Collaborative Leadership: A New Model For Developing Truly Effective Relationships Between CEOs and Trustees launches a series of tools on developing and maintaining effective working relationships between CEOs and trustees. The full series aims to present the collaborative leadership model, show CEOs how it improves trust and communication between them and their boards, and demonstrate how it can be applied in a number of areas where CEOs and boards interact, including: budgeting, planning and goal setting, board self-evaluation, management development and succession planning, quality improvement, and CEO performance appraisal.
The goal of this series is to show CEOs how to adapt to the board’s expectations for more engagement in leadership, and how to help shape the board’s approach to doing just that. Individual tools will identify ways to reduce unnecessary conflict between the CEO and trustees, improve communication, increase the effectiveness of the board, and help trustees achieve more satisfaction from board service, without changing the important and necessary boundaries between governance and management.
In some ways, this new model isn’t all that different from the old model. It still requires the CEO to exercise leadership in framing issues for the board, providing the information the board needs to make decisions, evaluating alternatives, and proposing the best course of action.
The difference between old and new comes primarily through inviting more board participation in shaping meeting agendas, strategic plans, and capital allocation decisions; giving trustees more time to discuss issues they deem important, in every meeting, in occasional executive sessions, and in board retreats; and in encouraging boards to, (1), define or reassess the role they want to play and, (2), have a say about the kind of working relationship they want to have with their CEO.
Collaborative leadership starts with clearly defining expectations—the board’s expectations for its own role, the CEO’s role, and the working relationship between them, as well as the CEO’s expectations for the board’s role, the CEO’s role, and the CEO’s relationship with the board. This will be addressed in the next collaborative leadership tool. These other key topics will also be addressed:
- how to get the board more involved in shaping its own agendas and use of meeting time;
- how to get the board more engaged in business planning, goal-setting, and shaping priorities;
- how to get the board to bring “stakeholder perspective” to bear on major decisions;
- how to make performance appraisal more meaningful;
- how to restructure executive compensation and governance thereof to meet new standards and reduce risk of criticism;
- how to leverage trustees’ talent and experience to improve planning and decision-making;
- how to leverage trustees’ interest in clinical quality improvement efforts;
- how to leverage trustees’ talents in communicating community benefit;
- how to get boards engaged in improving the governance process itself; and
- how to help boards feel that they have a meaningful role in leading the organization.
