Communicating Differences Across the Boardroom

Introduction:
Welcome to the Trusteeship Podcast from AGB, the Association of Governing Boards of universities and colleges.

In an era of polarization and heightened scrutiny, how can higher education boards ensure that disagreement leads to progress, not gridlock? In this podcast, AGB consultant and senior fellow, Terry MacTaggart talks with Mylien Duong, who is the Vice President of Research and Innovation at the Constructive Dialogue Institute. They explore research-based habits for constructive disagreement and share strategies to build trust, improve board culture, and keep shared purpose front and center.

Let’s get started. Terry?

Terry MacTaggart:
Thank you all for listening to this podcast between Mylien, Vice President for Innovation at the Constructive Dialogue Institute, and myself, Terry MacTaggart, senior fellow with the Association of Governing Boards.

I have a hard time imagining a more relevant and important message than this one about how to engage in productive, constructive dialogue in the midst of conflict, disagreement, animosity among people. CDI has a lot of experience with campuses, universities that are erupting with conflicts over ideology, over student rights, over free speech, over political intrusion. And this podcast focuses particularly on moving boards that are in conflict to a better place where they can dialogue honestly and in a peaceful manner, and emerge as partners in supporting their institution and not enemies in the boardroom.

Mylien, tell us a little about the model that CDI follows. What are the basics of your approach?

Mylien Duong:
Thanks, Terry. I’m so glad to be here and thank you for those kind words.

I think when we talk about political polarization, it’s often helpful to ground it in something that most of us are familiar with. So for example, in the business world, most of us know that a divergence of viewpoints isn’t a problem, right? That’s the raw material for innovation, for creativity, for problem solving, and that’s how companies like Apple get the cutting edge in the business world.

So we take the premise that the same is true on college campuses for student clubs, in the classroom, and on university boards. So we take the premise that different experiences, different political viewpoints, and even different personalities are what makes groups valuable.

But here’s the catch, it’s just like you were saying, is that the way that we handle those differences don’t always lead to constructive agreement. They often lead to gridlock and personal conflict. So what we do at CDI is we teach five simple habits that keep disagreement constructive. And they’re simple, but they’re actually quite difficult to do, especially when we’re talking about things that mean a lot to us.

So the first habit that we teach is to let go of winning. In any relationship, a marriage, friendship, business collaboration, any relationship where you have goals that are shared and the parties depend on each other, they’re interdependent, if one side wins and then the other loses, this fundamentally undermines the shared goals of the relationship and the entire relationship in the long-term.

So the same with boards. If one trustee wins and another feels dismissed, long-term, the institution loses. The real win is to solve the problem together.

The second habit that we teach is asking real questions. So not gotcha questions, not rhetorical questions, but questions that come from a place of curiosity, that help you to understand where the other person’s coming from. Right? Questions like, “What’s driving your concern about this? Tell me more about what makes you think that,” from a place of true curiosity, which we often don’t hear these days.

The third habit that we teach is to share stories. So as humans, we’re actually wired to be moved by stories, and if we can explain our views by sharing a personal experience, it often lands very differently than just asserting our opinion.

The fourth thing that we teach is to respond rather than react to emotional moments. Of course we’ve all been in those meetings where someone makes a comment and immediately our blood pressure spikes. So what we teach is to pause, to choose a response that doesn’t raise the temperature, but instead keeps the conversation moving forward and keeps the conversation from getting stuck.

And finally, we talk about finding what’s shared or finding common ground. Even in the most divided board, people can usually agree on one thing, which is that they want the institution to thrive. So coming back to that shared purpose helps to keep disagreements from turning into political battles.

Our model in a simple phrase is that conflict is actually healthy, but how we address conflict is what shapes the outcome.

Terry MacTaggart:
Let’s dig a little bit deeper, if we might, and focus on the kind of opposition, the kind of constraints you may face in the boardroom.

Board members usually have probably a larger than average number of Type A personalities. High achievers. You know, they’re pretty confident individuals. On the public side, many of them are also involved in the political world, which adds a complication.

So when you have that kind of tough guy, “Me boss, I don’t have time for this,” sort of attitude among some of the members, what do you do? How do you get them to play the game?

Mylien Duong:
Yes. That is such a good question. And we often work in settings where there are Type A people.

And the thing that’s tricky about boards also is that they are making very important decisions and often in very public settings, where their decision could get scrutinized by pretty much everybody: students, faculty, staff, administrators, sometimes even the media. So in settings like this, it is very important for two things to happen.

One is that there needs to first be a baseline of trust. So each member of the board needs to believe that even if they disagree on how to get to an outcome, that everyone is fundamentally committed to the institution being successful. You can imagine how without that basic trust, dialogue can just collapse into suspicion.

The second thing that needs to happen is that there needs to be a very intentional process for how to set norms or ground rules around how we disagree. In high performing companies, executives know the difference between challenging ideas and undermining colleagues. So boards need the same set of ground rules. If trustees worry that raising a dissenting view is going to be taken personally by somebody or held against them in a later conversation, they’re going to stop speaking openly, and then the board loses the candor that it really needs to make good decisions.

Terry MacTaggart:
I just wanted to underscore your statement that trust is the foundation for success in these relationships, and recognizing that it needs to be strengthened, reinforced; people need to be reminded of that fundamental virtue when it comes to resolving differences and just getting along in general life.

Mylien Duong:
Yeah. And a lot of that happens outside of the boardroom. Right? A lot of that trust building happens outside of the boardroom in one-to-one conversations, in more casual settings, and that is the connective tissue that makes the board conversations really function.

Terry MacTaggart:
What are some of the, in addition to trust, the pre-existing conditions that tend to make the CDI approach effective and useful, and what pre-existing conditions might get in the way?

Mylien Duong:
I think one pre-existing condition other than trust is that any group, including the board, needs some clarity on shared purpose. We know from organizational psychology, for example, that the best teams sometimes have very fierce arguments. So constructive dialogue is not about holding those arguments back or making them feel … It’s not kumbaya, right? It is about, “How do we talk to each other in a way that’s fundamentally respectful to a person’s humanity?”; as long as those arguments are actually about the ways to reach a shared goal, not about each other as people.

So boards are no different, right? The key is to keep the mission of the institution front and center. And when that’s clear, conflict again can be guided to become about how to get there, not about whether or not we’re even on the same team.

The other piece that I think is really important for boards, and I would love to see this happen more often, is for board chairs to get foundational training in how to facilitate constructive conversations.

The chair is really the lead facilitator in a meeting. They play a bunch of other roles. Of course, they clarify the vision, they build trust, they represent the board outwardly. But in the boardroom, in a discussion, if we want genuine dialogue, the chair also needs some very practical skills. They need to know how to set norms for how trustees disagree; they need to know how to get every voice in the room so that few extreme voices don’t dominate two sides of a debate; and they need to be able to step in and to de-escalate when things get heated.

And the most important thing is that they need to practice what they preach. If they want trustees to be engaging with each other constructively, board chairs need to demonstrate listening deeply, disagreeing respectfully, and the kind of decorum that’s expected in the boardroom.

Terry MacTaggart:
Yeah, that is extraordinarily good advice for all of us, frankly, to get that kind of training when the era we live in is so conflicted in a whole bunch of environments.

But a little bit more on the mechanics and the tactics, if you will. Let’s say the board chair is a total introvert and is just really not interested or equipped to do what you’re talking about. Will it work with another member of the board, whether they’re an officer or not? And whether or not that alternative is available, what about an external facilitator? Does it work then, or is it just not so effective?

Mylien Duong:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Both of those situations can work.

So having somebody on the board that is designated to be the facilitator of heated conversations, it doesn’t have to be the board chair. You make a good point that not everybody’s interested in playing that role, not everybody is naturally inclined to play that role. But there needs to be somebody who is designated. So they are given the power and the legitimacy by the board chair and the other members of the board to play that role in these conversations.

And when conversations really get heated, it is very helpful to have a third party come in who can have a more neutral or a wider stance on the conversation. That is beneficial because people tend to trust that outside parties have less of a horse in the race.

The thing about bringing in an outside party though is that it’s not always the most expedient way to resolve conflict, right? You have to make arrangements, you have to find a facilitator, you have to work around their schedules. So we think that these skills need to live within the board itself. The external facilitator is something that you use in very special circumstances.

Terry MacTaggart:
That’s a good point. Some facilitators actually will know the board well if they’ve been working with them for a number of years, but a total stranger probably wouldn’t enter the room with a lot of credibility.

Let’s stick a little bit longer with the personality-driven constraints and how you overcome them. There is a mindset that says, “You know, this sounds kind of touchy-feely. Can’t we just get down to the problem at hand and solve this damn thing and get on with life?” What do you say to that character?

Mylien Duong:
You know, we hear that all the time. We often hear, “Dialogue is soft.”

And you know, what I say to those people is like, “If that’s been working for you, go for it. If getting down to business and solving problems is working for you, go for it.” And that’s exactly what constructive dialogue is, in my mind, is getting down to business and solving the problem together. What happens is when it derails, and the personalities come in and the attacks come in and the slide remarks come in and the questioning of intentions and suspicions and lack of trust. That’s when you want to slow down.

And I just want to make this point. Dialogue skills, these same skills that we teach, listening, reflecting, finding common ground, they’re used by peace negotiators and hostage negotiators; these people whose jobs are there to prevent buildings from blowing up, prevent bombs from getting dropped, prevent people from getting killed. These skills are used by people where lives are literally on the line. So I don’t think that they’re very soft. I actually think that they require quite a bit of mental and emotional discipline. So the discipline to stay focused on your shared purpose, the discipline to manage your emotion, the discipline to manage your ego, and the discipline to disagree without blowing up the institution, I don’t think it’s soft at all.

Terry MacTaggart:
I agree with you, and your comments are just absolutely terrific.

Before we close this out, is there any concluding message you’d like to leave with our audience?

Mylien Duong:
The one thing I would say is that I think that we are seeing the dynamics on campuses where constructive dialogue is required for students, and yet boards are not immune to these same dynamics that we see playing out on campuses. Trustees also bring different political views and backgrounds and loyalties.

So when tensions arise, the board, it can really undermine the president’s ability to lead and an institution’s credibility. So that’s where we see constructive dialogue skills becoming more and more relevant. So even though the practical moves are simple, we really think that it helps to channel conflict in a way that strengthens trust and alignment.

And more and more, we start to see boards asking students to practice civil discourse. But if boards can’t model that among themselves, I think they’ll really struggle to lead their institutions through these polarized times.

Terry MacTaggart:
Mylien, thank you, thank you. This has just been terrific. You know, I’m an old scholar, right? I’m a kind of highly rational individual. So before I learned about CDI, I was frankly skeptical. But you’ve convinced me, and frankly, my own experience with conflicts in the boardroom and elsewhere have convinced me that this is one very important alternative to forestalling conflict where it’s predictable or likely, and to helping to resolve it once it erupts.

So Mylien, thank you again. I’ve learned a lot from your comments. And we’ll be back in touch. We really appreciate this, Mylien.

Mylien Duong:
Thanks so much, Terry. It’s great to be here.

Introduction
Mylien and Terry, thank you so much for your insights today.

For more information, visit constructivedialogue.org and AGB.org.