Can Your Board Members Coach?

At a Glance:

• Aligned boards are crucial for supporting CEOs and driving company success

• Common issues include CEO identity struggles and self-serving board members

• Great boards look out for the company and the leader, navigate healthy tension, and consider the long term 

• The most important skill for the next generation of effective board members? Coaching 

The Three Types of Boards: 

We’ve been talking about the three types of boards effective leaders benefit from: a Personal Board of Directors, a group of trusted advisors who help us grow personally and professionally; an Inner Board, which is an internal conversation among the different “parts” of ourselves that drive decisions and our emotional state, and a Company Board, which oversees the business and our performance. 

Building an Aligned, Supportive Company Board 

In my book, Reignition, I tell the story of reaching out to my board at Jive while facing a very difficult life situation. The company was on fire, but I was struggling. Instead of supporting me through the issues, they sought to push me aside. Ill-equipped to handle anything other than a“fight through the pain” mentality, they moved to bring in another CEO, one of a number of decisions that led to the company’s demise on the public markets. 

I vowed at that point to support the inner life of CEOs and leaders (and by extension, everyone they touch). It’s not just the right thing to do, but also the nucleus of cultural health, innovation, and long-term value. 

Sadly, great boards are rare, but they’re possible. Whether you have a board, act as a board member, or both, here are some ideas to consider. 

What goes wrong? 

With CEOs, the biggest issue is their identity. They see the board as their “boss” and do anything humanly possible to look good, ignoring hard truths, neglecting the help of the board, and exhibiting a form of theater intended to make the company seem further along than it really is.   

They also don’t know which investors or board members will be best for them, how to manage those they do bring on, or how to hold a boundary. That means boards often display a number of crappy traits: 

• Backgrounds are not diverse 

• Don’t deeply understand the business 

• Apply older thinking / strategies that aren’t as applicable  

• Want to hear themselves talk 

• See the company as a “bet,” not a system of people 

• Are a pawn of the investors, not a unique entity 

• Check out in meetings 

• Apply overly broad “pattern matching” when unique solutions are needed

Building an Aligned Board: 

Other than “the opposite of what I’ve outlined above,” here are some important and overlooked attributes: 

• Deep alignment: members have a shared purpose with the company and a long-term perspective on its potential 

• Healthy tension: a diverse group that shares a multitude of perspectives to drive good outcomes on issues that matter (this last part is key) 

• Willing to get their hands dirty: help with recruiting, selling, coaching

The One Board Skill that Matters Now: 

I recently facilitated a dinner of 25 VCs and Founders on the future of great board members. In that dinner, I said there is one skill that board members should develop if they want to succeed in this next era:

Coaching 

I told them to take a coaching class. Even just a 3–5 day class. You shouldn’t be “the” coach for the CEO (that person should be separate from the board), but having those skills will be the WD-40 for your relationship and help ensure your CEO is in the best “athletic shape” for the role. 

Not all of the VCs were ready to hear this, but I would say 60% were in agreement. And it probably would have been 10% just fifteen years ago when I had my issues. 

Things are Changing 

Other than keeping up with important trends like DEI and cybersecurity, great boards are aligned with leaders’ inner lives. As technology becomes commoditized, recruiting the best people, keeping them engaged, and building strong emotional connections with customers will become the basis of breakout companies. It’s time to shift our thinking on great boards.  

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