I’m a director, get me outta here!

What makes an effective leader and what makes for a good board? Should executives and directors run for the hills or can leadership roles be fulfilling? These are some themes I’ve been mulling over, spurred by recent questions from Women on Boards (WOB) and Queensland University of Technology (QUT)..

As a longtime WOB member, I was delighted to be asked by their team to share my governance perspectives and experiences as part of WOB’s 20-year anniversary celebrations. The WOB team was especially interested in my good governance observations, board journey, director tips, and network participation motivation.

And as a QUT Industry Fellow, I’ve been pleased to participate in QUT’s mentoring program and be asked insightful leadership questions by my ‘mentee’, a soon-to-graduate QUT Executive MBA student.

I joined WOB in 2006, their inaugural year. My goal was to join a board to take on a strategic oversight role which seemed a natural extension of my advisory work for directors and CEOs and to be part of a team which I value and enjoy yet isn’t always possible as a sole operator and adviser to others. Two decades on, I’m still a member because I see membership as a way to further WOB’s important contribution to women and broader society and also because I enjoy WOB’s regular and varied communications, ongoing access to their diverse vacancies’ listings, and the birds’ eye view of a dynamic and evolving social enterprise that membership provides.

Early in my WOB involvement, I was pleased to receive the WOB AICD Corporate Governance Scholarship. This allowed me to undertake the AICD’s flagship Company Directors Course, foundational training that I continue to draw from. And WOB’s director noticeboard and guidance have helped me build an active and eclectic board portfolio, as well as advertise governance opportunities in organizations where I’ve been a director. I’ve also contributed directly to WOB by participating in a strategy workshop with co-founders Ruth Medd and Claire Braund and then WOB Directors Mary-Sue Rogers and Cheryl Hayman and by supporting the WOBSX program as WOBSX Adjunct Chair, a pathway for experienced female Directors to become ASX board ready.

As a QUT Industry Fellow, I’ve had the pleasure of regularly connecting with my ‘mentee’, an experienced leader himself who’s invested in this applied MBA to build his intellectual rigor and springboard his next career stage to incorporate both business profitability and social purpose. It’s been very rewarding to discuss our different leadership reflections and experiences and I’m certainly the richer for it.

The various questions posed by WOB and my QUT mentee center on leadership effectiveness and how to develop and harness it to benefit the organization. This also ties squarely into my work as a social innovation scholar.

In boardrooms, I’ve learnt the importance of board composition, constructive and dynamic relationships, and effective practice, including the work behind the scenes—in the board papers and pre-board one:one or small group discussions and meetings. And through my PhD research on how nonprofit boards effectively innovate for growth and impact, drawing especially from my interviews and survey of directors of mid-large growth nonprofits across the globe, I’ve discovered that effective boards, innovation-wise, diversely structure their boards, encourage positive conflict-based inter-board relationships, and develop strategic board practice.

My board experience, which spans start-ups and skeleton organizations to large, established entities across different life stages and a variety of for-profit, nonprofit, and government subsectors, has revealed several fundamental lessons.

Being a nonexecutive director differs from being an executive, navigating the right balance may be tricky, and how hands on a board is and should be can vary across organizations and even for one organization over time. Boards should always ask selected well-considered questions (without constantly peppering every discussion!) and ensure their decisions are based on good information and appropriate deliberation.. And boards can play a critical role in establishing disciplines and frameworks and building operational capacity to enable growth and impact, rather than assuming their operational leaders already have all the necessary operational expertise for the next chapter.

And boards need to take on all board responsibilities. It can be tempting to turn nonprofit board meetings into ‘managing the gap’ forums and avoid the longer term strategic and often tough deliberations. Connectedly, good boards recognize risk and opportunity as opposite ends of one continuum and the need for a shared risk appetite that varies for different strategic priorities. For instance, your board may have zero appetite for customer/beneficiary (and staff) health/safety yet high appetite (i.e., risk tolerance) for growth and impact.

Boards should ensure that mission and vision guide resourcing, activities, and decisions, and not be isolated to a strategic plan. In today’s multistakeholder world and with tight resourcing, organizations can easily swerve off track and it takes a resolute board to do the hard yards to build back the organization’s focus.

Finally, boards and staff should live and breathe the organization’s values. These are the behavioral blueprint for achieving goals, and modeling them builds team engagement, accountability, strategic decision making, and brand reputation.

In short, formal and informal leadership opportunities appear throughout our lives. While leadership isn’t for everyone, many find it developmental, fulfilling, and a valuable contribution towards a healthy economy and society.