Confidence at the Board Table

Enablers for the Right Questions

When you know what questions to ask you are more confident at the board table.  But your board needs three enablers to get you there. 

Effective Board Dynamics make board meetings a joy and participating in the discussion easy and non-threatening.  Board members bring a diversity of skills, experience, viewpoints, and gender, to any decision and make it more reliable.  Sound board dynamics allow each board member to add their ideas to the discussion, and listen to the ideas of others without prejudice.  Your personal contribution to the discussion is very important. 

Having the right information ensures that the board can understand the issues.  Boards need the right information, efficiently gathered, in the right form, prepared without prejudice, and easily read and understood in order to make the right decision.  Most of that information will come from management.  Thick reports are rarely “right.” 

A Focus on Substantive Issues ensures that board time is spent on issuers that are important to the board’s Stewardship Mandate.  A Board is a Steward, an agent of the owners appointed to secure the health of the organization and to ensure the accomplishment of its mission.   The Stewardship mandate defines the substantive issues on which the board should focus.

Good dynamics combined with the right information, focusing on substantive issues form the foundation for good governance.  Together they enable board members to ask the right questions and demonstrate Confidence at the Board Table. 

Next:  “What’s in the Stewardship Mandate?.”