It’s True — My Board Chair Became a Dear Friend

I recently returned from celebrating a friend’s 40th birthday in Puglia (the heel of the boot in Italy). My friend has been planning this since last fall, and I knew when she told me about it I would figure out a way to be there– it was clearly a chance enjoy a vacation without my children (I love them, and I also see a lot of them), experience a new part of the world, get out of the country for the first time since Covid, and also get to celebrate this friend, who has been a rock-steady source of support for me through the last 12 years, especially during the loss of my children’s father.

When people learned I was going on the trip, they’d ask how I knew this friend. I’d explain that she was the Founding Board Chair of the school I founded, and I’d see the surprise cross their faces–oh. Huh. The reactions included everything from, “I didn’t know you could be friends with your Board Chair!” to, “Wait, you really only knew each other from that?” Yeah, we really only knew each other from the time that we did that crazy thing and started a high quality school in a neighborhood that desperately needed it in a city with terrible politics especially around charter schools. Turns out, that was plenty of time and space to bond and get to know each other in that work!

Anyhow, it’s gotten me thinking a lot about Boards and Executive Directors lately. They are just tricky. When I was out with another friend last week, she made a passionate point that requiring nonprofits to have Boards (while undoubtedly required to ensure appropriate use of funds, to leverage expertise outside that of the Executive Director, etc.) often just got in the way of effective leaders. After all, wrangling Boards took a lot of work and often ego massaging and stakeholder management–all things that would be time better spent, from her eyes, on doing the work to reach the mission.

Boards are definitely complicated. Any time you get a group of people together and try to get them on the same page it’s a challenge–and when it’s a volunteer position, often involving people with a lot of other responsibilities, talents and gifts–and it’s usually for an organization trying to make progress on a fairly intractable problem… well, it gets messy. There are a lot of ways for Boards to get screwed up–from the dominant member who doesn’t share the floor or uses it to advance a personal agenda, to the members who don’t show up so you are scrambling to make quorum.

A lot of my work involves Boards–for example, recently, a Board has hired me to do a Current State Analysis, leveraging my expertise and outside perspective, or in another current project, I work closely with the Executive Director/CEO on a strategy for engaging their Board on a project of critical importance. 

It’s gratifying work because when Boards thrive, organizations thrive. Sometimes the organization thrives and needs the Board to catch up–or sometimes the Board realizes they need to right the ship, starting at the top. As an Executive Director/CEO, I worked with three different Board Chairs–all of whom were honestly wonderful in their own unique way. That said, the Board itself went through ups and downs and trials and tribulations during each era, just like any team. It takes a lot of heart, patience, skill and forbearance to make it work–and great things happen when the Board is firing on all cylinders, so it’s worth it.

While I didn’t imagine, years after opening the school, going on an amazing 40th birthday vacation when my friend joined the team as Board Chair, I’m not surprised–this is someone who helped design the first flier for the school we founded, and who worked the circuit of local libraries, homeless shelters and churches to help us spread the word. We were focused on something we both really believed in: I brought instructional and cultural experience, and she brought extensive community relations work as well as an MBA. 

While everyone you work with is not going to become a lifelong bestie, when it does happen, it’s one of the added bonuses of doing mission-driven work: getting to collaborate with truly amazing people as you work to change the world.

Are you a Board Chair, ED or CEO wanting, wishing, wondering how you could possibly find this type of harmony with your Board/Board Chair or ED/CEO (and vice versa)? Please reach out — I’d love to help you go from frenemies to BFFs.