I love top 10 lists, especially at the end of the year. As we prepare to toast the close of 2016, my website analytics pointed me to the blog entries that you read and shared the most.
Whether you are a long-time reader or new to my writing, I hope this list helps your board career advance in the coming year.
The Work of the Board
1. Strategy: Four Ways It Can Bridge the Board-CEO Relationship
A collaborative chair and CEO can do a lot to set directors up for success. This post highlights four practices they can use to engage a board constructively on strategy.
2. Moving Beyond Conflict: How to Get Along Without Going Along
Board work depends on our ability to listen openly, find common understanding, and collaborate. Dealing with an opposing opinion is rarely simple and painless. This post explores the balance to be found between respecting another view and abandoning one’s principles entirely.
3. How to Be an Idea Fountain: Resources to Fuel Board Work
A colleague once noted that I could succeed by being crackerjack smart or by reading so much I came across as such. This compilation of governance-related resources reveals where I find some of my best news and ideas.
4. In the Silence: Three Powerful Questions to Ask Before You Speak
Spoiler alert: Whom does my question serve? Is this question a reflection of my responsibility or my curiosity? How does this question build our shared understanding?
The Subtleties of Role
5. Five Hard-learned Truths for the New Board Chair
When I stepped into my first board chair role, I felt like the dog that caught the car. Now what? After selling myself into the role, I had to actually do the job. This post explores five truths that helped me face a number of judgment calls.
6. The Vice Chair Role: How to Write Your Own Job Description
The vice chair gig is tricky, carrying responsibilities that vary with circumstances. So much of a vice’s opportunity for impact depends on subtleties that a policy document can’t summarize. This post views the vague job description as a platform for growth and service.
Motivation
7. The Rich Benefits of Board Work by Age and Stage
Regardless of where you are in your career, board service can boost your standing today and accelerate your progress going forward. How else can you refine your interpersonal skills, learn new industries, broaden your professional network, travel to new locales, and supplement your income?
8. A Call to Lead: How to Get Comfortable Feeling Uncomfortable
This post encouraged us all to stop merely participating and instead adopt a competitor’s mindset. It placed high value on work so engrossing that we wouldn’t dream of multitasking through it. And it emphasized the value of modest, yet consistent, progress.
9. How to Overcome Self-Doubt in the Boardroom
Readers always respond so generously when I reveal my setbacks. My experiences with disappointment have given me plenty of practice at pulling out of mental nosedives. This post skates over moments of doubt with three ways to boost confidence.
10. Starting Over: Four Things to Do When You Feel Discouraged
And because I’m not the only one who struggles, this post provides another crop of ways out of a professional funk. It all comes down to returning to the basics: communication, networking, knowledge and action.
Thank you for your continued support and encouragement in 2016. Your willingness to share my work and suggest new topics fuels my writing week after week. It’s been a pleasure learning with this community, an activity I look forward to continuing in 2017!
