“The head of school is not only an employee of the board, but also its teacher.”
That line has been bouncing around in my head for months since I heard it from Jane Taubenfeld Cohen during an early episode of my podcast. I think it’s an important perspective for the head’s relationship with their board members.
But recently I’ve been thinking about how we run our board meetings, whether in a school, nonprofit, or corporate setting.
I remember every detail of the first day I walked into the classroom as a teacher, down to the purple shirt and wide tie I was wearing. (Don’t judge. 2004 was a rough year in fashion and I was teaching on the Upper East Side of NYC.)
I had been preparing for this moment for weeks. I had chosen an excellent topic, and I was ready for my class of 11th graders to engage in the discussion. And engage they did. In off-topic arguments and debates, in texting on the flip-phones in their pockets, and in anything else they could do to avoid the actual material I had hoped we would cover.
With the guidance of senior colleagues and mentors, I learned two basic pieces of advice to set the stage for a discussion that works.
- Frame the discussion. You may think that your students are being disrespectful, but it’s more likely that they just don’t know what you want from them. So, first frame clearly what you want them to do. Give an example. Make sure they understand. And only after you have done that, start the actual discussion.
- Give them the structure(s) they need. Whole group discussion might be the right structure. Or it might be a combination of whole group, small breakout groups, pair-share or fishbowl discussions. Make sure that form supports function.
Of course, there is much more than this to leading a great lesson. But these two jump out at me for their easy applicability and obvious benefit in the boardroom as well as the classroom.
When we say the head is the board’s teacher, that most certainly does not mean the head should deliver lectures on effective board governance practices. It means that the head will teach in an ongoing manner through the relationships they form; and it means that the head can proactively set the stage for effective learning and discussion in group meetings.
Board members tend to be committed, thoughtful, and experienced individuals, but they too need framing and structure to ensure that the group reaches insight rather than exhaustion.
One of the best ways to achieve productivity is for the head and chair to frame each agenda item together before the meeting. The two of you can ask questions like:
- What is the purpose of this agenda item?
- Is it an update, a discussion, or a decision?
- What do we hope trustees will understand or decide by the end of it?
These will determine how you frame each line on the agenda. They will also help ensure that you are aligned in what both the head and the chair hope to achieve in the meeting.
Once you have your framing set, you can focus onthe structure. Rather than defaulting to a whole-group discussion, you can ask questions like:
- What is the best format to achieve our goal for this agenda item?
- Does everyone need to hear every part of the discussion, or can we divide and conquer?
- How many people need to speak? Who needs to learn what from whom?
- How much time will people need to accomplish what we want from them?
Assigning roles can help as well. In the classroom, we may ask one student to summarize, another to question, another to connect. In preparation for a board meeting, you might ask one person to open with the background on a topic, another to highlight the potential risks, another to reflect on how the issue aligns with mission. This kind of advance preparation creates engagement while preventing a few loud voices from dominating and others being cut offduring the meeting itself.
We often hesitate to apply such explicit structure to board meetings because we assume adults do not need it, or because we are nervous that they will feel stifled or talked down to. But if we can get over our own hesitations, we can bring framing, structures, and roles to our meetings in a respectful manner that signals trust, builds understanding, and deepens the sense that governance is about shared work. Structure, when used wisely, doesn’t constrain learning or discussion, it creates the conditions for it to flourish.
I know from experience that this is much easier to write in an article than it is to remember in the moment. To make it a bit easier, here is a Head-Chair Board Meeting Checklist that you can adapt for your needs. One more example of a simple structure that can help ensure your meetings are purposeful, engaging, and effective.