Leading Boards Establish Inclusive Norms*
Agree on expectations for board practices and behaviors
Who This Is For
Board chair, committee chairs, board members, and CEOs
The Aim
Define your board norms* to bring clarity to formal and informal practices and behaviors that directors aim to follow - akin to a board’s governance model - to make your board work more effectively, mitigate risks, and capture the contributions of all directors.
Take Action
- Gather information on your board interactions, including what works well and areas of needed growth
- Assess the responses and identify new practices to enhance board effectiveness
- Agree upon expectations of what norms to codify and what to add
Benefits
High performing boards need to act effectively as a group, leveraging the expertise from diverse perspectives. Norms set expectations of how to contribute and dissent in ways that contribute to overall performance.
Why It Matters
Unexamined norms* can result in undesired outcomes like groupthink and overlooking expertise.
*Inclusive Norms: A set of agreements about how members will work with each other and how the group will work overall.
*Norms: The practices and behaviors of a group - formal and informal, spoken and unspoken - that guide how the group works together and how individuals can participate.
*Unexamined Norms: Practices and expectations which are often unacknowledged but are regularly relied upon for the overall functionality of the group.
Learn more about these terms in the glossary.