Governance coaching

This is the Kingsport Community Hall. It is one of a 100 or more meeting halls and small community centres across Nova Scotia maintained and run entirely by volunteers.

If you are interested in making improvements to how your board works, your board-executive director relationship, or even how your organization connects with the broader community, governance coaching is worth considering as a change strategy. For board chairs and executive director pairs, the key players in this model, coaching can:

  • Support the leaders to act in ways that will help their organization to be governed more successfully
  • Provide the leaders with a confidential
 and “safe space” for honest conversation and for identifying practical strategies for achieving specific governance goals
  • Aid in planning, executing and assessing one or more small interventions over a short period of time
  • Address both the interpersonal and professional challenges of leadership.

Coaching sessions tend to be easy to schedule and can take place in person in an informal setting or at a distance with the help of online technologies like Zoom.

Coaching can emphasize an experiential or action/reflection approach to change. Small actions, even just initiating some “need to have” conversations, can lead to improvements.

The coaching model I like to use involves at least 4 meetings that can be spread over a year and therefore 4 or 5 board meetings. Coaching sessions with the board chair and ED could look like this:

  1. Introductions, expectations and identification of governance improvement interests & options. Agreement on coaching relationship.
  2. Identification of initial improvements to be attempted, coaching on approach and time frame for specific actions, setting dates for follow-up meetings
  3. Reflection on actions taken, results achieved, identification, of additional actions to be taken by the executive director and/or the board chair
  4. Reflection of progress, decision to continue coaching, if yes, selection of next improvement measures and time frame.

If you are an a board chair, an executive director or a consultant and are interested in working with this approach you are welcome to get in touch with me via the “Contact” page. I have more detailed outline of the model and would be happy to share it.