The Staff Executive and the Volunteer Board Chair--Smooth Sailing or Rough Sea?

One of the most important--if not sacred--bonds in organizations is the partnership between the staff Executive (e.g. President, CEO, Executive Director) and the Board Chair, usually a volunteer who has a history of service to the organization. Most organizations handle board leadership transitions as a “taking turns” experience. Thought goes into it but more often than not the decision is more about circumstances than strategic process or planning. Who is available? Who has some experience? Who has time? A strategic succession plan would be helpful. But, the idea of succession planning makes boards queasy as though thinking about succession will wish somebody out of the picture; and so it usually is avoided.

In reality, pairing a paid executive with a volunteer Board Chair is a high stakes process. The future of the organization is in the hands of these two leaders. This leadership duo needs to work well together and, in turn, they each need to lead and manage the relationships with the rest of the staff and board so that the organization as a whole functions as a powerhouse.

Therefore a strategic approach to selecting, orienting and coaching this critical partnership is a good organizational investment.

Most often the Executive is in place with long term service expectations that exceed those of the Board Chair. The Board Chair position often has brief one or two year terms. Regardless of who is the “new” appointee the board has the obligation first to make a good choice and then to support their choice for this top leadership partnership. In the same way that a board nominating process might be organized or executive staff hiring might be organized there should be a protocol for vetting the formation of the Executive and Chair partnership.

Questions on the table might include a mix of strategic and relational concerns:

Will the chemistry work?
Will their work styles mesh or clash?
Do they have the right skills at the right time for the organization?
Do they have the emotional intelligence to build a relationship?
Are they openly and transparently on the same page about organizational priorities?
Do they understand their roles and how those roles complement each other?
Do they have the capacity for “flow” or will they threaten each other and end up in conflict?

Questions like these could be built into an appointment process. In the same way that the board members exercise a disciplined process for hiring the Executive Director they would be well-served to use a similar process for choosing the board chair and other board officers. Organizations can create a checklist for skills and attributes that is adapted from their board nominations process or their executive hiring protocols.

Even if the questions are asked and answered and everyone realizes that the relationship may well be a difficult one to manage an appointment may still need to happen. So, what can be done to optimize future success? Or what if the board chair and the executive already are both in place for the next year or more with aggravation, suspicion and/or conflict beginning to flare between them? Can anything be done midstream to re-direct the relationship?

Of course the answer is “YES”! There are tools that help the Executive and Board Chair to get in sync and those same tools can work more broadly between the board and the staff as a whole, if needed.

See What I Mean has an array of tools (our own and other sources) that could help support the Executive and Chair relationship, depending on circumstances and needs. Here’s a sample of how to get started: