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Making the Decision to Internationalize Boards and Committees

As your association moves along an “international engagement spectrum” [PDF], there are key junctures and considerations to determine what decisions to make. One of these is whether to bring non-U.S. members or representatives of other constituents that your association serves onto your board or volunteer committee.

As I wrote in my book Going Global for the Greater Good several years ago, doing so can provide several benefits. Among them: creating a broad-based prism for viewing the world and helping to identify and analyze international trends that may affect the organization. At the same time, it sends the message within your organization and to other partners that your association is committed to international engagement.

While there have been some changes in the time since I wrote the book, many of the basic concepts of internationalizing have stayed the same. Here are some major themes:

1. Greater inclusivity and perspectives. When the board starts with a primarily domestic membership and the association serves an international constituency, a decision may need to be made as to how this board can better incorporate the perspectives of the organization’s international community. The advantages of taking this step include more diverse perspectives, greater proximity to understanding the context of service delivery, and enhanced internal and external credibility.

For example, the International Ombuds Association has had several board members from outside the U.S. and staff shared “that you have to be intentional about soliciting and considering these board members’ perspectives, so it is not tokenism.”

2. Enhanced global and strategic mindset. If the association serves an international constituency or has an internationally oriented vision, it needs to intentionally focus on how the association can forward its international strategy. To do so, the board needs to think globally and avoid parochialism or tunnel vision.

3. Vision and values. A clearly defined vision and mission to guide activities and provide a sense of purpose and direction to staff, wherever they work, is considered a good practice in the sector and important to keeping a growing and/or decentralizing association aligned.

For example, the International Coaching Federation tries to stay true to its vision by not getting pulled into polarizing issues where they have stakeholders on “both sides” of something that can be seen as political. Having key questions that the board focuses on can help. One of the questions the ICF board asks itself is, “How can we best represent and serve our specific global audience?”

4. Logistics. Time zones, costs, and so forth need to be addressed for any stage of internationalization for the board to be inclusive and effective. A broad range of time zones can be addressed by rotating times so different sections of the world take on less comfortable times of the day, along with having at least one in-person meeting a year. In-person meetings help to build and nurture relationships—the “social glue” for the association. While it does take additional resources, it is important that an association is committed to truly operating as an international entity.

5. “At large” international board membership. There has been more of a move in this direction over the past years to avoid the challenge of boards getting too large (as the number of chapters or national entities grow) and to help them stay focused on the mission and remain strategic.

For example, the Institute of Internal Auditors transitioned from a representative to a competency-based board, looking for a balance of needed competencies and geographic diversity.

6. Criteria for members. Many organizations develop a criteria or profile for board members. This can help the association focus on what type of board members will be most helpful to forward its mission and vision, as well as help them include a balance of different demographics, including location, gender, age, and leadership skills. Additionally, boards may look for experience with thinking globally and globally credible or prominent individuals who can help raise the profile of the organization and assist with fundraising.

For instance, the Council for Advancement and Support of Education has criteria for board nominations and a leadership and governance committee that regularly reviews the composition of the board and chooses individuals who will help fill identified gaps. This ensures that the board is broadly representative of all key stakeholders with a good mix of regional and institution type. 

Use a Skills Matrix to Improve Board Recruitment

When the Modern Quilt Guild (MQG) was formed in 2009, we initially struggled to identify qualified board members who were willing to serve. Early directors were often people well known to the original founders or members who were willing to “pitch in and help out.”

While this method provided many strong directors who were passionate about our mission and who helped provide strong foundations for growth and expansion, it often created a homogenous board with gaps in skill sets necessary for strong strategic leadership.

Per our bylaws, our board is composed of 10 members: five directors elected by members from each of five geographical regions, as well as an equal number of board members elected by the existing board. The term length for each director is three years, and they can serve for a maximum of two terms (six years). The positions have been staggered so that there are no more than two new board members per year.

Over the years, as our organization grew and became more stable with a larger staff, it has become easier to identify and recruit qualified candidates, both for member-elected and board-elected positions.

Because of this, we worked with our nominating and governance committees to develop a multistep process to screen applicants for the member-elected positions and identify recruiting needs for those elected by the current board. Here’s a look at how creating a skills matrix has benefited MQG.

Skills and Self-Assessment

The first step in this process was to create a list of skills that we felt were needed by our board based on what they’re responsible for. While MQG has a staff of four full-time and four part-time employees to manage the day-to-day operations, the board is primarily tasked with strategic planning, approving the budget and major expenditures, providing support and training to chapter leaders, and supervising the executive director.

With these responsibilities in mind, we worked with the nominating and governance committees to create a simple matrix. Each current board member then used the new matrix to evaluate their skills on a scale of 0 to 3—from no experience to expert knowledge based on extensive experience.

The nominating committee then combined the results of this self-review with other data, such as years remaining in each term, state or country of residence, and other demographic information to identify current and upcoming gaps in desired and needed skill sets.

Our first board started their terms at the same time so when those terms expired, we lost a great deal of institutional knowledge and had a full board of new members. We have worked to stagger our members’ terms so there are no more than two or three new members at a time. When identifying potential gaps, we consider the skills of the individuals who will be exiting the board soon and prioritize replacing those skills. This allows a new member and an existing member with similar skills to overlap a little and share knowledge and workload.

Additionally, as an international organization, we want to ensure our board includes voices from geographically diverse areas. Any board is stronger with diverse membership, so we try to account for various demographic factors, such as race, gender, and LQBTQ+ identification when we are evaluating potential new members.

The Matrix in Practice

For member-elected positions, the nominating committee, per our bylaws, is tasked with reviewing the applicants and selecting the top three to be put forth for member election.

As part of the process, all applicants were asked to complete the same skills matrix used by the existing board. They then chose the two or three skills that they felt were their strongest and provided additional information on their experiences in these areas.

Next, the nominating committee used this data to rank applicants and choose the candidates who would participate in the member elections. Candidates who could fill the existing skills gaps received high ratings and were selected to participate in the election. The use of a matrix provides an objective application scoring process that is more transparent than review methods we have used in the past.

Continuous Review

As our organization continues to evolve, we plan to review our skills matrix each year to ensure that they are still the right ones and will add or remove items as needed. Each board member will also complete the self-review process every year, and the new data will continue to feed our board recruitment and review processes.

For example, we currently have one certified public accountant serving as board treasurer, who is responsible for ensuring our tax forms are filed accurately and helping us prepare for an eventual audit. Since she will cycle off our board after 2024, finance skills are high on our list for next year’s recruitment. Additionally, we have three members who are highly experienced in nonprofit governance with several years left on their terms, so that is not a skill we are prioritizing right now.

Ultimately, we hope the skills matrix will help us improve the overall diversity of our board members. By focusing on specific skills and experiences, we are likely to attract a more varied slate of board candidates

How to Repair a Toxic Board

Asociation boards are paradoxical creatures. They exist to create a consensus around an organization’s priorities, but they are also meant to foster robust debate around challenging issues. Drift too far toward consensus, and you risk a rubber-stamp board. Drift in the other direction, and you risk open conflict. So it’s unsurprising that, according to a 2022 PricewaterhouseCoopers survey of corporate boards, nearly half of all board members would like to replace at least one of their colleagues.

A new report from the National Association of Corporate Directors, Culture as the Foundation: Building a High-Performance Board, explores the difficulty of threading that needle, and proposes a few solutions. As the report explains, the need for boards to get it right is more acute these days: In the post-COVID era, boards are asked to be more agile, transparent, diverse, and accountable, which means “longstanding norms of behavior may no longer be effective or acceptable.”

To that end, the report, produced by a commission of corporate board leaders and subject-matter experts, emphasizes how a board can establish and enforce an effective culture. Its recommendations are bundled into three main themes: defining an optimal board culture, reinforcing its culture and behavioral norms, and addressing “major cultural fault lines.” Within those themes, the report comments on some familiar issues—the board’s relationship to management, silos, ineffective committees, and more. But it’s worth a look especially for matters around those “cultural fault lines.”

On today’s boards, longstanding norms of behavior may no longer be effective or acceptable.

Such fault lines often emerge, according to the report, due to conflict avoidance: punting the big issues to the next board cycle, waiting for the “red ant” on the board to resign or be term-limited out. But more successful boards need to face their disagreements—and disagreeable board members—head-on.

There are plenty of mechanisms for this, from creating white space for strategic discussion in the agenda, adjusting bylaws around board tenure, and (the nuclear option) making arrangements for the removal of a board member. But the heart of an effective board, the report suggests, is cultivating disagreement without leaning on the most dire mechanisms. And that means communication. 

The NACD report cites one case study, for instance, of an organization that makes a distinction between “consensus” and “alignment.” For some major decisions, the standard is that all board members agree on the move. Alignment doesn’t require that everyone agree, but that everyone understands the overall decision. As the report puts it, “clearly defining areas where the board can ‘agree to disagree’ has helped to reinforce a healthy culture of debate.”

That debate requires that committee leaders and other board members talk through concerns and questions before the vote, hearing out dissenting views. One group makes sure that every board member has an opportunity to speak about a potentially contentious issue among their peers.

Every board will have a different method for expressing dissent. However it’s done, the important thing is that it’s encouraged respectfully. The resentment that makes half of board members wish That One Person would just go away is often a function of misunderstandings and lack of opportunities to share concerns. Talking it through doesn’t guarantee consensus. But it’s a good way to avoid paralysis.

Does Your Governance Structure Need a Reboot?

The COVID-19 pandemic unquestionably made associations more agile: In 2020 and 2021, they quickly learned how to establish virtual meetings and hybrid offices, ramped up their efforts around workplace wellness and social justice, and generally did things faster than they were used to. But how much of that effort was strategic? How many board discussions during that time were framed around putting that agility to broader, longer-reaching purposes?

That question is at the core of a new report from McKinley Advisors, Next-Level Governance: Leading With Strategic Agility. Based on a survey of trade and individual-membership association CEOs conducted earlier this year, the report finds that associations are still struggling to get their boards to think strategically. Perhaps more important, they’re not creating a governance pipeline that’s populated with leaders who have a strategic mindset.

You need to name the things that are really important to your organization and then proactively find folks who bring that to the table.

Jon Hockman, McKinley Advisors

For instance, the survey finds that while a large proportion of organizations are talking about DEI (78 percent), only slightly more than half (53 percent) say they have a comprehensive DEI strategy. There’s similar softness when it comes to committees: Only 28 percent of boards say they set desired strategic outcomes for their committees. As the report puts it: “Without such oversight, committees and task forces can take on a life of their own with yearly goals and activities not aligned with organizational strategy.”

Jon Hockman, chief practice officer at McKinley Advisors, says those figures betray a failure to build a strategic mindset into their governance structure. “All too often, associations populate governance with who we know, who’s familiar, who we’re comfortable with, as opposed to saying, ‘How do we work with the intent to find people who have a very strong innovation mindset, very strong strategic leadership orientations?’” he said. “You need to name the things that are really important to your organization and then proactively work to find folks who bring that to the table, not just send out a call for volunteers and accept whoever raises their hand.”

The McKinley report includes a host of recommendations about how to start recruiting for mindset. The most popular ones involve casual relationship-building: Conversations with industry leaders, close communication with members of the nominating committee. But there are more nuts-and-bolts suggestions as well: formal assessments of board competencies and gap analyses; nomination guidelines that emphasize strategic needs; application processes that are designed to surface strategic thinking; establishing a leadership-development committee that prioritizes improving the pipeline.

The approach that works best will differ from association to association. “Each organization needs to look at its particular governance model and say, ‘What do we need to do to drive greater strategic agility?” Hockman said. “It’s not just the board. The data suggest you really need to look at mindset around strategic leadership, innovation, and understanding the profession you represent.”

If that sounds intimidating, Hockman suggests doing some simple things before pursuing a governance overhaul. “Start small: Make a change to the agenda,” he said. “How we design agendas still matters. Are we sitting and listening to committee reports, or are we having a generative conversation around the future of the workforce in our industry? That’s a different way to spend leaders’ time.”

What Association Boards and CEOs Must Understand in the Age of Polycrisis

With the first third of The Turbulent Twenties behind them, boards and CEOs need to focus on understanding the “polycrisis” and begin setting a higher standard of stewardship, governing, and foresight to navigate the rest of this decade and beyond.

For most of this decade’s first three years, humanity’s central focus was on the struggle to survive and overcome the worst public health crisis of our lifetimes. While we knew that the 2020s would be a time of great turbulence before they began, we were not prepared for the turbulence’s near-immediate arrival or its detrimental impact on every aspect of our lives and our world. The COVID-19 pandemic was a painful wake-up call.

Today, with the first third of The Turbulent Twenties behind us, we are entering into a different and disquieting new phase. While the global health emergency has been rescinded, the pandemic goes on, and we will continue to navigate COVID-19’s enduring consequences. At the same time, fit-for-purpose association boards and their CEOs and staff also need to shift their attention and focus on understanding another threat on the horizon: the polycrisis.

The Age of Polycrisis

In fall 2022, I shared the six toughest decisions association boards must make to anticipate and adapt to the unforgiving conditions still to come in this decade. The first three decisions (reclaiming agency from orthodoxy, caring more about successors than ourselves, and making sacrifices for the long-term benefit of others) urge association boards to become more in every respect: more inclusive than they have been historically, more intentional than they are today, and more influential than perhaps they imagine they can be.

The second three decisions (safeguarding stakeholders/successors from technological harm, addressing the climate emergency, and limiting the damage of ideological extremism) inspire boards to transcend traditional association boundaries and beliefs to confront pressing societal issues and embrace their essential role in leaving the world better than how they found it.

As I wrote at the time, however, “… none of these … decisions … will be a panacea for addressing the wicked problems facing the association community, its organizations, or their stakeholders and successors. Instead, they are offered as direct and immediate challenges to boards to focus their attention on the future and begin nurturing the habits of mind required to fulfill their stewardship responsibilities.”

Looking toward the rest of The Turbulent Twenties, developing and sustaining a shared sense of stewardship among boards, CEOs, staff partners, and other association contributors will become even more critical in the context of the polycrisis.

Columbia University Professor Adam Tooze defines “polycrisis,” a term that originated in the 1970s, as:

“A problem becomes a crisis when it challenges our ability to cope and thus threatens our identity. In the polycrisis the shocks are disparate, but they interact so that the whole is even more overwhelming than the sum of the parts.”

The polycrisis is not simply the convergence of multiple simultaneous crises, such as the climate emergency, economic inequality and fragility, geopolitical instability, global health concerns, ideological extremism, and technological harm, but also the increasing entanglement among them that further deepens and exacerbates their collective negative impact on humanity.

The myriad social, technological, economic, environmental, and political forces that have been reshaping the world over the last 15-plus years have created conditions of deep, accelerating, and systemic global risk, which has enabled the emergence of the polycrisis. In The Age of Polycrisis, our most important institutions, including associations, have a clear and demanding responsibility to work together to identify and implement solutions to address each underlying crisis without worsening the other crises.

As I have reflected on the polycrisis and its implications for the association community, I also have felt a certain hesitancy to write about them out of concern that this crucial challenge for association boards and CEOs would be dismissed as just another buzzword. While there has been some backlash (and the suggestion of competing terms such as “multicrisis” or “permacrisis”), I agree with Canadian researchers Thomas Homer-Dixon, Michael Lawrence, and Scott Janzwood, who argue, “[t]he debate around the term polycrisis boils down to whether we really understand the mess we’re in. And clearly, we don’t.”

Three Considerations for Boards and CEOs

As boards and CEOs contemplate the significance of the polycrisis for their associations, stakeholders, and successors, it will be vital for them to situate their thinking and action in the context of the six toughest decisions and with the clear intention of setting a higher standard of stewardship, governing, and foresight (SGF). Here are three critical considerations for boards and CEOs to keep in mind:

Discard orthodox beliefs about crisis. Earlier this year, an Associations Now article asked whether boards are ready for the next crisis. It is an important question that requires reframing for a world of polycrisis. In The Turbulent Twenties and into the 2030s, boards and CEOs must discard the orthodox linear view of crises occurring one at a time in favor of a more adaptive perspective that recognizes and examines the complex and dynamic interactions among multiple crises happening at once. By choosing to think and act beyond this and other detrimental orthodox beliefs, boards and CEOs can reclaim their agency and build their associations to become true 21st-century societal institutions capable of making a positive-sum impact on the polycrisis.

Develop a disciplined practice of intentional learning. The advent of the polycrisis reinforces the foundational SGF principle for boards and CEOs that intentional learning is a non-negotiable requirement. To ensure their collaborative learning efforts deliver the desired benefits, boards and CEOs must focus their attention, minimize distractions, and overcome the inertia created by orthodoxy to concentrate on a comprehensive and disciplined practice of sense-making, meaning-making, and decision-making relative to the polycrisis. This consistent learning practice also must be inclusive by reaching out to gather a full range of heterodox perspectives drawn from diverse stakeholders within the industry and professional ecosystems in which every association is involved.

Prioritize making sacrifices today. The next definition of the board’s duty of foresight requires boards to stand up for their successors’ futures. The emerging polycrisis is a moment of truth for boards and CEOs to demonstrate that they care about their successors and to reaffirm their commitment to long-term thinking and action on their behalf. This commitment must include the clear-eyed choice to make tangible and meaningful sacrifices today for the primary benefit of people current decision-makers will never know personally. Any viable pathway out of the polycrisis will require more dispassionate decision-making by boards and CEOs to reduce their successors’ risks and potential exposure to harm through present-day sacrifice.

If there is a chance to overcome the growing and potentially devastating threats we face, associations must play a central role in confronting them to shape different and better futures. At this critical inflection point in our trajectory toward the future, delaying difficult decisions through inaction is not an option. The association community needs boards, CEOs, and staff partners to work together to navigate the radical uncertainty, volatility, and risk of The Age of Polycrisis

Jeff De Cagna, FRSA, FASAE, is executive advisor for Foresight First LLC in Reston, Virginia. Email

Best Practices to Maintain an Enforceable Code of Conduct

Last year, ASAE added diversity, equity, and inclusion components to its Standards of Conduct. ASAE promotes these Standards of Conduct because more than 287 million people around the globe look to associations for their vision, values, and effectiveness.

However, apart from individuals who have earned a CAE, the ASAE Standards of Conduct remain primarily aspirational. While the conduct is desired, it is not required for membership. But ethical conduct is mandatory and enforceable for those with a CAE credential since a code of conduct is critical to the credential and required under third-party accreditation standards. 

Many associations adopt an aspirational code of conduct or ethics because they allow for more flexibility and freedom in their administration. However, other associations find enforceable codes of conduct are necessary to protect the public and the reputation of the profession, particularly in industries like healthcare or finance where professional conduct can affect public safety and well-being. 

While necessary, organizations that adopt an enforceable code must understand and pay attention to very specific legal requirements. Here’s a closer look at what those entail.

Enforceable Codes 101

At their foundation, enforceable professional codes of conduct or ethics must be fair and reasonable. They should relate to the organization’s mission and should be no more stringent than necessary.

Any enforceable code must maintain a balance between specificity, to provide reasonable notice of what may be prohibited conduct, and generality, to allow for flexibility. An enforceable code should not unreasonably restrict or restrain trade, unfairly diminish a professional’s ability to practice or engage in business, or otherwise run afoul of or violate antitrust laws.

Associations can generally adopt enforceable codes of conduct or practice that prohibit practices, policies, and conduct that are commonly considered to be illegal, largely improper, or unacceptable. 

It is generally good practice that regardless of whether aspirational or enforceable, an association’s code of conduct or ethics should ensure that it is administered fairly and equally to all those subject to it.

Enforceable codes can usually prohibit unprofessional conduct, such as practicing under the influence of alcohol or drugs. They can also prohibit criminal behavior and other general crimes of moral depravity. Most importantly, they can generally prohibit conduct that would be considered violations of professional practice.

However, enforceable codes cannot be used to “blackball,” inappropriately exclude, or subject members to unreasonable restrictions disguised as “unethical” behavior or professional “misconduct.”

To be fair and reasonable, enforceable codes of conduct or ethics must be both substantively and procedurally fair, providing “fundamental fairness” to those that are subject to it. An enforceable code is substantively fair if it is not developed on or applied on an arbitrary basis and is “rationally related” to a “legitimate concern” of the association. For example, it likely would not be substantively fair for an association’s enforceable code to make owning a red car a violation.

Handling a Violation

In the event of an alleged violation of an enforceable code of conduct or ethics, procedural fairness requires that an association provide advance notice and an opportunity for the individual to explain the situation. Any findings of a violation must be based on substantial evidence.  

An association must also provide a reasonable opportunity to appeal any adverse decision to a separate decision-maker who can handle any due process (fairness) challenges or concerns. This includes the ability to determine whether the association followed its own rules in enforcing the code of conduct or ethics. But fairness does not require rigid adherence to procedures so long as the results were generally consistent with fairness requirements.  

When adopting an enforceable code of conduct or ethics, legal considerations require that written notice must be provided to potential violators that clearly presents any alleged violation and identifies the specific conduct that may be a violation. Determinations of violations must be made by impartial decision-makers such as peers in the profession. An opportunity for appeal must be allowed.

It is generally good practice that regardless of whether aspirational or enforceable, an association’s code of conduct or ethics should ensure that it is administered fairly and equally to all those subject to it.  

Do You Need a Chief Governance Officer?

It isn’t news that many boards struggle to get a handle on good governance. Would it help if one of your board members was exclusively dedicated to the matter?

Yes, it would, argues Paul Jansen, a University of California-Berkeley business professor, and Helen Hatch, a Berkeley business student. In an article for the Stanford Social Innovation Review, “Does Your Nonprofit Board Need a CGO?,” the two make a case for creating such a role.

The reasons for a chief governance officer, they write, are straightforward: Boards tend to become disengaged, their goals can become scattered, and their members can struggle to agree on what good governance is—and rarely make a plan to define it, let alone improve it. A culture of confusion, without intervention, can prevail.

“Outdated committee structures, underperforming committee leadership, or lack of annually updated plans fail to ensure that committees are focused and accountable,” they write. “A bias towards consensus too often leads boards to rubber-stamp decisions, and inadequate preparatory materials coupled with tight timelines leave boards struggling to debate complex issues, explore strategic choices, or act with confidence.”

Certainly, something needs changing: The writers point to a BoardSource survey of nonprofit CEOs demonstrating that nonprofit board performance has been at a plateau or in decline for more than a decade. 

In-House Expert

What could a CGO do to address this? A few things, Jansen and Hatch say. A CGO would be the in-house expert on a nonprofit’s bylaws, policies, and procedures, keeping strategic discussions from drifting off course. They would be a close advisor to the board chair, helping to better set and frame agendas. They would do the work of measuring the board’s effectiveness, managing orientation and training, and connecting with the CEO and staff. 

The writers set a few ground rules around this. The CGO role shouldn’t belong to the board chair, who is likely too busy with the broader strategic issues. It also shouldn’t belong to the governance committee, which is typically consumed with identifying next year’s officers. 

Might it work? Leadership speaker and consultant Hardy Smith, who spoke with me last week on dysfunctional boards and their struggles to identify good board candidates, says the position “could shine a light on a board’s governance role and help ensure proper governance-related practices are being executed.” But to succeed, he adds, it would need a board that takes the role seriously. “A title without clarity of expectation and commitment from the board … would accomplish little.”

Mary Byers, CAE, an association consultant and coauthor of Race for Relevance, is similarly skeptical. “It’s unlikely that most boards will have someone on the board, or could recruit someone, who would have the necessary background and skill set to handle the role,” she says. “With time at a premium, it’s unlikely that someone could get up to speed on the role quickly—and board turnover would make it an ongoing challenge to keep the role filled.” Better, she suggests, that the CGO role be handled by a staffer who can be the institutional memory of the association’s governance and dedicate more attention to the job. 

No question, associations should avoid falling into what Jansen and Hatch call a “rut of substandard governance.” Better training on governance can be an important element of that. The first task for a board, then, should be to identify who’s best to lead it.

What has your association done to address governance issues within your board, either with volunteers or staff? Share your experiences in the comments.

Could Your Board Benefit From Spring Training?

It’s officially spring training season for Major League Baseball.  

But this type of training isn’t just for professional athletes. According to Christina Rowe, MSOL, an expert in organization development, leadership, and strategic team communication, consistent training benefits any group that frequently collaborates, including your association’s board. 

“With a different mix of people coming in every few years, the way your board makes decisions, communicates, and feels supported may frequently look different,” Rowe said. “Spring training, or consistent training, can help members better understand themselves, the group, and in turn, your association.” 

She shared how spring training benefits both new and experienced board members and strategies for implementing it no matter the season. 

Stretch the Right Muscles 

Whether strategic thinking or financial literacy, spring training is an opportunity to expand a board’s skill set. Once areas for improvement are identified, get feedback from board members on what they want from the training.  

“As an outside consultant, I talk with a few members about the overarching area we’ll cover and ask them what they want to see as outcomes,” Rowe said. “Then I work backward so I can tailor each interaction with the board to meet these needs and know what’s on their radar.” 

Rowe recommends making consistent training both fun and informative. A shared learning experience with gamification opens opportunities for peer-to-peer connections.  

“Sometimes I present a challenge example and then break the board into teams,” she said. “These challenges look at how well or how quickly they can solve problems.” 

Adding constraints to challenges will encourage members to lean into their decision-making and communications skills. “It also leads to a great debrief afterwards,” Rowe said. “We discuss what got hard, who approached the problem from a new angle, and how those new approaches helped.”  

The Value of Practice 

“Board members will see more value in this training if they know they can apply the skills once the training ends,” Rowe said. I use a ‘me, we, us’ approach in my work with boards.” 

She breaks down the value into multiple levels: individual, group, and organization, or “me, we, us.”  

“By starting with ‘me,’ board members think about how they can adapt the training in their day-to-day work. Then we move onto the ‘we,’ how they can take these skills back to their team at their organization, or with their fellow board members,” Rowe said. “Finally, the ‘us’ is industry-wide and how they can adapt the training into the role they play in the association.” 

In addition, if some of your more experienced board members view this training as unnecessary, Rowe recommends enlisting these members as guides in your training. 

“In that role, they can contribute to the overall outcome of the board rather than build individual skills,” she said. “Serving as a guide or mentor will also leave these members more open to learning.”  

Building a Game Plan 

During this training, Rowe recommends carving out time for board members to identify their strengths and areas of need, particularly in communication and decision-making. 

“Encourage them to think about how they process information, how they communicate, and what they need to feel safe making big decisions,” she said. “Developing this awareness will help your board members show up at their best, whether it’s for a preplanned meeting or in response to a crisis.” 

During this process, also help your board determine their collective blind spots. Doing so will put them in a good position when it comes time to select a new team member. “Your board will know the right voices to invite who can challenge the blind spots,” Rowe said. 

Ultimately, this type of training will also allow staff and board members to better communicate and collaborate with each other.  

“When association staff know how the board best processes and receives information, it helps them do their jobs more effectively,” Rowe said. “They have a way to cut through the noise and get a response from members quickly.”

One CEO’s Story of Executive Burnout

A fog descended upon me, like clouds forming above a seaside town when a warm day meets cool ocean waters. At first, I made nothing of it.

I’m probably tired. I should sleep more.

Maybe I need more iron in my diet? I should start taking vitamins.

Despite my efforts, the fog thickened. Every afternoon I felt an overwhelming exhaustion overtake me. I yearned to fall asleep on the spot.

I grew concerned. This was highly unusual. As a child, my parents nicknamed me “huracán,” the Spanish word for hurricane. A boss once gifted me a stuffed Energizer bunny as she joked about my incessant stamina. 

 I’ve learned that the most important thing I can do to lead effectively is care for myself.

So how is it possible that in my second year as a CEO my batteries would die? I loved my job. It brought me meaning and purpose. My team and I were leading organizational change, creating new and exciting initiatives, hiring outstanding staff, and successfully steering the organization through a pandemic. I travelled relentlessly, delivered speeches and media interviews, published articles, served on several boards, taught graduate school courses, and more. From an outsider’s perspective, I was thriving.

Yet, despite my passion for the job, all things that historically brought me joy faded. I continued to work hard, but I was going through the motions. I kept up my workout routine to muster up endorphins and still had little energy. What worried me even more was my lost interest in most things outside of work. All I did was go home, sit on the couch, watch TV, and do it all over again. The deeper my fog became, the more I worked; it has always been my coping mechanism.  I thought, this must be what a mid-life crisis feels like.

Looking for Answers

As a trained academic, I turned to the tools I know best: books, articles, podcasts, and lectures. I reviewed topics from spiritual development to depression, psychology to leadership development, and more.  The more I learned, the more I thought I discovered the cause of my fog. Perhaps I was languishing, as Adam Grant wrote in The New York Times. Perhaps I lost my hum, as Shanda Rhimes shared in her TED Talk. Perhaps I was in greater need of spiritual development, as Jay Shetty wrote in Think Like a Monk.

It wasn’t until I returned to therapy that clarity ensued.

“You are the walking poster child for burnout, which has led to a mild depression,” she said. 

“Burnout?  I don’t do burnout!  I’m the Energizer bunny, remember?”

In retrospect, I don’t know why it was a shock.  For the past several years, I moved at an unyielding pace. Work was the only focus of my life, and joy faded like a distant memory.

Workaholics tend to not acknowledge how too much of a good thing, especially work, can lead to a significant loss of joy. Even when work brings us meaning, an absence of balance makes it unsustainable. As restaurateur David Chang writes in his memoir, “Recovering alcoholics talk about needing to hit rock bottom before they are able to climb out. The paradox for the workaholic is that rock bottom is the top of whatever profession they are in.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised. A recent member survey we did here at the National Association of College Admission Counseling (NACAC) revealed that the top concern for our members is burnout. I shared the data with our constituencies and attended meetings to plan how we could help bring relief. I presented webinars about the mental health crisis my colleagues are facing, and the burnout we must help alleviate. Through all these meetings, I didn’t consider that I needed relief as well. In fact, even NACAC’s board members told me, “You’ve been running a marathon at a sprint’s pace.”

In the face of our country’s racial reckoning, a pandemic, financial crises, political wars and more, leaders have been busy worrying about their members, staff, boards, and others. As a result, many have forgotten to take care of themselves. I’ve learned that the most important thing I can do to lead effectively is care for myself. Care means different things to different people. For me, it’s meditation, nurturing relationships, finding joyful things to do outside of work, and practicing gratitude. It also means saying “no” more, so I can say “yes” to a fuller life.

Finding Joy Again

The fog has finally lifted, but I know keeping it at bay will be a lifelong journey.  In the end, I realize I wasn’t having a mid-life crisis, rather a mid-life awakening.

I encourage leaders to embark on a journey of reflection to identify what their healthy work-life-joy integration could be.  It’s not only good for us; it’s good for our association.

As we embark on this journey, let’s also share what we learn with others. Many people in our organizations suffer in silence. When leaders share their own challenges, it gives permission for our constituents to tackle theirs.  Will this lead to some discomfort?Perhaps. Is it worth it? Yes.

Conventional wisdom may be to “never let them see you sweat.” Yet, a recent study found “that one reason leaders struggle is because they frequently choose to present their strengths and intentionally avoid disclosing their weaknesses.”

The world of work is changing, and our constituents no longer subscribe to the fallacy of the leader as perfect. They want leaders to be genuine, and they are inspired by those who bring their true selves to the organization.  Let’s lead by example and show the next generation that finding meaning and purpose at work matters, but when it’s not paired with joy and self-care, it will never be sustainable.

How to Fix the Disconnect Over Volunteer Effectiveness

Volunteers are crucial to an association’s success: Board members are typically uncompensated, and bylaws usually require the creation of several standing volunteer committees. But despite building volunteering into the core of their work, associations are often uncertain about what role volunteers are supposed to play and how to measure their effectiveness.

One piece of evidence to that effect comes from a new ASAE Research Foundation report, A Holistic Approach to Association Volunteer Management, which reveals a disconnect between association staff and volunteers. While nearly half of association volunteers (46 percent) rated their fellow volunteers as “highly effective,” less than a third of association staffers (29 percent) gave their volunteers the same ranking.

Part of the challenge, says Mariner Management President and Executive Director Peggy Hoffman, FASAE, CAE, is a lack of clarity about what “effective” means.

“If you ask volunteers, many will tell you that they’re doing everything and that the organization couldn’t exist without them, when in fact what they’re doing is perhaps not moving the needle,” Hoffman said. “Without valid, objective metrics, there’s no meaningful accountability, and ‘effectiveness’ remains a purely subjective assessment.”

Lindsay Currie, CAE, executive officer of the Council on Undergraduate Research (and chair of the foundation study’s research advisory council), has been working on this challenge with her own association’s volunteer pool. One issue, she says, is that CUR’s volunteer structure hasn’t been substantially updated in the 45 years since its founding, and its organizational policy focuses more on board governance, with little guidance on other volunteer roles.

“We really needed to reevaluate our programs to make sure that we were actually clear about what being a volunteer meant,” Currie said.

To that end, CUR has a task force that is working on retooling both its board governance and its general volunteering model. Some things have become clear through that process, she says. Requiring committees to be subject to the bylaws is a roadblock to change. CUR also has a large council of elected members that define volunteer roles—more than 300 people serving three-year terms, with no term limits. That structure has closed off opportunities to younger members and has further limited flexibility.

“What we’re trying to do is diversify the number of volunteer opportunities and establish clear roles and responsibilities, so we can leverage different talents and interests,” Currie said.

While nearly half of association volunteers rated their fellow volunteers as “highly effective,” less than a third of association staffers gave their volunteers the same ranking.

Searching for Purpose

One positive note in the ASAE Research Foundation report is that the appetite for volunteering in associations doesn’t seem to have been significantly affected by the pandemic. A substantial majority of surveyed association staff (78 percent) said that their total number of volunteers has remained stable or increased.

But once those volunteers raise their hands, Hoffman says, associations need to be better equipped to make their participation meaningful. The report highlights several characteristics of successful volunteering, including “clarity of purpose and definition of ‘high performing,’” “commitment to continuous improvement,” “staff readiness and preparedness,” “resource commitment,” and more.

“You have to start by confirming why you have volunteers in the first place and what metrics define effective performance,” Hoffman said. “Everything else falls from there. Once you’ve set your metrics, you have to adopt a volunteer system that’s built to deliver those outcomes.”

To create that environment, says Mariner Management CEO/COO Peter Houstle, associations will have to get away from simply calling on familiar names to volunteer—a practice that leads to skills gaps and a lack of diversity. “Far too often, familiarity supersedes competence,” he said. “There’s a fair amount of discipline required to really implement the structure and processes that will ensure a more open and inclusive recruitment process for volunteers.”

That can seem intimidating, but CUR’s Currie says the effort is rooted in asking basic questions about an association’s reason for being.

“Can you answer the question: ‘Why does your organization leverage volunteers? What is their purpose? How is it tied to your mission?” she asked. “Answering those questions first will help you find out what excellence in volunteering looks like.”