These are the seven steps I use to facilitate better board effectiveness, conduct and leadership on main and operating boards, executive committees and senior function teams:
Step 1: Acknowledge uniqueness
You and your colleagues are unique individuals. No two board members are the same. If you behave as if they are you cannot expect to get the outcomes you want. If each board member is unique it follows that your board is unique. Why would you use generic processes for a unique situation?
Step 2: Understand uniqueness
At work, the components of your, and each of your colleagues’ uniqueness are their skills and experience, reputation and emotional intelligence. Whilst many share aspects of these, no two board members share the precise mix. Why, therefore, would you treat yourself and your colleagues as human capital assets?
Step 3: Understand emotional intelligence (EI)
The most important components of emotional intelligence are empathy, self-awareness and the ability to negotiate needs productively. All three are important. While organisations may perform well for a while without these in harmony in each director, research suggests that organisations that fail to foster these, often struggle to develop long-term capability. In which case, why would your board ignore individual EI problems, even if those colleagues with issues are delivering good results in the short-term?
Step 4: Understand the negotiation of needs
Experts tell us that if your ability to negotiate your needs productively and safely was frustrated in your formative years then you will have taken a decision to deal with that frustration in a manner that was appropriate at that time. However they also tell us that humans have a tendency to extend formative years decisions into adult life. Even those people who experienced little or no frustration in having their needs reasonably met in their formative years suffer when they encounter those that did or when they experience significant stress in later life. The productive negotiation of needs as between members of boards and teams is key to success. Why would your board not pay attention to creating an environment in which members’ needs can be negotiated productively, even if this involves painful confrontation of personal issues?
Step 5: Reveal hidden potential through small changes
Experts also tell us that no one escapes emotional pain. Everyone carries one outstanding emotional painful experience. By outstanding I mean more than all other painful experiences. We compensate for these in different ways but these strategies invariably hide our potential. If this is true, it means that your board’s hidden potential is more than the sum of the hidden potential of you and each of your colleagues. The route to revealing the hidden potential of each director is for each to negotiate small changes in behaviour with each other. In aggregate the sum of the small changes is greater that each in terms of their impact on board effectiveness and conduct. Conduct is observed behaviour over time. Why would your board not seek to reveal the hidden potential of each member over time?
Step 6: Share your personal purpose, strategy and behaviour plan
You and your board colleagues each have, or should have, a personal purpose or objective at work, a strategy to achieve it and a personal behaviour plan to implement that strategy. Some do this process intuitively; others plan it whilst others drift. The more these issues are shared openly between board members, the more likely it is that business purpose, and strategy and behaviour will be successful.
Step 7: Make personal and business purpose interdependent
The tension between the personal purpose of each of your board members and the purpose of the business negatively impacts performance and the development of long-term capability. It follows that these are interdependent and if so it further follows that it is worthwhile paying attention to the interdependence of personal and organisational purpose. It also follows that not doing so increases organisational risk and reduces opportunities.
I use three well-known emotional intelligence tools to help directors implement these steps:
Tool 1: Feel/Need/Do?
Regarding specific issues or behaviour or exchanges at board meetings what do you feel?; what do you need in relation to that feeling?; what are you going to do to meet that need?
Tool 2: Are you selling or buying?
In almost every board interaction you are either selling or buying. Know which and know how.
Tool 3: Are you in Parent, Adult or Child mode?
In almost every boardroom interaction you and your colleagues will, at various times, be in Parent, Adult or Child mode. Do you know which you frequently occupy and when? Do you know how to get yourself and your colleagues into Adult-Adult mode?
The steps and tools above together constitute The Fenton Model® which is a registered trademark of Ciarán Fenton Limited.