Governance - where is your board heading?
The development of the chair and board of trustees is a crucial component of a charity’s training strategy. Ruth Lesirge and Hilary Barnard demonstrate the impact of getting this right
This article explores trustee training and development needs and is based on the proposition that boards have a duty to lead through governance; furthermore, the position of the chair requires special attention. It builds on a previous article (‘First Among Equals’, Caritas, issue 29, April 2010, pages 7-9 ) arguing that the training and development of chairs should be looked at both separately and alongside those of other trustees.
The value of training and development for all trustees is based on the recognition that a leaderless board is likely to be less effective over the long term – and particularly in difficult times. This links directly to the benefit of such a leader being able to require that an investment be made (by the organisation and board members) in improving the practice of the wider group of trustees.
William Ryan characterises the work of the board as being made up of three components. He identifies these three key ‘modes’ as being;
- fiduciary, where the board concentrates primarily on the stewardship of the tangible assets of their organisation (money, property, staff) and the performance and delivery of services within the mission;
- strategic, where the trustees work to create a strategic partnership with the paid executive, to steer the work and wellbeing of the organisation into the immediate future; and;
- generative, in which the board not only steers and guides the work of the organisation – adding to the understanding and analysis of the external environment – but makes new strategic thinking possible. The example he gives of this mode of working is where ‘the board of a human-service organisation work with their executive director (ED) on a major shift – away from trying to help families by offering them counselling, and toward helping them by building stronger, healthier communities. They got there partly by looking outside the board room, and outside the “board book” – meeting with experts, reading, even visiting other organisations. The ED didn’t supply information. She just brought both a looming sense that they were approaching a dead end, and a possibility that there might be something more promising in a community approach.’1
Chairs and their boards
One assumption underpinning this article is that the leadership role of the chair requires a relational approach not a command-and-control model. Useful skills needed therefore include the ability to maintain contact, facilitate development, and sustain the confidence and commitment of trustees and thereby motivate them. In addition, we believe that without development, the other trustees (including the honorary officers) of most boards are – or over time become, just a set of individuals bringing disparate knowledge and skills. They are not a team by virtue of sitting together.
However, team development approaches (based on well grounded theory – for example Tuckman’s notion of teams ‘forming, storming norming, performing’2) are not rocket science, but are likely to increase the productivity and effective use of trustee and meeting time. It is worth, therefore, taking a look at David Nadler’s proposition that ‘the key (to corporate governance) lies in the working relationship between boards and managers, in the social dynamics of board interaction and the competence, integrity and constructive involvement of individual trustees.’3
Only if chairs manage and lead boards competently will trustees as a corporate body be able to hold the organisation’s strategic objectives sufficiently in mind and govern well. We believe this is particularly important in the current environment when boards and organisations may need to swiftly reposition themselves to be sustainable but remain on-mission.
Trustees and their roles
We bring together some commonly held assumptions about trustees in the list below. We have heard people make reference to all of these; some occur with considerable frequency.
- Most trustees think they have the best interests of the organisation at heart;
- many trustees believe that they are not able to give sufficient time to their work as trustee;
- many trustees rely heavily on the advice and preparatory work of the chair and/or chief executive;
- some trustees have a just-in-time approach to preparation for board and other meetings;
- many trustees would like to visit a wider range of the organisations projects/services to learn more about work on the ground;
- many trustees defer to what they see as the expertise of senior staff executive; and
- some trustees are frustrated by what they perceive to be inadequate recognition of their expertise (technical, experiential or professional).
Chairs and trustees
Approaches to training and development of chairs and trustees will necessarily be shaped by your views of your board members; these may, of course, be very different to those we offer here. However, we include these as some of the attributes espoused by people we have encountered in our board/governance consultancy work.
Question: Which of these apply to you and your fellow trustees?
We suggest you might try these out with your board (maybe anonymously) and find out whether you have a common view about positive and negative aspects of your board using the above checklist! This can support you in forming a plan that can help your board to decide where to focus its development energies.
The value and limitations of a skills audit
Skills audits have become something of a hook upon which many boards hang all their hopes for improving performance. This is too much to load onto one tool for analysing the skills and expertise a trustee body might need. It also has too little to say about the behaviours by board members that will best suit the needs of your organisation. NCVO’s Tools for Tomorrow4 includes a panoply of tools which can be equally applicable for board as for managerial use.
Nevertheless, a skills audit can be a useful vehicle for helping trustees to reflect on their complement of skills and knowledge, and potentially key areas where they can contribute. The most common application of skills audits is in planning the recruitment of new or replacement trustees. They can also help in understanding the development needs of some trustees. Examples of trustee skills audits abound and can be found on the internet.5
Cost-free or low cost development options
The most common word used in discussing the question of how best to improve board performance is ‘training’. This can often be unhelpful, as the training envisaged is too often focused on acquiring blocks of knowledge; we propose that in relation to boards and trustees the emphasis needs to be much more on developing new or enhanced skills and behaviours.
Instead of short courses away from board meetings, the approach we suggest emphasises learning on the job as a trustee. Used effectively, the developmental approach will energise the skills commonly identified in a skills audit; in addition it can change the focus of the intervention from imparting knowledge (with its sense of duty) to enabling board effectiveness, thereby increasing confidence, job satisfaction and benefitting the end users.
Despite all the encouragement by the Charity Commission and others, there is evidence that many third sector organisations are reluctant to invest money in developing chairs and trustees.It is also true that many chairs are reluctant to spend the organisation’s money on their own development.
Practical approaches are needed to break this log jam.
It is useful to focus on some low cost development options. These include:
- co-mentoring – see case studies of chairs who participated in the pilot project funded by the Governance Hub6 delivered by Cass Centre for Charity Effectiveness;
- action learning sets (for trustees of one or for a mix of several boards). These can be initially externally facilitated, but then self managed; and
- attending key conferences such as the ACEVO winter conference for CEOs, chairs and trustees7 and the NCVO/BWB trustee conference.8
It is interesting to note that there is substantial anecdotal evidence from trustees that peer networking (by both chairs and trustees) is very productive irrespective of the size of the organisation; representatives of both large and small organisations can learn from the engagement.9
Three areas where peer networking and exchange could be particularly valuable are difficulties in dealing with staff who are under-performing; getting staff to work across specialisms and break down silos; and managing staff at a distance.
We see encouraging signs that at least some chairs and boards are showing more commitment to their development through sessions in board time.
For example, through inviting external contributors to brief them on specialist areas; holding board meetings on a project site with a tour or briefing as part of the meeting; and systematically scheduling slots at board meetings for workshop sessions (led by senior staff) about key areas of organisational delivery.
Given the continuing need to be economic with regard to trustee development costs we have explored some skills and behaviours that the board needs and how these can be improved without great cost.
The template we use set out in figure 2; the content is a starting point open to you to modify and make relevant to your organisation.
1. Governance as Leadership - reframing the work of nonprofit boards, Chait, Ryan & Taylor2005
2. ‘Development Sequence in Small Groups’, Bruce Tuckman, Psychological Bulletin 63 (6), Spring 2001
3. Building Better Boards, David Nadler, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Cynthia Montgomery, and Rhonda Kaufman Harvard Business Review, May 2004
4. www.ncvo-vol.org.uk/products-services/ publications/tools-for-tomorrow
5. www.icsa.org.uk/assets/files/pdfs/guidance/ 080310.pdf; www.governancepages.org.uk; www.reachskills.org.uk/skill-audit-2; www.voscur.org/system/files/skills+audit
6. www.ncvo-vol.org.uk/search/node/ Michael%20Noonan
7. www.acevo.org.uk/Page.aspx?pid=1839
8. www.bateswellsllp.info/Seminars/ Default.aspx
9. ACEVO Investing in leaders programme 2010
Author: Ruth Lesirge
Ruth Lesirge is a visiting fellow and tutor on the Cass CCE degree programme and has a special interest in chair, chief executive, board and trustee development.
Author: Hilary Barnard
Hilary Barnard heads up the strategy and change consultancy services and is a visiting fellow at Cass.
He is a former charity chief executive.
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