Boards – Stop recruiting leaders and start developing leadership

Several years ago I had the opportunity to work with a small nonprofit in the local area on a comprehensive organizational identity and strategy alignment process. As they explored what they valued and how best to advance their work in alignment with those values, focus turned to the board and any implications the newly articulated vision and values might have on the board itself. At one point, one of the board members asked if they should start thinking about the board as an opportunity to develop the leadership of young women (a clear extension of their mission and values).

This was one of the most brilliant questions I had heard in many years of doing board development work. Not just because it indulged my own passion for developing leadership among young people, but because it also demonstrated a deep desire to have the board be aligned with AND integrated into the vision and values of the organization as opposed to the proverbial steward/caretaker of those values.  

In previous posts, I’ve encouraged us to look at boards as assets and ask about the direct added beneficial value they bring to an organization (not money!). My experience is that this framing often leads to a different concept of what a board ‘should be and do’ than we often hear in the traditional notions of ‘best practices’ and ‘roles and responsibilities.’

Now I’d like to pose another question along that continuum – What are we doing to develop that asset so that it contributes to BOTH the success of the organization AND further benefits the ability of our communities to thrive? Specifically, how are we growing the leadership capacity within our organization and contributing to greater communal leadership capacity in the world?

The shift is that we stop looking to recruit 'leaders' that are ‘out there’ and rather look to develop leadership that serves the organization and then eventually the community. Much like a garden, that if cultivated and nurtured well, produces enough beauty and sustenance for ourselves and others. This also transitions us from a leadership scarcity model to a leadership abundance model. 

As I’ve commented in previous posts, leaders are scarce, but leadership is abundant. Only so many people are able to be placed in leader roles - it’s the product of our organizational defaults and the predominant pyramid staffing structure we use. Then the forces that inform board recruitment consistently encourage us to recruit from the ranks of those that hold these leader roles, recycling people from board to board across the community.

I cannot count the number of times I’ve been invited to task forces on leadership development only to see the CEO’s and ED’s of organizations on the invitation list. If we keep inviting the people who already hold the leader roles and positions of power and influence to these ‘leadership development’ entities, we are consuming the leadership space with ‘established leaders’ at the exact moment we should be inviting non-established leaders to the planning and leadership space – isn’t that an example of irony…

Now, add to that, that the systemic structure most of our organizations are working in predispose those leader roles to be held by white, older males – and it’s no wonder we have the equity and diversity issues we see as a systemic shortfall of boards across the country. Add again, that many of those ‘leaders’ are succeeding in organizational and business management models that are complicit in creating the struggles, injustices, and inequities within our communities and we may be recruiting people with implicit biases that are actually antithetical to the work our organizations actually need to conceive of, implement, and advocate for.

So not only are we limiting the potential pool by looking to those that already hold leader roles, but we may also be introducing fundamental conflicts around the values, beliefs, and assumptions deeply internalized by ‘leader’ board members and the beliefs and assumptions required by the organization to effectively advance beneficial change.

Leadership is the ability to articulate desired outcomes (small & large), determine what it takes to accomplish them, engage people in achieving those outcomes, and evaluating success of the processes that get you there. The superpower of an organization is that it brings people together and in its strongest incarnation DOES have a sum that is greater than the parts. 

Boards are a subset of this structure with an opportunity to bring together perspectives, assumptions, beliefs, and dispositions that deepen the collective understanding of what needs to be done and what it actually takes to advance benefit in our communities. Boards that contribute this capacity are assets to an organization.

Many individuals hold pieces of this leadership puzzle given their close lived experience with the situations our organizations are navigating through and working to improve, but may not have developed or been given the chance to exercise their competencies fully (aka leadership potential). 

These are the amazing spaces we can create with our boards. Spaces that acknowledge and honor an individual’s leadership competencies and creates the space for them to contribute and develop more.