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

User Tip: Incorporate questions about what can make your board even more effective into meeting debriefs, retreats and postmortems. 

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.}}