associations | Golden's Rules for Associations

The Staff > CEO > Board Relationship: A Matter of Perspective

29 January 2026 Leave a comment

Last week I wrote about the association CEO’s unique position in governance, situated as it is between professional staff and voluntary directors/leaders. That focused on the CEO’s role in advancing a culture of stewardship at both the staff and voluntary levels. I received numerous comments from CEO colleagues who agreed with everything I said but raised a slightly different and potentially more problematic set of circumstances surrounding board/staff roles. (And I heard more than one horror story about where, in their experience, things went bad, in one case to the point of nearly costing the CEO their job.)

The basic principle is straightforward: the CEO is responsible to the board; all other staff are responsible to the CEO. Staff performance is itself a part of the accountability that the CEO has to the board.

Most often, all staff hiring, firing, promotion, and compensation decisions are explicitly and specifically delegated exclusively to the CEO in his/her contract. And frankly, in my own experience, I have been pretty impressed by how seriously boards have shown respect for that separation of authority. They understand why it’s so important: the board can’t hold the CEO accountable for staff performance if the board is meddling in the CEO’s autonomy to exercise the authority necessary to building and maintaining a high-performing staff.

Pretty straight forward in principle. But as my peers’ reactions to that column demonstrated, not always so clear in practice.

The Board’s Limited Perspective of Staff

Where the challenge can arise is a matter of the board’s limited perspective of staff. Some staff positions are more member-facing than others. These are the staff members that voluntary leaders see and interact with directly. They have direct evidence of how well or how poorly such staff are performing those portions of their responsibilities that are visible to them. The problem is, they are forming a judgement based on only a limited perspective of that staff member. And they only see the pieces that touch them.

Who Goes Unnoticed?

It’s why I always get so uncomfortable when the board wants to publicly recognize a member of staff for a job well done, even when such recognition is richly deserved. Now, I am all for recognizing and celebrating individual staff everywhere and in every way that it can be done. But when the board or a committee wants to single out the director of meetings for a successful conference, or the director of credentialling for the successful launch of a new certification, or the director of government relations for a legislative win, this can potentially set off negative ramifications elsewhere in staff.

The board isn’t wrong in perceiving and wanting to acknowledge the performance of a staff member they work with directly. But they can only recognize the performance of the staff members they actually see. Who else goes unnoticed? There are always others, in less directly member-facing roles who may have contributed as much or more to the accomplishment being recognized.

There are also staff members whose roles are no less critical to the organization but are largely invisible to voluntary leaders. The only way they will ever come to the board’s attention is if something goes horribly wrong.

When any staff member who had a material role in the success the board is celebrating are left out of recognition, and whenever a staff member or department feels unrecognized, they feel demotivated, unappreciated, and marginalized.

What Aspects of Even the Staff Members They See Are Hidden from Them?

And my colleagues pointed out an even worse case but not entirely uncommon scenario. There is a staff member the board or committee works with closely and continuously over a long period of time. That staff member is exceptional in the level and quality of support they provide the board or committee. Personal relationships are built.

But they are seeing only the piece of an iceberg that is above the water.

What if there are other, legitimate performance, skill, or behavioral issues going on underneath?

Generally, these issues are minor and manageable. They might be uncomfortable and difficult for the CEO but buckle up. They can and need to be addressed. Most often, with a competent CEO, they are.

An Admittedly Extreme Example

But one particularly egregious case shared with me concerned a staff liaison who was truly extraordinary in meeting the member-facing aspects of his job. An absolute super star. But hidden from the voluntary component he supported were deeply problematic performance issues vis-à-vis this individual’s interactions with other staff. Persistent patterns of behavior that were contrary (and corrosive) to staff values and culture. And at so serious a level that other staff found ways to work around him rather than try to deal with him directly. He was that toxic an employee.

As the CEO who shared this story put it to me, she had gone to great lengths to coach and develop the employee, providing training and support and encouragement that would allow him to correct his deficiencies and be truly successful at all levels of his job. She admitted that she went above and beyond the lengths she would have gone to with a staff member in a less member-facing role. Still, the employee’s behavior truly rose to a level where dismissal was warranted. But, my CEO colleague added, “how could I fire an employee so universally beloved by every member of leadership he ever supported?”

Of course, one extreme case does not generalize to the commonplace. But it underlines the critical necessity for the CEO to cultivate a level of awareness, appreciation, and understanding by the board and other voluntary leadership that every staff member is an iceberg and they only see the piece above the water.

Building a Foundation of Trust

This is a matter of appreciating not just the principle at work but earning a solid relationship of trust by the board in the CEO’s judgement sufficient to weather the hopefully rare occasions when such a degree of trust is needed. Despite the cognitive dissonance between what the voluntary leader sees in the employee and the actions the CEO takes, do they have enough confidence in the CEO to accept on faith that he or she knows what they are doing, and that it is truly in the best interests of the organization?

As a CEO, by the time you are in the difficult situation, it is too late. Trust needs to be earned and banked before you need to rely upon it.

Disclaimer

The ideas contained here are my own. I do not speak for any organization or company.

AI was used to generate the image accompanying this post. I do NOT use AI to research, generate or edit drafts.

Filed under Uncategorized Tagged with Association Governance, association profession, associations, leadership, The Nature of Associations

The Power (and Limitations) of Social Media

24 April 2016 Leave a comment

At a recent conference, I was diligent in my efforts to use social media to not only capture my own notes, but share them with my colleagues and associates, present and absent. I got a decent amount of reaction and interaction for my efforts. Retweets, likes, comments and discussion. (Nothing remotely viral, mind you, but my efforts did not go unnoticed by the (in the grand scheme of the world) relatively small community of professionals who share my interests and concerns.)

I even got a tweet from a colleague whom I admire and who was not at the conference that my social media flow “made me feel like I was there and able to participate.”

I was simultaneously flattered and horrified by the reaction.

Flattered, because it suggested, perhaps, that I had been reasonably successful in a small but arguably impactful way in amplifying engagement and advancing the discourse of the brick-and-mortar event within the likeminded community who care about my profession and its future.

Gratified that the focus achieved through the laborious process of reducing insights to fit the 140 character limits of the media seemed to have been successful.

Horrified to think that these soundbites, absent all the context, nuance and depth of the intellectual substance generated by the conference itself, could conceivably pass for (and be accepted) as remotely adequate or even marginally profound.

Frustrated that the limitations of capturing the idea is sometimes achieved at the expense of failing to give full or proper credit to the source of the insight. Just because I tweeted it doesn’t mean the thought was mine. But with a 140 character limit, there is only so much capacity to convey an idea and give proper credit where credit is due. (The media almost compel us to become involuntary plagiarists.)

And in my morning after moment, I am left wondering: We live in a world where political engagement and news have already been reduced to soundbites, slogans and attention grabbing at the expense of substance, a process readily evident in the current presidential political campaigns and how they are covered. This has replaced serious political discourse and deep engagement with achieving solutions to the complex issues and challenges that face us as a society. News has evolved from “what bleeds, leads” to whatever can ignite passion is more important than advancing the dialogue in any meaningful way. That passion is not a bad thing; maybe it is even a critically necessary thing. It is just insufficient if it fails to enable action that achieves actual solutions. (It has been two years since #bringbackourgirls galvanized global attention … but those girls are still gone.) In politics, that passion can even be counterproductive to actually getting anything done and impede building any basis for consensus as a foundation for concrete action.

Maybe I am just sleep deprived and it will all look better tomorrow, but the question I am left with: Have associations (or really any cause or mission-driven enterprise) become as attention-deficit benighted as our politics and news, and do we now accept that soundbites (slogans) that resonate actually do constitute sufficient wisdom and knowledge? Or constitute an actual accomplishment?

I do not want to in any way dismiss or disparage the sincerity and good will behind this new , social media reality … I just wonder whether it actually is getting us anywhere.

Or worse, creates an illusion of substance that enables complacency.

Filed under Social Media & Associations Tagged with associations, impact, Social Media & Associations, twitter

Radical orthodoxy

6 May 2013 Leave a comment

It is something of a commonplace to refer to associations as a kind of family or even to think of our mission-driven efforts as in some ways similar to a religion: an effort to organize like-minded individuals who share a common cause … a cause that is integral to both who they are as individuals (in our case, generally, members of the same industry or profession) and as part of something larger than individual self-interest. We want our members to be passionately engaged, not mere consumers of products and services. We want to make a difference and change the world in some way, hopefully for the better. We even sometimes talk about being “evangelists” for our profession, industry or cause.

That thought came home hard with me while recently reading something about my own church. Which church is irrelevant and naming it would only serve to derail the discussion in unrelated directions. It isn’t about what one church believes or how you feel about it. It isn’t meant to suggest that any of our organizations are as profoundly important as any church is. Just go along with me for the moment, accepting that a church — any church — is a non-profit, voluntary organization with a mission. What this commentator said about this church struck me as relevant for associations, too. Paraphrasing to the point of plagiarism, that commentary ran along the following lines:

Association membership or engagement maintained merely out of cultural habit or legal/governmental establishment “has no future because it does not merit a future.” A mission-driven organization that does not get out into the world and act upon what it believes sooner or later gets sick “in the hothouse atmosphere of its own self-absorption.”

When any organization gets too concerned about itself — its structure, hierarchy, governance, internal politics, culture — rather than its mission, the purpose it exists to serve, it “falls victim to a kind of narcissism.” That narcissism leads to an irrelevant and self-referential focus on its own sophistication in form and operation. This is where organizations get sidetracked by hugely contentious internal matters that, if we allow them to (and how often we do allow them to), become all-consuming efforts around matters that don’t actually matter.

We rationalize it, of course, and make it sound reasonable. We tell ourselves that it would be foolish to take external actions until we get our own houses in order … until we get the membership model exactly right. Or governance perfected. Or whatever.

But where does that leave us vis-à-vis our mission? Bold action, it is true, means that you risk something. “Just as things can happen to someone who leaves the safety of home: accidents can happen.” But isn’t “risking an injured organization far preferable to a sick organization, palsied by self-absorption?”

Such radicalism is “going to take some getting used to. Expect serious disorientation in those ideological redoubts where old battles over now-superceded [self-referential institutional constructs] … remain all-consuming.”

“Some may find it hard to reconcile … radicalism with orthodoxy. But that’s precisely what orthodoxy is: the adventure of radical conversion ordered to mission.”

I realize that these ramblings run the risk of fueling the fires of another pitfall we face: an overinflated sense of our own importance. After all, we aren’t responsible for men’s souls or eternity. Hubris is as catastrophic as self-absorbed complacency. Maybe even more so. Associations are important … but we are not that important.

Still … we are organizations defined by mission. We should be organizations driven by mission. Keeping our houses in order is important, but only in so far as being better organized and structured, operationally efficient, and philosophically consistent makes us better at achieving our mission.

Start with the end in mind, build capacity, achieve results, as Stephen Covey put it.

But never forget the core purpose, the mission, along the way. That never changes, and shouldn’t as long as the mission itself remains relevant. Being radical and orthodox means taking chances with everything else, risking everything else, in a ceaseless effort to be true to the reason the organization was created in the first place: its mission.

Filed under The Way We Are Tagged with associations, mission, purpose