Are you challenging your board?

Are you challenging your board?

When you recruit for your board, do you tell them that all they have to do is show up to meetings, read some reports, and vote on some things?

Or do you challenge them to be active participants?

In the for-profit world, it’s recognized that promoting human values can be inspirational. As Sue Bingham wrote in SmartBlog,

“To create an inspired, high-performing workforce, leaders should promote five basic human values: positive assumptions, trust, inclusion, challenge, and recognition.”

But you can’t cherry-pick among the values. Employees can’t trust each other if they’re not included in the conversations. They won’t be challenged if you have negative assumptions about their abilities. They don’t feel valued if you don’t recognize their passion and skills.

The same is true for your board members. If motivated employees achieve more when the bar is set high, how much more might this be true for individuals who volunteer for a cause in which they believe?

It begins with recruitment.

A board of motivated individuals starts before they join the board. How you recruit board members makes a difference in how successful your organization can be. When you first approach a prospective board member:

  • Can you articulate the purpose of your organization – your WHY?
  • Can you articulate what the board is trying to do?
  • Do you show prospective board members the latest strategic plan and ask what they think?
  • Do you ask them how they want to contribute to its success?
  • Do you tell them about the excellent people they’ll be working with if they join the board?
  • Do you ask them to share what it is in their own life journey that makes them passionate about your cause?

Asking questions like these engages your prospective board members in the future of the organization. It sets them up to be active participants in the work of the board.

Then, at the start of their board service, give them the opportunity to share their answers with each other and the existing members of the board. Magnify the engagement and ask existing members to share as well. Far from a touchy-feely exercise, shared stories build trust and camaraderie that carries through to working together.

Then challenge them to set their bars high. Your new board members – and the existing board members – are motivated to achieve the plans. Together, they can find ways to surpass any turbulence they might encounter in their execution.

For more tips about building an engaged board, strategic planning, and board-executive partnership, follow me at www.detwiler.com, or reach me at sdetwiler@detwiler.com.

One Assumption Board Presidents Should NEVER Make

One Assumption Board Presidents Should NEVER Make

Whether or not your board acts like a team may actually depend on whether you’ve told them they are.

There’s great research  out now that proves that teams are more productive when they’re told they’re working together.  In the research, small groups of people met, were then separated and each individual was given tasks to complete. Individuals in one group (the “Together” group) were told they were working together, though they remained physically separated. Individuals who met in the other group were given the same tasks, but were not told they were working together. In each case, the participant was given a hint or clue to help them perform the tasks. Those in the “Together” group were told it came from another member of the group. Those in the other group were told it catogetherme from staff.

The individuals from the “Together” group not only did better than the individuals in the other group, but they stayed at the tasks 48% longer, solved more of the tasks, and found the tasks more interesting. In other words, just being told that they were working “together” created an environment in which they were more motivated and more engaged in the task at hand.

In the words of Heidi Grant Halvorson

“The word “together” is a powerful social cue to the brain.  In and of itself, it seems to serve as a kind of relatedness reward, signaling that you belong, that you are connected, and that there are people you can trust working with you toward the same goal.”

As other research has shown, human beings are just naturally social. We have been bred over millennia to be attuned to others. Even when we believe ourselves to be introverts, we want to know that there are others out there to whom we can relate in our own way.

That’s why, when we bring new members onto a board of directors, it is understandable that there is an initial feeling of uncertainty. The other members have a shared history. There are references to previous decisions and previous board members. Shortening the time it takes to overcome these feelings of alienation increases the likelihood that board service will be a positive experience. Introducing new board members by emphasizing that they will be working together with the rest of the team can accelerate building new relationships.

This also holds true for existing board members. Each board discussion and each board decision should explicitly be made “together.” References to working together for the sake of the institution or the mission reinforces the importance of each individual role in building success.

What are your experiences in bringing board members together?  Pass them on!  Post them here or you can reach me at sdetwiler@detwiler.com.

When Good Intentions Get Derailed

When good intentions get derailed.

I’m on the board of a nonprofit contemplating a new initiative, and it’s been taking us a long time to come to a conclusion. When the chair said, “Thanks, Gina, for nudging us back on track,”  I remembered something that nonprofit administrators sometimes forget.train tracks

Boards of Directors have other lives.

Executive Directors eat, sleep, breathe, LIVE the mission. Most boards don’t.

That’s not to say they don’t care. Not at all. They care very deeply! That’s why they are filled with regret when they realize that they’re not living up to their own expectations of what they hope to accomplish during their terms. The Executive Director may be frustrated with them for not following through, but you can bet that most of them are also frustrated with their own lack of progress.

I once worked with a Board President who was dynamite at raising money – when he made his calls. He was completely committed to making those calls When he was at the board meeting, he had no other mission except to make those calls. But he didn’t make the calls.

Something else came up to distract him, and as committed as he was to the mission, the immediate task took precedence, pushing those fundraising calls down the list.

So what’s the solution?

Well, in the case of the board president, we set appointments for him and the Executive to meet in the same room and make the calls. Once it was on his calendar, it became concrete, not just an item on a to-do list.

We figured out what the problem was, what was keeping him from fulfilling his own self-identified commitments, and figured out how to overcome those obstacles.  With this as an example, the Executive Director learned to view each board member as an individual. Each had his or her own external pressures and obstacles, and each had ways in which they worked well. The Executive Director had to spend some time considering how to help each stay on track.

Time consuming? A bit. But so much more productive than fuming, “can’t they see that this is important?!”

And in the case of the nonprofit that opened this post? We set concrete dates and commitments for our next meeting.

What keeps your board members from accomplishing their work? What else is on their minds? How can these obstacles be overcome? If you’d like to hash this out, let me know!

Presume Good Will

The nonprofit world is filled with people who have the best interests of their organizations at heart. Then why is it, when these board members, volunteers and staff professionals disagree, it is sometimes hard to maintain a cordial discourse?

Newspaper headlines focus on the negative, but I believe in the presumption of good will. I believe that most people really do want what is best for the organization. Let’s take, for example, a house of worship.

The people on the board of trustees, or vestry, or similar body, are volunteering their time to make this house of worship a healthy, vibrant place for all people who wish to participate. But sometimes, when there is a disagreement on the board, personalities are brought into the discussion and arguments become heated. Nastiness occasionally ensues. Trustees storm out. Rumors are spread. Email diatribes fly.

Yet each party to the disagreement probably began by arguing from a position of love of the organization; each wants the church, mosque, or synagogue to be the best it can be. How much more cordial the discussion would be if each party stepped back and acknowledged that they all want the organization to succeed. The disagreement is about how best to improve the organization, not about one party or the other wanting to see it fold. If we see that we each want what is best for the organization, perhaps we can be more tolerant of those who disagree with us.

Many people go through life with the attitude that it’s better to be nasty first, before someone else is nasty to you; an attitude that each new person must earn their respect. On the other hand, my mother, of blessed memory, always treated people with respect until they lost it. Watching my mother as she encountered new people, I realized that her life was richer, and new people she met were likely to live up to her expectations. She was a woman whose work was always behind the scenes. She earned no honors or awards but she had a smile and a welcome for each new person; at her funeral, we realized just how many people she had touched with this attitude.

Of course, there are disappointments. I am not a Pollyanna, and I will not deny that there are people who don’t have good will, are regularly nasty, or are just plain bad guys. But you can’t convince me that the majority of the world would not want to see it improve. I continue to believe in the presumption of good will. I may occasionally be wrong. But I know I will be far more often right.

Teach Your Children Well

I just read a thought provoking blog post by my friend and colleague, Jeff Metz of Bloom Consulting. He writes about the impact it had on him to really understand the philanthropic service his daughter had done went she went to Peru. 

It made me think about how we portray our nonprofit work to our friends, our relatives, our spouses, and especially, to our children. What do they hear us talk about? The difficulties working with board members? The ‘needy’ donors? The number of calls we have to make? The staff cuts we have to endure? The grants we didn’t get? 

When we’re at home, do we talk about the good that we are doing? Do we focus on the impact that we are having on the world? We’re careful to do that when we’re around donors, but what about when we let our hair down en famille?  Are we helping or hindering their passion for service when we talk about our work? 

Jeff’s post has made me consider more carefully how I portray the work I do with nonprofits. After all, something made me want to make this my life’s work. It’s important that our families – our children – also understand that no matter the challenges, it is work that is vital to the world; it is work that it is our privilege to do.

Along with talking to our own kids, we can also make a point of helping others find ways they can inspire children and youth to give back to the world. The Foundation Center has a great site for youth philanthropy,  with links to many opportunities and resources. This page is a list of great resources worldwide. 

Here’s to the next generation of philanthropists and nonprofit leaders.