what does "great" look like for your board?
TL;DR: Most board-staff tension comes from assumptions about what each person's role actually is. Working together to name what "great" looks like, in writing, is often the simple answer.
In my last Executive Director role, we shifted from an operational board to a governing board. The operational board had been deep in the day-to-day of our programs and mission delivery. Then came a wave of board turnover: a new board of sharp, big picture thinkers.
I was optimistic about this board refresh. But we'd shifted the board's role without writing down what that shift actually meant day to day, so everyone was guessing and pushing against the edges of their own job.
Something had to change.
What worked was almost embarrassingly simple: I worked with the board and staff to write down what it meant to go above and beyond the standard board requirements and be a great board member at our organization. Two pages. Enough clarity for the board to know where to point their energy, and for staff to know what to expect.
It named the real shape of the job.
Show up and be an ambassador for the work. Talk about it. Bring people in.
Be a prepared, engaged committee member who helps move things forward.
Treat the board's role as strategic guidance to the Executive Director.
Get genuinely involved in fundraising, in whatever way fits your strengths, whether that means making an ask or simply opening a door for someone new.
And all of a sudden. Things got more peaceful. Tensions dropped. Power felt balanced. People felt respected. It wasn't rocket science. We just got a team of brilliant people rowing in the same direction.
I've thought about this a lot since then, now that I sit on the other side of the table.
I had a client last year where their board had previously been a governing board, shifted to become an operational board for a stretch when the organization needed that, and then was ready to shift back to governing once they brought on a new, highly capable executive director. Nobody had done anything wrong at any point along the way. The board had leaned in when leaning in was needed, and now needed to lean back out. But the board and staff had not named what specific expectations had changed.
The conversations that followed replaced assumption with agreement.
Building the Document
That's almost every tension I see between board and staff. Just revisiting the answer to what doing the role well actually looks like. And the conversation often doesn't happen until friction forces it.
This isn't a one-time fix. Governing boards become operational boards become governing boards again, depending on what the organization needs at a given moment. The clarity has to get revisited regularly, not just established once and filed away.
Over the past few years I've built governance manuals with several clients. There's no single right structure, but the strongest ones tend to cover similar ground:
Governance philosophy. What kind of governing body the board actually is, and where it's headed: operational, strategic, or somewhere in the transition between.
Decision-making framework. Who owns what: board, ED, or both together, so nobody has to guess where their authority starts and stops.
Board member agreement. The baseline of service, and what it means to go above and beyond.
Committee charters. What each committee actually exists to do, and how it's expected to operate.
Recruitment and onboarding. How new members come in, and how they get oriented.
It's not the most glamorous work. But it's what separates a board that spends its energy guessing from one that spends its energy contributing.
I still think about that two-page answer to "what does it mean to be a great board member" more than most things we built in my time as an ED. It cost us very little, and it changed more about how the board showed up than anything else we built.
What would change for your board if everyone already knew what "great" looked like?
In service,
megan
I'm now offering a Tilt 365 workshop for boards and staff.
Tilt 365 is both a personality assessment tool and a character development launchpad. The assessment reveals natural leadership strengths, individually and as a team, as a starting point for intentional growth.
For a board and staff working together, people get a clear read on how they naturally lead: Connection, Impact, Clarity, or Structure. Once everyone knows their home base and how to tilt, the growth path is something the group builds together.
This is a great team-building and culture-building tool. If you've got a retreat or board meeting coming up, this is an easy add: a few hours that gives the group a shared language they'll keep using long after the day is over.