Knowing Your Board Chair

The better you know your board chair the more successful you’re likely to be in building and maintaining a positive and productive partnership.  The really board-savvy superintendent of a large, rapidly growing school district in the Southwestern United States who has had notable success in building effective partnerships with her school board presidents (chairs) over the years makes a point of spending several hours with every new chair early in his or her tenure – usually over several breakfast and lunch meetings – becoming thoroughly acquainted with her new colleague at the top.  One major benefit of this early, very intensive interaction is personal bonding with her new chair.  Knowing that friendship is a powerful lubricant, this board-savvy superintendent really does aim to develop a relationship with every one of her board chairs that is more than strictly business-focused, without ever threatening professionalism.

Beyond bonding, early personal interaction has served this board-savvy superintendent well in breaking down erroneous impressions that her new board chair might bring to the new relationship.  For example, one of her new chairs, who was newly elected to the board and had been publicly – and loudly – critical of several of the superintendent’s decisions over the past year, had perceived the superintendent as an aloof administrator preoccupied with management system development at the expense of education.  But when he got to know the superintendent better, he learned that she was passionate about education and deeply committed to student success, both in the classroom and later in life.  Don’t think for a minute that these corrected impressions didn’t contribute to what became a truly productive board chair-superintendent working partnership.

This excerpt is from Doug Eadie’s newest book, Building a Rock-Solid Partnership With Your Board (Governance Edge, 2008).

© Doug Eadie; all rights reserved

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