How Your Board Can Enrich Your CEO’s Success

“How Your Board Can Enrich Your CEO’s Success” by Jeff Rendel, Certified Speaking Professional

The relationship between a Board and the CEO can be best described as a partnership. The Board looks to the CEO for planning and execution; and the CEO looks to the Board for guidance and strategic focus. How can your Board best partner with your CEO in enriching her or his executive effectiveness?  In listening to scores of credit union CEOs, three themes emerged describing ways that a Board can increase its value to the CEO.

Expand Your Outlook

Many directors are, or have been, leaders in their professional fields. The various perspectives are of great value to the CEO because they embolden the CEO to think in different ways. Often, the diverse insights, experiences, and opinions – while not instructions – can help your CEO add applied value to your credit union’s long-term vision. A fresh way to see the Board’s role is that of “the guide on the side.” While business plans and day-to-day execution are the bailiwick of the CEO, your Board can ensure it keeps its focus on next levels of strategic success for your credit union and members.

A constructive method to help lead your Board with this expanded view design is to encourage your CEO to look for new ways to grow the long-term experiential, economic, and civic value of your credit union. Whether it be an expanded footprint, new line of business, or testing an untouched opportunity; this approach allows your Board to help your CEO work “on the business,” rather than the details of being “in the business.”

Commit to a Continuous Partnership

Great boards keep getting better; and in many ways – education, certification, self-evaluation, recruitment, leadership, etc. After all, a CEO deserves a great board (and vice versa). While individual development is significant, so is the fullness of the relationship with your CEO. Where your Board meetings – by design – are focused on business, first-rate communication between your Board and CEO is central.

Your Board Chair can lead the communication/partnership dynamic. The Chair can assure that each director’s insights are sought out and heard. The Chair can ensure that each director adds to the conversation and deferentially considers others’ contributions to the dialogue. Last, the Chair can sustain that the CEO is getting maximum benefit from the Board and look for ways to enhance its support and encouragement to the CEO.

Speak with One Voice

E Pluribus Unum – “Out of Many, One” goes the motto of the United States. It functions in the Board Room, too; and, it’s of immeasurable value for your CEO. A mixed set of directors will occasionally produce an assorted array of understandings, expectations, and desires. It can also generate dissent.  While dissent is valuable when it leads to better decisions, it cannot lead to confusion for your CEO and out-of-focus guidance for execution. Dissent stays, and one message leaves, the Board Room.

While your Chair should guarantee that all thoughts are gathered and considered; there may be times when your CEO needs leadership from the Board, even if a split vote ensues. Delay may lead to opportunity lost; and, dissenting ideas may eventually be managed through execution. However, as a Board – a single body – one voice must guide and support your CEO. It allows her or him to focus and execute, delivering results and relevance for your credit union.

If your Board wants to be the best body it can be for your CEO, ask – and look for ways to act. It’s a fundamental component for a successful relationship. Your CEO can ask the same from your Board (a subsequent article on this aspect to follow). And, it’s a way to grow – together – to make certain your members get the best credit union they deserve.

© 2018 by Jeff Rendel.  All rights reserved.

Jeff Rendel, Certified Speaking Professional and President of Rising Above Enterprises, works with credit unions that want entrepreneurial results in sales, service, and strategy.  Each year, he addresses and facilitates for more than 100 credit unions and their business partners.

Contact: jeff@jeffrendel.com; www.jeffrendel.com; 951.340.3770.

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