Many Boards I work with struggle with giving feedback.
Some feel it’s not their place- how could they know more than the professionals who do this every day?
Some worry about the adaptability of their own field of expertise: how can they adapt what they do know in a way that is helpful? Others struggle with not being hands on, and can overstep into operations with misguided positive intentions.
Others get themselves in a tangle from the misnamed ‘critical friend’ role and think they are supposed to criticise everything – a one way ticket to being resisted and resented by your CEO and staff team.
So how should it be done? Well, let me start with a story about how it shouldn’t be done.
A Chair I worked with once described their CEO as defensive. The CEO reportedly ‘never listens to our ideas’.
An alarm bell rang – the only Board who ever accused me of being defensive was the worst I’ve ever worked for – full of unimplementable suggestions and random ideas that had no association with reality (or relevance to the Trustee role, for that matter). This meant I had to say no…A lot. From their perspective, this was defensiveness. From mine, it was doing my job and protecting the charity and the team from wasting time and resources.
So I dug deeper – and seeing this Board in action told a very different story from the Chair’s version.
The Chair’s own style of feedback was destructive – aimed to deflect accountability and put people in their place rather than add value. She lashed out – vindictively – whenever there was push back against her input or ideas. Trustees lacked self reflection and an understanding of their role. They were (like my old Board) mostly focussed on bringing their ideas to the table, and not on good governance and effective oversight, and took it as a personal affront when their ideas weren’t taken up.
Good board challenge comes from a very different place. It starts with an attitude of partnership rather than hierarchy. Boards who do this well ask themselves: How can we work effectively and collaboratively with the staff team to support the charity’s success?
The feedback itself must be constructive – actionable, realistic, value adding and respectful. Not insulting, belittling, superior or unimplementable.
It should absolutely not be influenced by egos, personal interests or preferences, and should be directed at ideas, not personalities.
Good feedback often starts with curiosity and comes from a position of care. Blame has no place – after all, it is almost always about egos.
It’s brought up in the right way, in the right place. This sometimes means the Board room, but sometimes doesn’t – the Chair I mentioned earlier preferred to ‘gang up’ on the CEO, and often misrepresented the views of ‘the Board’ to serve her own personal vendettas.
It should be balanced – not a feedback sandwich, but also not isolating only the things that are wrong.
And it should also be delivered with an understanding of the complexities of the charity sector itself – many Trustees have never worked in the sector and their advice and experiences in other sectors may need significant adaptation to work in this one. If there’s one thing my MBA taught me, it’s that the majority of commercial approaches and tools do not work plonked directly into this sector.
There is so much wrong with how we structure our sector, and it takes a lot of effort to be a good Trustee and a high performing Board. The Boards doing this right recognise their responsibilities and accountability, invest in their own development, embrace feedback and reflection, and bring huge respect for the sector and its staff in all they do.