Governance as leadership: What organizations want from board members

For the past several years, I have had the opportunity to be a faculty member of the Board Leadership Institute (BLI), sponsored by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. During my presentation at the institute, I share principles I’ve learned over time from my experience on boards and with organizations. Successful leadership of an organization depends on board members being knowledgeable about their core values and potential contributions to the organization. Mastery of fundamental knowledge and characteristics expected of a board is central, therefore, to effective board membership.

Below are some of the concepts and principles I share and discuss at the Board Leadership Institute together with resources and references you can use to develop your own knowledge base about what organizations want from board members. During the course of my BLI presentation, I advise attendees to:

• Be intentional about their board leadership aspirations. Understand governance as leadership.
• Know the wisdom of contributions based on talents, strengths, and values.
• Master skills associated with change and transformation, futures literacy, levels of perspective, polarities, and competing values.
• Understand the power of alignment and logical levels of learning and leadership.
• Know the basic responsibilities of board work and how to be an effective and ethical board member.
• Be clear about the importance of expectations related to fundraising, philanthropy, fiduciary responsibility, and return on investments.
• Commit to being a team player by developing resilience and through personal and professional renewal.

A place at the table? BLI is

an excellent place to prepare.

Basically, the 10 responsibilities of nonprofit boards are to: 1) determine the organization’s mission and purpose, 2) select the chief executive officer, 3) provide proper financial oversight, 4) ensure adequate resources, 5) ensure legal and ethical integrity, and maintain accountability, 6) ensure effective organizational planning, 7) recruit and orient new board members, and assess board performance, 8) enhance the organization’s public standing, 9) determine, monitor, and strengthen the organization’s programs and services, and 10) support the chief executive and assess his or her performance.

Richard Chait and his colleagues, William Ryan and Barbara Taylor, observe that effective boards attend to the following variables. They pay attention to the context and culture of the organization, while discerning needs of members and stakeholders. They build a sense of community and inclusiveness among members, and they value education and development among themselves and members of the organization. Effective boards cultivate future leadership and build community. They possess analytic skills that help discern relationships among the complexities of competing issues. They value differences of opinion and seek out information that helps them in their deliberations. Effective boards are politically sensitive, and they communicate and attend to needs of all stakeholders. Effective boards are strategic rather than bound up in the day-to-day operations of the organization.

If you are eager to learn more about board leadership, consider attending the Board Leadership Institute scheduled for 18-19 August in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. If you are unable to attend, check out the variety of learning resources available that provide information and guidance regarding organizational governance of for-profit and nonprofit boards. Resources I especially like are available through an organization called BoardSource. Also, read Nurse on Board: Planning Your Path to the Board Room. Authored by the late Connie Curran, EdD, RN, FAAN, the book was recently published by Sigma Theta Tau International.

Join the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International for the Board Leadership Institute! The program will be held all day on Thursday, 18 August, and end midday on Friday, 19 August. Register by 8 July to receive the Early Bird rate of US $599!

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. Comments are moderated. Those that promote products or services will not be posted.

From vision to action: Discover the Nexus

To what degree are you contributing to the vision and reality of interprofessional practice and education? To become a part of this national and international movement, explore the resources and activities of the National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education (the Nexus). If you are already involved in interprofessional practice and education, you should definitely consider registering and becoming a part of the growing Nexus network. The story of Amina best represents the vision of the national center in advancing a desired future for practice and education in the health professions.

People Images/iStock

Recently, I had the opportunity to facilitate a national conference hosted by the Nexus. More than 100 people from around the United States who are part of the national center’s Innovation Network came to Minneapolis to share stories, insights, and results of ongoing initiatives related to the movement. Drawing upon a variety of liberating structures, participants engaged in dialogue and shared learning about their individual projects, challenges, and issues. The social networking and cross-pollination of ideas, experiences, and lessons learned fostered additional innovations and insights among conference participants.

The center is supported by Health Resources and Services Administration Cooperative Agreement Award No. UE5HP25067 with major funding from the Josiah Macy Jr Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and the University of Minnesota. If you are looking for resources and ideas to advance research, teaching, or partnerships in interprofessional education and practice, explore the center’s website and go to the Nexus Learning System or Resource Center links to learn more and connect with others.

One of the most exciting aspects of the center’s work is the creation of a National Center Data Repository (NCDR) that will support comparative effectiveness research about the value and promise of interprofessional practice and education efforts to meet the triple aims of high-quality patient experiences, improved population health, and lower costs. As the center continues its work and learns over time, it will be an example of an organization turning vision into action.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. Comments are moderated. Those that promote products or services will not be posted.

Influence, power, and activism

There is focused effort to get more nurses on governing boards. The goal is to have 10,000 nurses serving in that role by the year 2020. There is no doubt that nurses have much to offer in terms of knowledge, skills and experience, but many are apprehensive about issues of influence, power, and activism.

I continue to be perplexed by the paradox that, although nursing is ranked consistently as one of the most respected professions, nurses are not regarded as being very influential. What does it take for nurses to own and master their influence skills? Eleanor Sullivan, PhD, RN, FAAN, a past president of the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International (STTI), tackles this issue in her book Becoming Influential: A Guide for Nurses, 2nd edition (2013), Prentice Hall, Boston, MA. In "Taking the Mystery Out of Influence," Sullivan advises reading the subtext of situations and going beyond the non-verbal to gain influence insights. Suggesting that professional presence supports influence consciousness, she notes that power is a foundation for influence. Perhaps nurses need new ways to think about the powers they possess?

Six stages of power
Janet Hagberg’s model of personal power is a useful guide for reflecting on the dynamics of what she identifies as the six stages of power: 1) powerlessness, 2) power by association, 3) power by achievement, 4) power by reflection, 5) power by purpose, and 6) power by wisdom. She believes there is a developmental trajectory to these stages and that people grow and evolve from one stage to another. She describes the characteristics of each stage, where people can get stuck, and how a person can move forward from stage to stage. 

mindscanner/iStock/Thinkstock

Observing that individuals can be, at any particular moment and relative to other people, at various stages of power, Hagberg links these stages to issues of leadership and motivation. Using her model and reflecting on one’s own developmental progress in regard to stages of power leads to insights and understanding of self and others. I personally believe that, to be effective and successful as a governing board member, power by reflection, power by purpose, and power by wisdom—stages 4, 5, and 6—are required.

Armed with influence, empowered nurses activate leadership skills. As Karen Kelly, EdD, RN, CNAA, BC, notes in “From apathy to political activism,” published in American Nurse Today (2007), there is a developmental trajectory associated with activism. It moves from apathy to buy in to self-interest to acquisition of political sophistication to leading the way. There is an emerging community of people who are becoming health activists and there are great stories about nurse activists. To prepare nurses to serve on boards, we need to do a better job of helping them own their influence, master their power, and be better activists, particularly at the grass-roots level.

What are your current beliefs and values in regard to the triple helix of influence, power, and activism? Where are you developmentally on the journey from powerlessness to wisdom? What are the compelling issues that ignite your reflection, purpose-power, and wisdom? How will you contribute your leadership talents to a nonprofit or for-profit organization that is meaningful to you? How will you move beyond apprehension to confidence? On what governing board will you serve? Will you be one of 10,000 nurses who serve on a board? The year 2020 is not far off.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. Comments are moderated. Those that promote products or services will not be posted.

Systems thinking and generative leadership

Nursing leadership has a significant role to play in sensemaking and supporting development of learning for the purpose of strengthening global health care systems.

Through understanding of system dynamics and interaction patterns over time, a leader’s influence and impact on positive organizational change can be strengthened. Such influence requires attention to the five disciplines of a learning organization: personal mastery, ability to discern and make mental models explicit, co-creating with others a shared vision of a desired future that is contrasted with a present state, and team-learning that supports an ongoing cycle of action-oriented systems thinking. Working intentionally in systems that aspire to become learning organizations requires development of personal mastery, based on one’s strengths and professional purpose-management.

Personal mastery requires dealing with paradox, ambiguity, and holding the creative tension of opposites, especially when people have competing or contrasting mental models or worldviews. Being open, honest, and direct supports exploration of mental models. Having a vision supports a generative—as opposed to remedial—mind-set. Understanding how the parts of a system influence each other aids sensemaking. Finally, building a shared vision requires contrasting a present state of affairs with a desired future state.

The gap between here and now, and there and then, sets up a creative tension that activates generative leadership. Navigating and negotiating tensions between compliance and commitment result in shared visions in service of greater purposes in the context of an organization’s mission, vision, and contribution to the social order. Consider exploring the world of systems thinking to enhance your leadership skill set.

Archetype learning

For some years now, in leadership courses I teach, I challenge and engage students to analyze situations and experiences through positive and negative system archetypes. The results are always fascinating. Students gain new and surprising insights into system dynamics they need to negotiate. Through systems thinking and sensemaking, students realize there are creative and generative solutions to seemingly intractable problems.

Archetype learning and systems thinking require perspective taking and a “balcony view” that reveals patterns that are often tacit. Systems thinking helps make these patterns explicit. Mapping and representing system dynamics help one visualize the balancing and reinforcing loops, as well as the delays and unintended consequences, of system dynamics. Being able to discern one’s own mental models, as well as those of others, requires reflection, inquiry, and advocacy. Mastering techniques of systems thinking, inquiry, and advocacy is essential to insight and action.

Negative archetype dynamics can easily be identified in health care scenarios today—for example: limits to growth, shifting the burden, eroding goals, escalation, success to the successful, tragedy of the commons, fixes that fail, growth and underinvestment. Knowing the early-warning signs of each of these negative archetypes can activate a management-leadership principle that will help in the resolution or remedy of the negative system dynamic, in service of one that is more positive.

Knowing the negative archetype dynamic is useful in terms of thinking of its opposite. Positive archetypes include: plan for limits, strut your stuff, collective agreement, invest for success, fixes that work, bite the bullet, stay on track, cooperative partners, win-win, and be your best! System archetypes are held in place by actors, policies, and procedures that may be in competition with espoused beliefs, values, or intentions.

Systems thinking is an essential knowledge management or leadership skill and supports integral understanding of the interconnectedness of all parts in a system. Systems thinking, generative leadership, and sensemaking are skills that nurses possess. It is our systems thinking and generativity, as well as our sensitivity to negative and positive system archetypes, that provide insight and direction for the nursing leadership crucial to strengthening global health care systems.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. Comments are moderated. Those that promote products or services will not be posted.

Becoming wholehearted

Recently, I became aware of the work of Brené Brown, PhD, LMSW, who studies wholeheartedness. The evolution and development of her interests and research career is enlightening and inspiring. For a quick introduction to her work, check out this TED video, where she talks about the power of vulnerability and the importance of human connection. What is most fascinating to me is that she began studying wholeheartedness as a result of her research interest in the concept of shame. I struggle with issues of shame. Everyone does. Brown’s definition? Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and, therefore, unworthy of love and belonging.

Brown makes the following points about shame. We all have shame, and it is one of the most primitive human emotions we experience. The only people who do not have shame lack the capacity for empathy and human connection. We are all afraid to talk about shame. The less we talk about shame, the more control it has over our lives. Shame is the opposite of owning our story and feeling worthy. Shame is different than guilt, which is about doing something bad. Shame is a belief that I am bad and not enough.

It was through her study of shame that Brown discovered wholehearted people, individuals who had developed shame resilience. Men and women with high shame resilience have four things in common. They understand shame and recognize what messages and expectations trigger shame for them. They practice critical awareness by reality-checking the messages and expectations that tell us being imperfect means being inadequate. They reach out and share their stories with people they trust. They speak shame. They use the word “shame.” They talk about what they are feeling and ask for what they need.

As I reflect on my nursing career, I realize that many of the dysfunctional dynamics I have observed in individuals, groups and organizations oftentimes involve issues of and responses to shame. I wonder what would happen if we started talking about shame and the effects of shame in our personal and professional lives?

Antidotes to shame involve the following: cultivation of authenticity, self-compassion, a resilient spirit, gratitude and joy, intuition and trusting faith, and creativity. Developing shame resilience also includes letting go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self-worth. It involves cultivating calm and stillness, and letting go of self-doubt and “supposed-to.” It involves cultivating laughter, song and dance, and letting go of being cool and “always in control.”

If you want to learn more about wholeheartedness and developing shame resilience, check out Brown’s work. She is delivering important messages to the world about the power and value of vulnerability, compassion, courage and connection. Nurses everywhere will benefit personally and professionally from her wisdom, advice and careful attention to the research available on the subject of wholeheartedness and authenticity. Developing shame resilience is a practice worth pursuing.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International.

Gremlins and grace: Challenges for a new year

As the holiday season and another year came to a close, I reflected how, in the recent past, my gremlin kept surfacing to influence, hamper and interfere with my thinking, doing and relating. One of my colleagues suggested I read Rick Carson’s book, Taming Your Gremlin. I did, and it has given me new ways to monitor, notice and respond to my personal gremlins.

As we begin a new year, I think it is a good time to take stock, reflect and consider how best to tame one’s gremlins. According to Carson, taming one’s gremlin involves the process of noticing and choosing—
moment-to-moment—light over darkness, good over evil and the love that sustains over the fear likely to destroy. If you have one or more gremlins that need taming, explore Rick Carson’s website and learn more about gremlin taming.

Of special note are his tips for taming gremlins. Pictures people have created that visually represent personal gremlins of many types and varieties is available in his Gallery of Gremlins. Feeling creative about describing your personal gremlin? Perhaps you will want to respond to Carson’s invitation to draw and submit a picture of your own gremlin to his Gremlin gallery?

Gremlins often take charge of the chatterbox inside our heads. Gremlin taming is one way to manage the chatterbox. Another way is to create a state-of-grace document for yourself and with others.

The five components of a state-of-grace document are: 1) the story of me/us, 2) interaction styles and warning signs, 3) expectations and core values, 4) questions to return to peace, and 5) short- and long-term agreements. A state-of-grace document can become a blueprint for positive healthy relating. Creating a state-of-grace document for yourself and with those you care about provides a stimulus for conversation, dialogue and understanding.

Learn more about these documents and consider how gremlin taming and grace can be incorporated into your personal and professional development plans for the new year, 2011.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International.

Paradoxes of group life: Is the profession of nursing caught in a self-referential bind?

Group life is permeated with contradictory thoughts, actions and emotions. Groups bound together by a purpose often spend time trying to negotiate and unravel the contradictory forces associated with relating to each other in a meaningful way. Such negotiations often result in a paralyzing circular process of conflict, enmeshment and paralysis rather than reflection and transformational dialogue. Smith and Berg (1987) in their classic work, Paradoxes of Group Life, note that making the invisible, paradoxical nature of group life visible helps unravel some of the paradoxical dynamics of conflict.

Clustered under the three essential group concepts of belonging, Smith and Berg identify tensions associated with identity, involvement, individuality and boundaries. Under the concept of engagement, they discuss tensions and issues associated with the dynamics of disclosure, trust, intimacy and regression. The issue of speaking in group life is explained in the dynamics of individual versus collective voice, authority, dependency, creativity and courage.

Group life revolves around several paradoxical tensions. Consider the complementary dynamics associated with tensions between the individual~group, self~other, conscious~unconscious processes, dependence~independence, stuckness~movement, framing~reframing, participation~control, disclosure~non-disclosure, fear~courage, isolation~intimacy, belonging~not belonging, splitting~connecting, and issues of introjection~projection.

Smith and Berg suggest the dynamic responsible for the paralysis and difficulty in group life is a “self-referential bind.” They write: “When a social entity uses itself as a mirror through which it judges what it is like, it often only sees those parts of itself that confirms what it wants to know, that is, that it will enable it to remain as it wants to be. Systems that are self-referential create binds for themselves that are difficult to get out of” (1987, p 48).

The bind that groups create is the paradox that emerges as a result of projections and introjections as groups engage in splitting and fractionation around issues of identity (we-they) and issues related to errors of logical type. Projections are defined as taking something from the inside and mapping it to the outside. Introjections are the mapping of outside onto the inside. Projections and introjections are forms of displacement, where some dynamic that belongs in one place is moved to another.

When the projection~introjection dynamic is co-mingled with subgroup formation in group role taking, collective splitting results in social interactive processes that are paradoxical and paralyzing. Multiple frames create conflicts that appear to be irresolvable and foster double-bind situations that elicit multiple contradictions and meanings. Framing and reframing these contradictions in different ways leads groups to developmental insights that evolve the group beyond intractable, paralytic dynamics. Reframing changes the meaning, content or context of a situation so people develop new insights about intentions and actions.

So, as I witness the dialogue and debate surrounding the Advanced Practice Registered Nurse (APRN) consensus model, and ponder consequences of the Essentials of Doctoral Education for Advanced Practice Nursing on the future of master’s degree education, and consider services the profession will provide to the public, and explore the fifth iteration of the Draft Masters in Nursing Education Essentials document, I ask myself: As a profession, are we caught in a self-referential bind? How might we reframe all of the contradictions in such a way that we gain insights that move us beyond intractable, paralytic dynamics?

What do you think?

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International.