E.D. Notes for the Field: To Succeed as an E.D., Succeed with Your Chair

One of the keys to success for any executive director is, without doubt, how you navigate your relationship with the board. If this is your first time as an E.D., this professional relationship is different from any you have previously held – as a senior manager occasionally interacting with the board, or as a staff person interacting with staff colleagues. Let’s take a step back and consider.

Over the course of your career, you’ve reported to a supervisor, someone you considered a “boss.” That relationship’s success played an outsized role in your satisfaction, productivity, and longevity in the job. If it was healthy and respectful, you had a strong base from which to work. If not, well, hopefully you found another job.

Your relationships with board members are different because, in an echo of quantum physics, you simultaneously have no boss and many. An E.D. has no boss in the sense that you don’t report to another individual. You are ultimately responsible for your organization’s success, subject to oversight by the board, a group of part-time volunteers. Because of the board’s size – anywhere from a handful to dozens – your most important board relationship is going to be with the chair.

While the chair is not your boss – that’s the board’s collective role – it’s a delicate balance. A great chair promotes two-way communication, helping the board support you while ensuring you are accountable to community oversight. But sometimes a chair misconstrues their role. Some chairs feel their job is to support you, no matter what, missing the accountability role. Others act as if they were your actual boss, becoming overly directive. To succeed as an E.D., you need to cultivate a positive, collegial, trust-based relationship with your chair, and by extension, with your entire board. This may require some basic education of the board on its role, which is best repeated every time new members are added.

One challenge in creating and sustaining a great chair/E.D. partnership is that in most organizations, chairs turnover much more frequently than Executive Directors. No sooner have you figured out a particular chair’s preferred meeting cadence, communication style, and personality quirks than a new chair arrives, and you begin anew. Human nature being what it is, you are likely to have a great personality match with some chairs, less so with others. It can be exhausting.

I’ll have more to say about board chairs in a future post, but for now I want to offer my Ten Commandments for Board – Executive Director Success. They apply especially to your relationship with your chair, but also to the entire board:

1. No surprises. Be sure any bad, or even mildly troubling, news comes to the board from you rather than via a disgruntled (former) staff person or (worse) the press. The board serves at a distance from daily operations, so your continuous, honest, non-defensive communication is essential. It also builds the board’s trust in your integrity.

2. Success breeds success. Succeed and the board will let you take risks. Because of their distance from the action, boards can be conservative and risk averse. Before proposing a wholesale change in direction, build your “success quotient,” with early wins. A new grant, expanded program, better than expected financial results, or even just a better board meeting can showcase your skills and build trust in your judgement.

3. (Don’t) curb your enthusiasm. Board meetings can be stolid affairs, filled with financial reports, program updates, fundraising appeals, and other necessary but often less-than-inspiring activities. Board time is precious. Put boilerplate reports in writing and send them in advance. Focus on current work and big questions about the future. Demonstrate your passion for the mission. Enthusiasm is infectious.

4. Provide the vision but share its ownership. Executive Directors are expected to point the way forward, their vision motivating board and staff as well as donors. This is best done through engagement with board and staff stakeholders, even if the ultimate product is mostly yours. Share credit with others and enlist their support. A board that’s engaged in the visioning will be more effective ambassadors for the vision.

5. Put the board to work. Let board members help in small and large ways, expect them to give money and time, and to lend their expertise as well as their perspective. Executive Directors can be reluctant to ask the board for anything more than attendance at a meeting. Recruit new board members with a realistic expectation for the time commitment and the types of work they will be asked to do. Expect your board to be actors, not audience, in the drama of the organization’s life.

6. Be accountable. Some Executive Directors actually prefer a board that is not actively engaged. It takes less time and energy and you’re busy. Remember, however, this is the board that will determine your fate when things go sideways – scary financial news, bad press, staff complaints. Never forget who hired and can fire you.

7. Cultivate transparency. Do nothing you would not want the board to know about. A good test when making a tough decision is to imagine yourself explaining it to your board. The decision may fall squarely within your scope but if it is likely to produce fallout, it might still be wise to run it by the chair (at least) not for permission but for an opinion, and to build an ally for the coming controversy.

8. Show your work. Some Executive Directors present a smooth, unruffled façade to the board thinking that’s what the board expects leadership to look like. It’s OK to let the board know you work hard, so long as you don’t whine about it. Boards are eager to be impressed by the scope of responsibilities you carry. They’ll appreciate you more if you occasionally let them see you sweat.

9. Be a self-starter. On your first day in most jobs, someone is there to show you what to do, to explain what the priorities are, and to define success. Not so for the Executive Director. That’s all for you to figure out and it is half the excitement of the job. Don’t wait for someone to tell you what to do. They can’t.

10. Connect board and staff. For all your ability to inspire and excite, the staff doing the organization’s work are often the best people to give the board a real feel for what you are doing to advance the mission. Put key staff in regular contact with the board and have program staff present their work to the board on a regular basis. It is often the most engaging part of any board meeting.