and sleep the peaceful sleep of the innocent – simple, right?