Question #4 – (In Order to Serve) Is Your Board Willing to Lead?

Rick Maloney

(49 Questions to Ask Your Board)

The most fundamental discipline of a board of directors is to direct the organization for high performance. Directing is a proactive discipline, focused on the future. But an alarming problem exists with many boards: they refuse to direct!

– Jim Brown1

The above observation is a clear consequence of the fact that, while it is hard enough for individuals to prepare for a leadership role, it is even more difficult for a board of 5, or 7, or more individuals to lead as a single body. Consider the camel, and the saying that a camel is a horse that was built by a committee. Collective, unified action by any group of two or more persons who are expected to act as one is inherently awkward

Although vital to the success of the organization, the board’s leadership role is one that is too often reluctantly assumed and passively carried out. A board that routinely defers to its superintendent, or even its chair, can be fairly accused, as Jim Brown asserts above, of refusing to direct.

Scenario: The long-time superintendent gave a progress report on school improvement plans. She did not expect any response beyond a few questions, and became visibly irritated when a relatively new board member, questioning the value to the district of a particular aspect of those plans, raised doubts about whether the plans were guided by board policy or even aligned with it. Two things became clear in the back-and-forth discussion that ensued between the two:

  • the superintendent’s idea of the board’s role was that it should limit itself to receiving the superintendent’s report, asking clarifying questions if necessary to understand, and occasionally offering suggestions, but never trying to change or countermand her decisions; and
  • the board majority appeared (through its silence) to be in agreement.

This board, and this superintendent, had grown comfortable with assuming a passive board leadership role. Perhaps its members had been wary after initial board training illustrated dysfunctional aspects of boards whose behaviors can be shown to negatively impact student learning. As a result, they may have learned to be a compliant board whose priority is to avoid such harmful effects at all costs. The new member’s view of the board role disrupted that view. His idea will only be right, however, when and if a majority of the board agrees with him.

Boards “behave like typical schizophrenics. On the one hand they willingly (indeed eagerly) give power away to the experts…On the other hand, they espouse an ideology of lay control.”

– L. Ziegler2

In view of these cautions, the bottom-line for a board that wants what is best for students is that it must carefully and skillfully take charge if it is to fulfill its responsibility to the state that created it and the community that depends on it. Governance is the essence of board work, and it must be learned.

Willingness to lead contributes to a mindset that prepares the board to act. It is not afraid to exercise the leadership role necessary for creating and maintaining an enduring vision of what the community wants for its children, for asserting values in its policy guidance that must be upheld by the district, and for monitoring to assure that vision and those values are upheld.

At the same time as it commits to a servant role, the effective board is fully aware of its responsibility for those it directs and for whom it must answer. It accepts an obligation to exercise authority granted by law for the purpose also stated in law, and is therefore willing to lead, directly through board actions and indirectly through the actions of the superintendent and staff, whom it directs to manage the district under the board’s guidance. It commits to leading through an effective governing approach that sets policy, delegates authority, and monitors performance as its primary method of leading.

NOTE: The opinions expressed in these blog entries are informed by references cited herein, and the experiences of the author. Your comments are welcome additions to the conversation.

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NEXT: #5 – Does Your Board Believe in Growth?