What is the Hallmark of an Exceptional Board?

What does an exceptional Board look like? Many people believe that their Board is a great Board because they have all of their governance best practices checked off and their Board members are high caliber individuals with exceptional business acumen and connections.

The highest standards of good governance and high scores in governance reviews are an important gauge of Board-effectiveness, but they don’t necessarily identify the exceptional Boards. In fact, a Board that purely functions from a fixed view of form and structure, that operates by the letter of the law, is unlikely to be destined for remarkableness. While good governance structure doesn’t guarantee an exceptional Board, it can help improve the chances that a Board will function competently. The most compliant Boards are typically good Boards, but they are also rarely the exceptional Boards.

Because Boards are made up of a group of people, it is within that conscious interaction and chemistry that the exceptional Board is made. An exceptional Board is made by the level of conscious awareness by the Board itself. How consciously do they interact with each other? Do they work really well together? Do they overreact to adversity and make knee-jerk reactions or approach a difficult situation with calmness, clarity, conscious awareness and follow due process?

The level of consciousness in a Board is the collective consciousness that accrues to that Board through the individuals who interact with that Board. These individuals include the Board members themselves, the CEO (who potentially has the largest impact on the level of consciousness in the organisation), the senior executives, the staff, the suppliers and the recipients of the business outcomes. “Consciousness” is a way of connecting what “is” at the present moment with what is possible, with all the possibilities. Consciousness means deeds, not words. To operate consciously the Board needs to destroy and uncreate the view of business ethos as a combat zone of conflicting forces and to see harmony, not conflict, as the innate state of a conscious organisation.

Consciousness is at the core of both personal and organizational growth and expansiveness. Consciousness is crucial both within the individual Board member, and within the organisation. At the Board level, a culture of consciousness facilitates a balanced integration of organisational values, vision, strategic and operational realities.

Conscious governing is not about force but about energy and direction. It is not behaviour or policy; it is a focus and mindful awareness. A Conscious Board has focus, clarity, coherence, synchronization, intuitive insight and empathy and can earn trust and provide direction.

The seven identifying qualities of conscious governance:

1. Wisdom- Conscious Boards are wise in their vision and knowledgeable in their responsibility and technical competence to allow manifestation of their vision. In other words, they are excellent at providing strategic leadership. A Board that is policy centric and focuses on purely technical compliance is useless unless it also spends a majority of its focus strategically. The Board needs to ensure that it understands its role as strategic, so it does not micro manage, thus encroaching on the role of management.

2. Fully engaged -The fully engaged Boards are totally present in their decision making, emotionally secure, mentally fortified and mission/vision aligned. They have multi-dimensional integration of emotional energy, mental energy and physical energy. These aspects constantly interact with each other and create the complex web which turns into reality. Disharmony occurs when one or more of these energies are more sustained above the other. Most Boards have the problem of mental and emotional imbalance in an extreme form. This comes from the discrepancy between what people are thinking and what they are feeling. To be fully engaged, the Board members must be physically secure, emotionally coherent, mentally lucid and whole heartedly aligned with a purpose beyond the immediate gratification and fulfilment. The first step in being a fully engaged Board is to know and fully embrace the organisation's vision and mission and understand the ultimate purpose of the Board. It is hard to be fully engaged to something if you don’t know what it is. A clearly defined Board purpose and Charter will prevent the Board from drifting aimlessly and from settling for side steps that take the focus away from the organisational vision and mission.

3. Openness to change- Openness to change means not operating from predetermined and fixed points of view. If the Board has a fixed point of view on anything, it will be locked into a routine and will not understand its business. This is one of the greatest risks that any Board, and thus the organisation, faces. As soon as something seems to be working well, questions need to be asked about what else is possible.

4. Strategic Practice and Renewal- The fundamental idea of a culture of consciousness is that organisational buoyancy and flexibility is crucial for sustainable success, and minimising organisational disturbance and trauma is critical. Concurrently, renewing creative thinking around processes and strategies is essential to be responsive to rapid changing environment and socio-political factors. The Board needs to ensure that it understands its role as strategic, so it does not micro manage. It needs to add value to the visionary decision making of the organization, not act as a compliance bottleneck.

5. Integrity and Truth -The Board is in a position that it expects and should receive the trust of their stakeholders and staff. The key secrete to this trust and integrity is to communicate only things that are true. People cannot relax and produce at their optimum in an atmosphere of distortion and concealment. A Conscious Board tells the truth to themselves and the people in the organisation. Consciousness is about willingness to receive everything, good or bad. The Conscious Board is willing to receive and know the truth, even though that truth sometimes is terrible and unsettling. This is done with the attitude of blameless inquiry that focuses on: What actually transpired? What can be done now? Fix it or fold it?

6. Coherence- Coherence is being present, focused, having clarity and synchronisation. When there is an alignment of strategy, relationship and communication between CEO, chair, Board, constituents and staff, that’s coherence. The Board that is driven by engagement and inspiration is usually highly coherent. Coherence can be thought of in four ways: emotional coherence, relationship coherence, communication coherence and strategic coherence.

7. Independence -Conscious Boards show evidence of a balance between cohesive and integrated leadership and yet are probing, penetrating and challenging of issues. They are not fractured, but independence of thought is encouraged and expected. The Board is not an instrument of collegiality where all agree, but the custodian of balance.

Now read this article: Cultivating a Conscious and Coherent Board

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About the author: Steven and Chutis Bowman are international speakers, best-selling authors and global leaders in providing practical frameworks and comprehensive approaches to assist Boards and Senior Executive Teams to reach higher levels of conscious awareness in governance, leadership, strategy and risk. Authors of Conscious Leadership-the Key to Success, and Leading Yourself to Money with Consciousness.

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