Leadership Tips For Board Chairs

DO's

  • Always remember why the organization exits, and why and for whom the board exists
  • Lead strategically, keeping the big picture in mind
  • Facilitate team decision-making
  • Own the board’s policies and strategic objectives
  • Own the board meeting agendas – that is your job
  • Lead for the long term; it’s far more important for the health of the organization that the board make improvements to policies, rather than it become focused on the short-term priorities of the incumbent chair
  • Act as “chief ambassador” for the board and corporation (the other ambassadors being your fellow board members and corporate and front-line staff)
  • Use committees to build consensus on new initiatives, not to make work for corporate and/or board staff
  • Act only with the authority you’ve been granted by the board, through policy
  • If an issue arises outside the boardroom, limit your commitments to “putting the issue on the board agenda”
  • Recognize your most important relationships are with fellow board members; relations with the CEO, corporates staff, or stakeholder comes next it’s the whole board’s relationship with the CEO that is paramount, not your personal relationship with him or her. Invest time and effort in relations with board members.

DON'Ts

  • Don’t confuse being chair with being CEO. As chair you lead board decision-making processes, you don’t make the Board’s decisions, and you don’t manage the organization.
  • Don’t make the board’s decisions for them, and if you do, certainly don’t try to sell it to your fellow directors as their idea
  • Don’t make the board’s decisions for them, and if you do, don’t try to sell it to the CEO as the board’s idea
  • Don’t micromanage the CEO or any other staff
  • Don’t make the mistake of thinking that revenue and profit (or cost savings) define success – they don’t. success is a measure of corporate performance relative to the organizations reason-for-being, and its (ever evolving) strategic plan
  • Don’t’ commit the board or the corporate staff to anything unilaterally; if a chair unilaterally commits to something with a board member, employee, media or stakeholder, the chair is in fact committing himself/herself – not the board, the corporate staff, or the organization (because the authority to commit rests with the board or the CEO as delegated, rather than the chair)

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