TOOL 20 - Tent Cards & Tools for Leveraging Board Member Strengths

Photo courtesy of Scott Mackes, Strengths Mugs

Inspiring Deep Engagement in the Boardroom

How do we inspire the deep engagement of our board members? Leverage their strengths!

The authors of Strengths Based Leadership write, “The odds of an employee [or a board member] being engaged are a dismal 1 in 11 (9%). But when an organization’s leadership focuses on the strengths of its employees, the odds soar to almost 3 in 4 (73%).” (Read my review.)


How do we inspire the deep engagement of our board members? Start with this tool!

TOOL #20: TENT CARDS & TOOLS FOR LEVERAGING BOARD MEMBER STRENGTHS
Inspire your board to complete the online CliftonStrengths® assessment and then create tent cards and tools to leverage strengths at every board and committee meeting!

Tool #20 in the new resource, ECFA Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance, is one of four tools in Part 6, “Ideas for Better Board Governance,” in this jam-packed 271-page resource. This tool features four ways to identify board member strengths—and keep them on the front burner.

Imagine! What if everyone on your board received committee assignments that leveraged their strengths! We recommend that you give every board member a “strengths assessment.” Each “StrengthsFinder” book (below) includes a unique access code for completing an online assessment at the Gallup Strengths Center. After you complete the 20- to 30-minute assessment, you will receive a list (and commentary) of your Top-5 strengths.

Many boards compile these strengths into a chart so that committee assignments and volunteer work are delegated according to a person’s unique strengths. Each book (below) includes mini-descriptions of each of the 34 talent themes. (For example: my top strength is “Focus®” and Gallup notes that “people exceptionally talented in the Focus theme can take a direction, follow through and make the corrections necessary to stay on track. They prioritize, then act.”

• Book Option #1: Living Your Strengths: Discover Your God-Given Talents and Inspire Your Community (order from Amazon)
• Book Option #2: StrengthsFinder 2.0: Discover Your CliftonStrengths (order from Amazon)
• Book Option #3: Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams and Why People Follow (order from Amazon)

If you serve on a church board, you’ll appreciate this personal testimony in Living Your Strengths:

“After serving almost four years on the church board, I had yet to fully know or understand those with whom I was working. The extent of our personal knowledge about one another went little beyond being asked to ‘share your favorite movie.’ 

“At the initiation of a new church board chair and a new executive pastor, we underwent strengths coaching, both individual and team. Everyone engaged in the process, and I learned more about my teammates in one evening than in all my previous years on the board. It was the most meaningful and significant times we’ve spent together.” (Read my review.)

Tool #20 shares ideas and templates for 1) wallet-size strengths cards, 2) tent cards for board meetings, 3) a board chart listing board member names and strengths—within the four arenas discussed in Strengths Based Leadership (Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building, and Strategic Thinking), and 4) a source for attractive coffee mugs listing your strengths.

Order the tools book from Amazon by clicking on this title: ECFA Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance: Time-Saving Solutions for Your Board, by Dan Busby and John Pearson. The book gives you full access to all 22 tools and templates—formatted as Word documents so you can customize the tools for your board’s unique uses.

BOARD DISCUSSION: Tom Rath and Barry Conchie write, “While the best leaders are not well-rounded, the best teams are.” How “well-rounded” is our board? Do we know and leverage the strengths and spiritual gifts of our board members to enrich their engagement in God’s work through our organization? 

MORE RESOURCES: In Lesson 25 for the Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom Blog, Erika Cole writes, “we are reminded that we all have different strengths, social styles and spiritual gifts (which form the “Three Powerful S’s”). It is a mistake not to consider the unique qualities that each person possesses when considering committee assignments.” Click here to read her guest blog, “Align Board Member Strengths With Committee Assignments.”

TOOL 15 - Board Retreat Trend-Spotting Exercise

Ostrich or Eagle?

James Belasco writes, “You can never do enough looking over the wall to learn how to do things. Seeing excellence in action helps individuals visualize how they can do it for themselves.”

What’s the culture in your organization? Ostrich or eagle?

Ostrich: head-in-sand, oblivious to trends, no customer feedback, never hearing from God.
Eagle: big picture, soaring, searching, discerning, and selective.

TOOL #15: BOARD RETREAT TREND-SPOTTING EXERCISE
Use this trend-spotting template to generate insights and interaction on a key hot topic at your next retreat—each person presenting one article.

Tool #15 in the new resource, ECFA Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance, is one of three tools in Part 4, “Taking Time for Strategic Planning,” in this jam-packed 271-page resource. The tool features a simple one-page template (and an example) for engaging every board member to present a trend on a key topic at your next board retreat.

Ironically, many CEOs wonder how to engage their board members at a deeper level—but then in the boardroom and at the annual board retreat, those same CEOs talk/talk/talk…and expect their bored board members to listen/listen/listen.

The solution? Try this trend-spotting exercise with five easy steps:
1) Select a hot topic on trends. (Example: “Church or denominational trends that impact our work.”)
2) Email a blank template and instructions to each board member.
3) Ask each board member to find a relevant article on the hot topic from: a newspaper, magazine, TED Talk, blog, professional journal, or a niche chapter in a book.
4) Each board member then shares the article and distributes copies of the article (see the example in the book).
5) Each board member has EIGHT MINUTES MAXIMUM to share the hot topic. 

For fun! Award a Chick-fil-A card if the board member is done before your iPhone alarm goes off.

This tool also reminds you to enjoy how each of the four social styles might do an eight-minute trend-spotting presentation. Drivers, of course, will present three memorable points and a bottom-line take-away (or task). Amiables, however, will likely use all eight minutes with a heart-warming story. Enjoy the diversity of your board members—and celebrate the God-designed uniqueness of each person!

Order the tools book from Amazon by clicking on this title: ECFA Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance: Time-Saving Solutions for Your Board, by Dan Busby and John Pearson. The book gives you full access to all 22 tools and templates—formatted as Word documents so you can customize the tools for your board’s unique uses.

BOARD DISCUSSION: How diligent are we in trend-spotting and then discerning God’s direction for major programmatic changes in our ministry’s work?

MORE RESOURCES: In his guest blog, “Think and Pray Outside the Box—and the County!” from the book, Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom, by Dan Busby and John Pearson, David Curry reminds us that “The tyranny of the day-to-day—budgets, meetings, and yearly events to sustain life and keep the lights on—can overwhelm most leaders and sap our energy, leaving little that could be used to power a big, God-sized vision.” Click here to read more.

7 Ways to Address Absentee Board Member Syndrome

Which statement below best characterizes your board’s response to absentee board members?

• HO HUM. Certain board members frequently miss board meetings, but there is no board policy addressing absenteeism, so nothing is said.

• HINT. When board members miss a meeting, the board chair (or CEO) gently “hints” that their participation was missed, but nothing further is said. Expectations on board meeting attendance are not clear and are not in writing.

• HARASS. If there is a written policy, one willing soul on the board agrees to remind the absentee board member of the policy (usually with a strongly-worded email), but there is no follow-through or personal meeting with the person. 

Maybe your board responds more appropriately. If not, here’s my list of seven ways to address Absentee Board Member Syndrome:

1) Reference Checks. Recruit board members who have a track record of excellent board meeting attendance. Just as you expect your CEO to check references when hiring staff, so the board must check references of board nominees. How faithful was this person when serving on other boards?

2) Board Member Annual Affirmation Statement. Leverage a re-commitment time each year with an annual affirmation statement (download the template from the ECFA Governance Toolbox Series No. 1 and/or No. 2). That form should list board meeting dates and locations for the next 12 to 18 months—and annually give board members the option of exiting off the board if their schedules don’t align with the board’s schedule. (Or, change the board meeting schedule to accommodate all board members.)

3) Engage the Board With an Engaging Agenda. Sometimes (let’s be honest!), board members skip meetings because they are not needed. The CEO and staff do all the talking. Next steps are all buttoned down. There’s no room for generative thinking by the board. No heavy lifting. What’s the point of participating? This is easy to fix by engaging the board.

4) Establish a Written Policy on Board Meeting Attendance Requirements. If you have a Board Policies Manual, include board member attendance policies—and review them at least annually. Some boards have an automatic exit plan for board members who miss X meetings in any rolling 12-month period. 

5) Emphasize Calling Over Rule-Keeping. Al Newell, founder of High Impact Volunteer Ministry Development, writes: “Sustaining motivation is better understood as a by-product as opposed to a goal of itself. It is my experience that if you pursue discipleship with volunteers [and board members], motivation will follow. If volunteers see the fulfillment of their role as ‘obeying and serving God’ rather than serving you or your organization, it will cause motivation to swell.”

6) Affirm. Affirm. Affirm. Take time to creatively affirm board members for their participation and their contribution as stewards of your ministry. Board discipline (news flash!) is the board’s responsibility—not the CEO’s responsibility. Ditto affirmation. When board colleagues affirm each other, then engagement will heighten and board service satisfaction will soar.

7) Address Issues Early. Don’t wait for the fifth missed meeting. Create the expectation that your board chair (and perhaps one other board member) will meet personally (if at all possible) with policy offenders. No one should be surprised that absenteeism will be addressed frequently and in a God-honoring way. Pray for a discerning spirit to know when you must show grace—and when you must show someone the door.*

*Note: Watch for the new book next month, Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom, by Dan Busby and John Pearson, and read “Lesson 31: Cut the Cord! Invite Board Members to Exit When They Don’t Live Your Values.”

BOARDROOM DISCUSSION: What person, or committee, is responsible for addressing absentee board members? What’s our current approach to missed meetings: Ho Hum, Hint, or Harass?

The Board in the Boat, Part 1

With apologies to Daniel James Brown and his amazing bestseller, The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Question for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics (click here to read my review), over the next few blogs I’ll be addressing strategy alignment with “The Board in the Boat.”

Imagine—if your board had the elegance, the unity, and the team harmony of a precision rowing crew, the world’s finest!

Here’s a keeper from pages 234-235 in The Boys in the Boat. Listen to the wisdom as Master Boatbuilder George Yeoman Pocock coaches Joe, a young rower with promise and dreams—but a nasty childhood:

“He suggested that Joe think of a well-rowed race as a symphony, and himself just one player in the orchestra. If one fellow in an orchestra was playing out of tune, or playing at a different tempo, the whole piece would naturally be ruined.

“That’s the way it was with rowing. What mattered more than how hard a man rowed was how well everything he did in the boat harmonized with what the other fellows were doing. And a man couldn’t harmonize with his crewmates unless he opened his heart to them. He had to care about his crew. It wasn’t just the rowing but his crewmates that he had to give himself up to, even if it meant getting his feelings hurt.

“Pocock paused and looked up at Joe. ‘If you don’t like some fellow in the boat, Joe, you have to learn to like him. It has to matter to you whether he wins the race, not just whether you do.’”

Then this clincher about trust:

“He told Joe to be careful not to miss his chance. He reminded him that he’d already learned to row past pain, past exhaustion, past the voice that told him it couldn’t be done. That meant he had an opportunity to do things most men would never have a chance to do. And he concluded with a remark that Joe would never forget.

“'Joe, when you really start trusting those other boys, you will feel a power at work within you that is far beyond anything you’ve ever imagined. Sometimes, you will feel as if you have rowed right off the planet and are rowing among the stars.’”

Board members—have you ever experienced a board meeting where the board was so highly engaged, all pulling in the same direction, praying in unity, trusting God for Kingdom outcomes, that you felt you could have rowed the board boat right off the planet?

QUESTION: Are your board members in sync with Proverbs 15:22 (Amplified Bible)? “Without consultation and wise advice, plans are frustrated, but with many counselors they are established and succeed.” Or, are your board members pulling in different directions?