Is there an elephant in your boardroom?

Teams that confront conflict directly do better. But most of us don’t have the training to embrace conflict. That’s where a skilled facilitator can help:

I love leading board retreats. It’s one of my favorite things to do because groups dig into deep issues. Let me give you an example:

Halfway through a recent board retreat for a social service organization, important information surfaced.

Board members mentioned that the secretary had been inconsistent in her performance. She was not sharing meeting minutes in a timely manner. This hurt board members’ ability to govern the organization: Board members weren’t prepared to vote on issues and wasted precious time catching up.

The secretary came to the meeting late so she missed that part. But then she walked in and read the complaints on our meeting notes on the wall.

I know I felt awkward. I imagine everyone else in the room did too.

We needed to talk about this to move forward. We all recognized that there was an elephant in the room. We had a choice: To pretend that she hadn’t seen this or to dive into the issue.

We needed to dive in.

I asked her how she felt about her work as the secretary. She pointed at the notes on the wall and said, “Well, I guess there’s some complaints!”

I didn’t feel anger in the room. It seemed like everyone cared more about improvement than blame. I asked her calmly, “How do you feel about your work as secretary?”

She sat silently for a minute or two. I could feel the vastness of that moment.

What would she say? Would she be defensive? Would she be angry? How would we go forward? The board had fallen down too by not sharing their concerns.

We held our collective breath.

Then she opened up. She talked about the challenge of juggling her volunteer work as secretary on top of work responsibilities and parenting. She was disappointed in herself. But talking about it allowed us to make a plan that would suit her and the organization. We were able to move on to the larger concerns of the board retreat. The rest of the day felt more cohesive because we had tackled this issue.

I’m not afraid of the elephants in the room. On the contrary, saying the thing that others may not have the courage to say energizes me. I love opening up conversations and getting people talking about things they had left unsaid. That’s how people build trust – with honesty, directness, and group ownership of the hard stuff.

What elephants do you need to talk about? And how can you begin the conversation?

Try this at your next board meeting:
Notice the “elephants”: Topics that the group skirts around.
Consider: How would the group work better by talking about these elephants directly?
Build in time to talk about at least one of these elephants in a trustful, nonjudgmental way.  It may take a few meetings to get through all the elephants. Bring some peanuts!