Are Leaders Made or Born?

Melissa Sines

This question has been asked – and answered – a million times. I’m not claiming a definitive answer – but as for my board – they were leaders-made.

As a young board chair in my first months of the job, I was beginning to get into the swing of leading an organization. Then, just as the board was about to approve our organization’s first strategic plan (an effort I had spearheaded) – our longstanding, founding executive director unexpectedly resigned.

Battered Board Syndrome

The relationship between board and staff had always been a rocky one in our organization. It was hard to ignore the finger-pointing taking place on both sides of the table. It was a classic case of management saying, “The board doesn’t fundraise enough, what good are they?” and the board saying, “The staff doesn’t listen to anything we say, anyway, what use are we?” Yes, folks, that’s right – battered board syndrome.

The remedy? Board development. We were approved for a capacity-building grant from a local family foundation to hire a consultant that would help our board think more consciously about governance. What followed was a year of board training, facilitated by BoardSource, about our roles and responsibilities, with particular focus on strategy; recruiting and retaining board members; fundraising; and program evaluation. We learned:

• What oversight really means: It’s more than just glancing over the financials and approving them. It’s executive evaluation, program evaluation, monitoring progress, AND  overseeing the financials.
• The meaning of strategy: What kinds of questions should we be asking? What should get reported to us so we can make decisions? Where are we headed?
• Fundraising is only part of the picture: “Give, Get, or Get Off” is meaningless unless boards are given a meaningful role that plays to members’ particular knowledge, strengths, and abilities, and the resources to enact the fundraising strategy.
• Engagement is key: A board that doesn’t show up is no board at all. It’s not enough to just achieve a quorum, approve some reports, and go home. Everyone’s got to pitch in, ask good questions, and be thoughtful.

At the end of this yearlong process, we as a board were stronger and more united than we had ever been. Without this year of board development, I’m not sure we would have survived the departure of our founding executive director. (Unluckily for us, our action item to start thinking about succession planning was on the next month’s to-do list – I’ll talk about that in another post).

Made or Born?

I don’t know the ultimate answer to this question, but in our case, a board that could lead was made.  I think that boards can learn to be better leaders – it happened to us, and we continue to reap the benefits of that board development. Throughout the transition, a number of board members who had previously been mainly silent stepped up and offered their time, advice, input, and office space to help us through the transition. As a board chair, I couldn’t ask for a better outcome – for us, learning to lead was a lesson that reaped huge benefits for every board member, and for our organization.