When I’m providing trustee training and, indeed, at other times when talking to new charity trustees, I often tell the story about Mark (not his real name), one trustee of a charity where I worked, whose role at every meeting was to ask: “Why are we doing things like this? I have an idea… Have we thought about doing this instead?”
Other trustees would always roll their eyes, sigh loudly and say “Oh, Mark! You do this at every meeting. It just takes up time when we could be making more important decisions! You know why our charity wants to do this.”
And he would reply by saying “Of course I do. But part of my role, and your roles too really, is to be awkward, to share queries, and to ensure that we’re asking the difficult questions.” And he was right.
One of the most crucial clauses in any trustee’s Role Description* – which comes right after the one that clearly sets out all trustees’ responsibilities to ensure equity, diversity and inclusion is embedded in both the Board and the day-to-day organisational thinking and operation – is the two lines that say: “Willingness to speak your mind and appropriately challenge other trustees and employees with good intent” and “Able to make unpopular recommendations to the Board, if necessary”
Take a look at what this means in practice:
“Speak your mind” is easy: Be honest, use your experience, skills, and knowledge but also your opinions and viewpoints.
“Appropriately challenge” should also be clear: Challenging thoughts and ideas is good, as Mark knew, although there may be occasions when it’s not appropriate, or the method of challenge you use could be seen as confrontational.
‘”With good intent” is a phrase I came across recently which is really important. Mark’s challenges were often made with a smile and a glint in his eye, always with the best intention, but if his questions to other trustees and the CEO had another, maybe hidden, agenda, then that criterion would not have been fulfilled.
“Make unpopular recommendations” brings a smile to my face and always reminds me of Mark’s understanding of the biggest failings of even otherwise-very-good Boards: We come to all think alike. The tendency to ‘groupthink’ is an easy trap for all Boards to fall into, because it’s more straightforward to agree with popular ideas or to come up with plans that everyone else agrees to. So many times, Mark, and other great trustees from different organisations, rattled their Board’s groupthinking mode, by suggesting something that seemed unpopular with their fellow trustees, making cases for new ideas, and asking for more information so that they didn’t always follow the expected status-quo. This makes for a great Board, lively discussions, great decisions, and many, many great services, sometimes even something no one else had yet tried.
And it demonstrates diversity: Diversity of thought.
A mixture of genders, races and ages, amongst many other characteristics, is so vital, but you can still have Boards that look very different and still think alike, or come to think alike. If you’re a new trustee, maybe even new to charity trusteeship, there will be some pressure (even if from yourself) to conform to the norms of that group.
So, be like Mark. Be challenging, with good intent. Ask that awkward question “Why are we doing things like this?”
Get in touch with me, Mike Allen, Involve’s Trustee Recruitment & Liaison Officer, to find out more about the inTRUSTed programme and the support we can provide.
* And if you’re not using trustee Role Descriptions (and Person Specifications), how do you know your trustees are doing their voluntary job correctly, or if they are even the right person to do it?