How the “Supportive” Board Backfires

I keep seeing it – a well-intentioned board hires a leader with a new vision for the organization. The board gets excited, sensing the change they’ve been waiting for. Enamored with their new hire, they seek to be “supportive” by standing aside through changes they don’t quite understand and/or agree with. They provide all the latitude…until.  

Until something goes objectively wrong, or just feels so off that the board snaps back into place with a response that is so abrupt it feels hostile. Trust was never built and there weren’t checkpoints along the way, so when something goes wrong, the board is left to start from square one in evaluating their ED. During the resulting hard scrutiny, the trail of decisions that the board can’t understand seems endless. The board tried being “supportive” but now it becomes clear that was a huge mistake. 

But the answer lies in the word support. Support doesn’t mean absence; it means purposeful presence. Enthusiasm for a new leader should not result in checking out on governance duties. A board should stay engaged – providing a framework of strategic guidance within which the leader has broad management and operational latitude, matched with regular checkpoints. 

And what if you are the ED in this scenario?

Some leaders like ongoing thought partnership with their board, but many embrace having an absent board – feeling the relief of not having anyone looking over their shoulder as they learn their way and seek to make changes. But this leaves a leader very vulnerable. If the board learns of something that they did not foresee or unspoken expectations are unmet, it can quickly lead to an avalanche of doubts about the current situation and everything that came before it.  

Clear expectations, ongoing communication, and clarity in the decision-making framework that a leader will use help ensure that the leader and board remain on the same page. It helps the organization course correct as needed and allows times of challenge to actually further build the board-ED relationship rather than fracture it. Absence isn’t support, and an absent board almost always will eventually find itself called into a moment of reckoning. As a leader, codeveloping measures of success, proactively seeking approval on a general framework for strategy and decision making, providing regular communications, and requesting regular meetings to provide updates and check in on performance can go a long way toward getting the real support you need when something goes wrong.