Attitudes about trustee and board engagement are changing. Presidents, board chairs, and trustees increasingly are discussing the need for greater board engagement in governance and more productive partnerships among the board, president, and executive staff. Even boards that already consider themselves to be high performing are finding that external forces and changing demographics have created the need for trustees to become even more engaged and effective.
An engaged board is a forward-thinking board whose work and meetings are designed around critical issues, with opportunities for meaningful deliberation and development of a creative, collaborative partnership with the president or chancellor. Such boards are willing to engage in “messy” discussions, and members are willing to push each other to seek innovative solutions to emerging concerns. In other words, gone are show-and-tell meetings characterized by reports that rehash old news and that bore and frustrate trustees and waste everyone’s time. In those meetings, it’s hard to tell what value, if any, the board members have added to the institution. While not everyone welcomes increased trustee engagement, there’s much to be said for a more engaged board, particularly now.
Four powerful forces are redefining boards’ responsibilities and changing attitudes about engagement. First, our post-Sarbanes-Oxley era has moved regulation and audit/monitoring functions to the top of board concerns. We now have a fear factor in board rooms arising from government pressures for strong board oversight in the aftermath of corporate accounting scandals. This can strain relationships as trustees ask more questions about financial and regulatory compliance and increase the seriousness of discussions at board meetings. As one president has mused, “Board meetings just aren’t as much fun as they used to be.” Indeed, AGB’s 2008 survey on governance found that recruiting and retaining board members has become more difficult as trustees weigh the consequences of the time and accountability demanded for good governance.
Second, the economic crisis and its effects on colleges, universities, and state systems of higher education have taught us that traditional solutions to financial issues may not suffice. Because of the disarray in state funding and student and family finances, up and down endowments, and declining philanthropic support, boards and administrators are facing new challenges in conserving resources and finding new revenues. In this environment, when solutions are in short supply and the need to enroll and graduate students is greater than in the past, the board needs to serve as a think tank, working with the president to identify and implement long-term strategies.
The introduction of new types of trustees into higher-education boardrooms is the third factor producing a movement toward greater individual engagement. The governance dynamic is being changed by younger trustees and those who have found success as entrepreneurs and in reinvented corporations. These individuals, who understand creativity, innovation, and change, are impatient with board meetings defined more by Robert’s Rules of Order than by serious deliberation of critical issues. They want their time, talents, and energies to be used well. Said one young trustee, dismayed over what she felt was “business as usual” despite “a new normal” for her college: “I didn’t sign up for this kind of board.”
Finally, there is little doubt that external pressures from government and the public are forcing both administrators and governing boards to consider changes in fundamental college operating procedures and academic standards. Funders and the general public have grown impatient with rising costs, and current questions about the “value added” of a college degree indicate public frustration. As scrutiny of the business model and student outcomes increases, trustees will need to engage the tough questions that accompany this scrutiny.
The New Board Engagement
The new engagement is distinguished by board deliberations that are future-oriented, proactive, and based on trust. To fulfill their obligations to provide effective oversight of the institutions they are charged with guiding and protecting, governing boards need to be willing to take calculated risks, including challenging assumptions, testing traditional ways of doing business, and introducing innovative ideas. This engagement is most vivid when trustees and presidents together discern patterns in complex data, move from the implications to new or transformed policies, and stay at the “altitude” that allows them to see what lies ahead.
Such board engagement is neither spontaneous nor the result of personality: It is an intentional and learned capability created when governance activities (the “board’s work”) are well designed and take place in an environment of trust among trustees and between the board and the president or chancellor. It depends as much on how the board’s work is shaped as on how trustees see their responsibilities toward that work.
In this environment, the board’s work requires committees aligned with the strategy and direction of the institution, meetings designed for meaningful deliberations, trustee expectations that fit 21st century needs, and an agenda for board education that emphasizes external trends and issues. A critical element in this mix is a board culture that fosters trust and deep thinking, allowing everyone to bring his or her personal best to the table.
The Challenges of Greater Engagement
Change is hard. Tradition dictates that the board deliberates on well-considered recommendations brought forward from committees, the board chair, or the president—in an orderly and prescribed fashion. This hierarchical model has enabled boards and administrations to work together to support their institutions while preserving important boundaries and curtailing the risk of boards micro-managing. When board meetings are redesigned and trustees are invited to engage in exploratory conversations without predetermined outcomes, uncertainty enters the picture.
For presidents and chancellors, greater board engagement can mean more time spent on meeting preparation. Highly engaged trustees ask more questions (especially as they are ascending the learning curve) and are likely to demand more information in new formats. A rote formula for committee and board meetings may not work with a highly engaged, visionary board. Moreover, greater engagement will most likely lead to greater scrutiny of some domains, which can raise practical issues, including the need to ensure that senior staff members are capable of fielding questions and offering more than dry reports.
For some, there is fear that greater engagement will slow things down. Speed, flexibility, and adaptability can get lost because the board may require more information and expect to engage in deeper discussion before reaching a decision. Others think that greater engagement on the board’s part can exacerbate the tension over efficiency—the difference between the time a board might expect an action to take place and the time it can really take to work through the collaborative decision-making process of a campus. Without carefully setting expectations, trustees can find themselves falling into the Board-Administration-Faculty triangle, tangling lines of communication and upsetting the delicate balance of shared governance.
For board chairs, this shift toward greater engagement can mean more time, energy, and risk in negotiating relationships and “people” issues—more time managing the president/board interface and board/staff interface, and more time helping the board discern and respect the boundary between governance and management. For some board chairs, greater engagement can feel like a challenge to their authority or a diminution of their leadership responsibilities. In institutional and board cultures marked by “command and control” leadership, the shift to greater engagement might be misread as a leadership failure rather than as an evolution of the leadership model. It is also nerve wracking if a chair is unsure about his or her skills in facilitating discussions and managing meetings.
Increasing trustee and board engagement does not mean eliminating the leadership structure and the mechanisms of decision making. Likewise, it does not mean tossing out or blurring the boundaries that enable the board to fulfill its duties of care and loyalty. It does mean redefining what can occur inside the boardroom in the interest of meeting the challenges now impacting higher education. It’s all about the work.
Return on Investment
Greater, more-sophisticated board engagement may be the best strategy for ensuring that an institution can address the critical issues currently facing higher education. It may also be the most effective way to retain the trustees who have the most to contribute to the board’s work. Using all the talents in the room can result in engaged trustees who give more money, time, and energy and are more willing to advocate for the institution.
Below are a few snapshots of shifts in board engagement, the motivation for the change, and some of the results.
- At one private institution’s board retreat, an entrepreneurial board member offered a way to reframe the discussion on the university’s strategic issues. It was totally unplanned but, with the board chair’s support and leadership, the conversation took a turn for the best. The suggestion led to a more energetic and strategic board discussion, as well as a more effective way to oversee progress on the strategic plan, and the results have lasted for several years, shaping the nature of board meetings and the way the board works.
- A public university board meets annually at the president’s home for board education and “blue sky” discussions. By getting out of the usual boardroom and off the usual agenda, the board creates the opportunity for more extended and deeper conversations. The results have been striking. Board culture has been enhanced, members trust each other because they have shared experiences, and the board deals more effectively with the institution’s business and understands its business model more deeply.
- Faced with severe financial problems, a private college board restructured its board committees to better align with the institution’s needs and the areas where the board and faculty thought solutions lay. Working productively with the faculty and administration through committee and board meetings, the board helped ensure a restructuring of the institution, as well as more powerful fundraising. The result is a stronger institution, not without some continuing challenges but with a more engaged board that contributes much greater value. The president and staff say they appreciate the real partnership with board members.
The Synergy of Work and Relationships
What is behind the successes depicted in the examples above? Each vignette describes a shift in relationships, the board’s work, and where the relationships and work intersect. Engagement lives at the intersection of board work and relationships; the synergy of these two elements determines engagement, which in turn affects outcomes. Without high-quality relationships within the board and between the board and administration, deliberations are shallow. Without relevant board work, decision making falls short and cannot add value. Many governance experts, including David Nadler, the author of several books on organizational change, and Richard Chait of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, have emphasized the role of engagement in the quality of governance and organizational outcomes.
Increasing board engagement follows a progression. As we see in the examples above, it starts with an expressed desire and willingness on the part of a committee or full board to move to another level of work, in which each member is obligated to participate fully in relevant and meaningful discussions. From there, members acquire the knowledge and skills needed for productive debate, powerful questions, conflict resolution, discernment, and facilitation of active conversations. As a result, the level of engagement changes when the willingness and capabilities to engage in these activities are in place. Through this progression, the quality of relationships among members also changes, and decision making improves.
Building an engaged board requires spending time and energy on strengthening relationships beyond social time. Trust, an essential element of engagement, is a byproduct of understanding one another’s values, learning from one another, holding each other accountable for decisions, and completing meaningful work together. Relationships are stronger and performance improves when feedback and learning are attached to accomplishments and a strategic purpose.
When trust is present, boards can more easily and quickly move into difficult conversations with honesty and openness. Members develop an ability to know when and how to take a “deep dive” into tough issues; this includes exploring issues with greater openness while staying aware of the relationship dynamics at the same time. For instance, without trust, personal politics can weigh too heavily in board discussions of controversies surrounding campus speakers.
The combination of trusting relationships, relevant work, and attention to results yields better governance. Achieving this is not the sole responsibility of the chair. There are multiple strategies that board chairs and presidents can employ to achieve new levels of engagement. For example, board committees are central. When committee work is aligned with the institution’s strategy and in-committee dialogue demands an open exchange of ideas and debate, engagement by individual trustees increases. Committees with compelling charges and work plans perform better. So if there is no real work for a committee, eliminate it. Supplement necessary committees with ad hoc task groups created to tackle specific topics that have short but important lives, such as board-bylaw revisions or college-community partnerships. Also consider providing training for committee members to build facilitation and feedback skills that foster learning and improve group performance.
Similar strategies can be effective for the full board so that its attention and time can be directed to important work where it can add real value. For instance, use a consent agenda to consolidate routine business and limit the time devoted to it. This allows the full board more time for deeper conversation on key topics. To help keep board members responsible for the quality of their work, the president and board can share the responsibility for planning board meetings. Regularly assessing board and individual trustee performance can also increase engagement, as well as aid accountability and provide avenues for further board development. Make sure that assessments go beyond the basics of attendance and giving to include questions about other features of trustee engagement, such as working collaboratively and willingness to offer dissenting opinions. Good orientation, along with mentoring and coaching of new board members, can establish the basic expectations regarding a trustee’s engagement, preparation, and commitment.
Building a pipeline of board leadership—including conscious development of leadership capabilities and opportunities for trustees—promotes ongoing engagement and ensures good use of the expertise and talents board members bring to the work. Likewise, ensure that policies, practices, and by-laws are in good order. Practices that lie behind the by-laws (for example, how the presidential-review process actually happens) should be written down and shared, because transparency fosters inclusion and trust.
To initiate the work of increasing effective engagement, board leaders can start by drawing out what trustees themselves believe about engagement and how they view what the new environment demands. Board leaders should be explicit about the implications of giving up old assumptions and behaviors in favor of new ones. They can acknowledge the fear factor and note that in the new environment everyone will be something of a novice.
It is also important to stress that individual trustees can “lead from any chair” in the service of positive change. But by the same token, boards should endeavor to elect board chairs who are ready and willing to work to foster more intensive engagement by individual trustees. However, if the board chair is not comfortable with facilitating “messy conversations,” make sure there are others around the table who can and are willing to do so.
Most importantly, remember that research into effective management and leadership has shown that high-performing teams do not rubber-stamp recommendations—such teams engage, shape, and own the process and the outcomes. In other words, they trust the power of collective intelligence as an important tool for seeking the best solutions to complex problems.
