Productive board meetings require a strong team. Sometimes boards struggle with working as a team because of a lack of trust among board members or with the chief executive. Other times, an unhealthy board culture is the root cause. To foster teamwork, it’s particularly helpful for board members to take time to socialize and celebrate board and personal milestones.

Click on the resources below to discover tips and tricks for creating a strong team.

Resources for creating a strong team:

Building Trust
Board Culture and Meetings
Personalities That Help Build a Culture of Inquiry
Culture and Dynamics
Building a Diverse Board and Creating a Culture of Inclusion

Do your meetings focus on the really important questions that impact your mission?

Board meetings should be focused primarily on strategic and policy level discussions. Many boards spend too much time on transactional information or just hearing committee reports. Board members are best engaged when they are helping the organization make sense of why they exist and how they can best serve their mission and their community.

Try This with Your Board:
Use generative governance principles to encourage your board to think deeper about the issues impacting your organization. The following resource explains how generative thinking can transform your board. It includes, an outline of the three mindsets of generative governance, tips for restructuring board meetings and how to identify and overcome common barriers to adopting critical thinking.

Using Generative Governance Principles for Better Boardroom Conversations

Do you board members receive the right information to evaluate and oversee the organization’s programs?

All of the following offer opportunities to educate your board members about your organization and its work and their roles and responsibilities:

Board handbook
Board member job agreement
Board member code of conduct
Board orientation

• Board Orientation Checklist.
• Board Orientation Template

Board mentor/buddy program
Mission moments at board meetings:

• You can bring the mission to your meetings by incorporating mission moments into meetings, meeting at a mission related location, framing board discussion around the mission, providing mission context to all discussions, and involving boards in the development and monitoring of strategic plans.
  Learn more here.

Governance and roles and responsibilities training
Fundraising training
Presentations on factors impacting the organization
Dashboards
Board-building matrix
Board self-assessment
Annual board retreat