Unlocking Your Board’s Leadership Skills for Better Governance.pdf

In this webinar, OnBoard and Dr. Emilie Socash, shared a comprehensive webinar that covers the foundational leadership principles related to fulfilling board responsibilities and provides a roadmap for nonprofit board members to excel in their roles.

1. Mastering Board Best Practices:
SEPTEMBER 2024
Presented by
OnBoard & the Nonprofit Help Center
ESSENTIAL SKILLS FOR
EFFECTIVE NONPROFIT
LEADERSHIP

2. The Nonprofit
Help Center
Training the people who power your mission.
The Nonprofit Help Center helps hundreds of nonprofit teams train,
sustain, and retain their people through a unique suite of
professional development and capacity-building services.
[email protected]
nonprofithelpcenter.com
nonprofitboardmemberbasics.com

3. About
OnBoard
OnBoard’s Mission: Make governance simple,
effective, and secure.
Helping nonprofits simplify governance so they can
focus on their mission and accelerate their impact.
•Serve 2000+ nonprofits and associations
•Make board meetings simple, secure, and
effective
•Special TechSoup Pricing

4. Today’s Board
Leadership Lens
Agenda
Understanding Key
Leadership Styles
Implementing
Board Leadership
Assessments
Fostering
Collaboration &
Strengthening
Relationships

5. Importance of
Board
Leadership
1
2
Leadership is:
•Influencing people to accomplish a common goal
•Not the same as managing
Traditional leadership
•Focuses on ability to inspire and motivate others
•Leader-follower vertical relationship
•Directive (telling) or participative (inviting)

6. Top Challenge:
Staffing Capacity
Top Challenge:
Recruitment & Retention
Nonprofit Facts:
Leadership Lens
Nonprofits’ Share of GDP Nonprofits’ Share of Total
Workforce

7. Board vs. Staff
•Future Focused
•Sets the course through identiifcation
of goals, vision, values
•Responsible for top staff
•Typically includes:
⚬Strategic Planning
⚬Decision Making
⚬Financial Oversight
•Now Focused
•Supporting and implementing goals
and values set by board &
organizational charters
•Operational Decisions
•Typically includes:
⚬ Hire, train, retain staff
⚬Translate & activate on goals
⚬Enforcing policy
⚬Accountability
Governance Management

8. Is your board
balanced?
•Yes
•Too much governance-focus
•Too much management-focus
•We’re a mess!

9. Key Leadership Styles
01
Democratic
03
Coach-Style
02
Strategic
04
Transformational
Equity-oriented
Discussion, brainstorming, and
group decision-making
Leader guides the process, but
only to discover the “voice of the
people”
Focus on inspiring others to
realize their goals
Focuses on values, mission, and
personal connection
Draws out strengths of others
and encourages personal growth
Setting direction
Aligning & Mobilizing
Leader typically likes order,
control, and planning.
Creates a strong, clear, compelling
vision that is shared with others.
Excites and compels others.
Lets the vision lead the action.

10. Democratic
Leadership
•Promotes creativity
•Inclusive
•Collaborative
•Builds Trust
•Empowering
•Increases team
satisfaction
•Slower decision-making
•Can cause communication
failures
Great for encouraging creativity, working with younger team
members, and engaging experts.

11. Strategic
Leadership
•Effective Communicator
•Structured finisher
•Focus on details of the future
•Challenge the status quo
•Objective
•Builds commitment to &
clarity around tasks
•Future focus is distracting
•Inflexible
•Expensive
Great for evaluating new initiatives, developing and
monitoring plans, and when matters are timely.

12. Coach-Style
Leadership
•Collaborative
•Interested in others’
progress/experience
•Comfortable with feedback
•Focus on empathy and building
trust
•Expectations are clear
•Transforms deficits into
strengths
•Time intensive
•It’s hard to do well
•Can impact progress if done
poorly
Great for subsets of teams or committees, when decisions
are not pressing, and with long-term relationships.

13. Transformational
Leadership
•Alignment focused
•Pull toward
accountability
•Emphasis on individual control
of work approach
•Growth orientation
•Promotes motivation
•Encourages
development
•Prioritizes long-term over
short-term
•Potential for burnout
Great for big-picture initiatives where vision can be rallied, as
well as clearly connecting the org’s goals with individual
roles.

14. What’s your
style?
•Democratic
•Strategic
•Coach-Style
•Transformational

15. What’s your
board’s style?
•Democratic
•Strategic
•Coach-Style
•Transformational

16. Board vs. Staff:
Leadership Roles
•Future Focused (D, S, C)
•Sets the course through identification
of goals, vision, values (T)
•Responsible for top staff (S, C)
•Typically includes:
⚬Strategic Planning (S, T)
⚬Decision Making (D, S)
⚬Financial Oversight (S)
•Now Focused (S, D)
•Supporting and implementing goals and
values set by board & organizational
charters (C, D, T)
•Operational Decisions (S)
•Typically includes:
⚬ Hire, train, retain staff (C, S)
⚬Translate & activate on goals (S, T)
⚬Enforcing policy (S, C)
⚬Accountability (S, T)
Governance Management

17. Today’s Board
Leadership Lens
Agenda
Understanding Key
Leadership Styles
Implementing
Board Leadership
Assessments
Fostering
Collaboration &
Strengthening
Relationships

18. Leadership
Self-
Assessment
Complete an online or in-person assessment
Assessment
Consider attributes of leadership styles and which are most
active in your own approach
Self Observation
Ask for reflections from others on what they see in you
Feedback
Experiment with different leadership styles
Sandbox

19. Value of Self
Evaluations
A means of getting what we want: Our leadership style, whether we
know it or not, typically also serves to meet our basic human needs
around respect, belonging, self-esteem, confidence, personal growth
and actualization.
How we think we show up as in leadership roles: The leadership
style that we think we show up as, even if our behavior doesn’t
follow. Often we revert to mannerisms that worked for us as
adolescents.
“Style in Use”
“Espoused Style”

20. Interpreting
Self-
Evaluations
Common gap results include lack of accountability, no
“bench,” repetitive communications, and silos around
activity and information. Where does your natural style
align with org needs? Where do you need to adapt and
flex?
Look to develop one or two leadership attributes around
your key board responsibility/area of focus.
Structure how you’ll determine if you’re improving!
Identify and lean into your “secret sauce,” and develop
parameters around where you want to take your
leadership (and where you don’t!).
Identify Personal Leadership Gaps
Develop Improvement Plan
Better Sense of Self

21. Today’s Board
Leadership Lens
Agenda
Understanding Key
Leadership Styles
Implementing
Board Leadership
Assessments
Fostering
Collaboration &
Strengthening
Relationships

22. Collaboration Strategies
01
Anticipation
03
Adaptation
02
Articulation
04
Accountability
Process of sensing and making
meaning of an ambiguous and
rapidly changing reality.
Process of gathering feedback
data and normalizing continuous
learning.
The way we communicate our
anticipation.
Goal: build collective
understanding and support for
action.
The way that we keep ourselves
focused on “who will do what by
when.”
Seeks to maximize transparency
in decision-making.

23. Which of these is
strongest on
your board?
•Anticipation
•Articulation
•Adaptation
•Accountability

24. Relational Awareness considers how we
think, feel, and act in three lenses: within
us, between us, and around us.
Understanding that there are a variety of
leadership styles and means of applying
them helps us develop trust in honoring
the diversity of talent around the board
table.
Relational Awareness Trust in Others
Self awareness is an antidote to leadership
struggles, including imposter syndrome and
feelings of inadequacy or self doubt.
Leading Yourself
Strengthening Relationships
Through Leadership Awareness

25. Top Tips:
Taking Action
•Create a leadership scorecard for use during meetings;
track your leadership moments.
•Recognize your intuition.
•Review agenda items in advance and categorize
according to the most suitable leadership style.
•Connect with another board member to share
feedback. (Typically, avoid open-ended.)
•Ask your exec or chair where they see leadership
gaps.
•Perform a post-mortem on a recent issue you were
involved with.
Try one new thing.
Share with a trusted peer.

26. Mastering Board Best Practices:
SEPTEMBER 2024
Presented by
OnBoard & the Nonprofit Help Center
ESSENTIAL SKILLS FOR
EFFECTIVE NONPROFIT
LEADERSHIP