Presidents – Tips & Opportunities

  1. Model mentoring, be a mentor, encourage a mentoring process with/for all members.
  2. Join or build president coffees/groups in your area and/or at every CASB gathering. 
  3. Lead from a solid personal and team understanding of your role as leader, facilitator, and spokesperson.
  4. Work to be encouraging, supportive, and healthily challenging with each member of the governing team.
  5. Engage each member whenever your observations detect/suspect a drift from the team’s framework/norms of excellence.
  6. Constantly assess for potential challenges to team effectiveness, momentum, or reputation.
  7. Regularly revisit and hone your personal expression of team core values and behavior norms. Arrive at each meeting with a specific commitment.
  8. Model learning. Become a student of effectiveness (governing, administrator/teacher, learning, change, engagement, and advocacy).
  9. Regularly ask fellow members: “How am I doing?”
  10. Admit mistakes.
  11. Build peer-to-peer support with one or two board presidents from like-sized, similarly-challenged districts.
  12. Constantly emphasize intentional listening to understand.
  13. Lead through policy.
  14. Ensure meetings are aligned to the board effectiveness framework.
  15. Honor citizen comments with a “listening ear” and a response that honors values of deliberation and delegation. Ensure the team has an effective policy for public comments at a meeting, then work the plan.
  16. Emphasize eye contact, courtesy, and gratitude toward any presenter.
  17. Seek and encourage each member’s wisdom/voice.
  18. Plan to sustain your modeling of mature leadership in action.

For training requests, please contact CASB at [email protected]