Skip to main content

The Empty Chair


Since a governing board is first and foremost about group decision-making, frequent absences of board members undermine the basic tenet of what a board does.  Yet many boards turn a blind eye to the situation, often ignoring their own rules regarding attendance.

If board members have difficulty making meetings, then it seems to me that there must be easier ways to keep them engaged in the work of the organization without holding the board and senior staff hostage to their attendance.   Chronically absent board members make it difficult for boards to achieve the quorums they need to legally accomplish business, thus thwarting decision-making.

If that weren’t enough, the organization loses out on the benefit of their input at the times it might most be needed and, in turn, absent members lose out on the benefit of their peers’ points of view. 

Thoughtful work to bring cohesion to a board can be undermined by the frequently absent.  The morale of those board members who faithfully attend meetings needs to be taken into account, too.  It's not fair to them to continually give a pass to the non-attendees.  

Perhaps it would be better if frequent absentees move to an advisory council or stay active at the committee level, where there are more options for meetings.

In lieu of that, urging your physically absent board members to participate via telephone or video conference, or some combination telephone and the Web, for all or part of each board meeting is an increasingly accepted approach.  That way, they can participate in discussion and decision-making -- they're just not in the room with the rest of you.  (The NYS Not-for-Profit Corporation law allows boards to meet via telephone and video conference as long as everyone can hear everybody else.)

Trying to keep absent board members up to speed via post-meeting emails or phone calls is laborious for the board member or staff person who is assigned that task and it still doesn't get to the heart of the issue, which is that governing is a group activity.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Three Most Important Nonprofit Executive Director Soft Skills

If you were asked to narrow down the list of executive director qualifications to the three most important, which ones would you identify? Would the list consist of soft skills, hard skills, or some combination? Would your list be based on the great ED you are or one you've worked for, or would it be your wish list for the ED you haven't been fortunate yet to work for?  This was an assignment in my recent online class in leadership and administration for the American Association for State and Local History . I asked the class to review three-five advertisements for museum directors and analyze what these listings intimated about the organization’s past experience, current focus and goals, and future aspirations. Then, I asked the class to identify what they consider to be the three most important qualifications they would look for in a director. (Okay, so there's more than three if you dissect my three big groups.)  Soft skills outnumbered hard skills, although

Back in the Saddle

MY LAST POST WAS NOVEMBER 2012, A LIGHT YEAR AWAY it seems, that marked the beginning of a long push toward completing a manuscript on history museum leadership with my co-author, Joan Baldwin.  We finally submitted 350+ pages to our editor at Rowman & Littlefield this week.  If all goes well, we expect the book to be available in early 2014.  It's taken us two years to get to this point, so six more months or so of revision and production don't seem too long to wait until we can hold the final product in our hands (and you can, too!). The project put a lot of things on hold, including this blog.  I'm glad to be back writing about intentional leadership -- leading by design -- for nonprofit boards and staffs.  Certainly, my thoughts are now informed by the forthcoming book, in which Joan and I posit that nonprofits need to focus resources on leadership, not just management.  Most cultural nonprofits are at a crossroad, as is the sector in general, where nothing is qu

What Would Make You Turn Down an Invitation to Join a Board?

THERE'S SO MUCH WRITTEN ABOUT RECRUITING BOARD TALENT, I thought I'd spend a little time thinking about it from the prospect's point of view. Clearly, there are boards where the line is long to get on them. But what would make you turn down an invitation? Here's a short list to get the conversation started: 1. You've had no prior exposure to the organization. Your immediate reaction is "did you pull my name out of a hat?" (Is that lady in the picture the head of the Nominating Committee?) Seems as though there must be a hidden agenda at work (like you're rich and once you become a board member you'll pour all your resources into the organization) or the organization is simply looking for any warm body to fill a seat. 2. The organization doesn't have a good reputation. There's something to be said for street cred. An organization that's floundering may be strengthened by your participation or you may find yourself sucked into