Join the Board Support Program

Mentor Your Way to Board Development

A board mentoring program can have powerful results. Mentoring can help orient new members, promote individual and organizational learning, and prepare for leadership succession. It can also increase engagement, contributions, and commitment.

Mentoring to Help Onboard

There are a variety of ways to create mentoring programs, but they tend to work best when part of a robust orientation process. Some boards allow the new board member to choose their mentor within the first 90 days. Other boards assign every new board member two mentors from day one — a veteran board mentor and a staff mentor — to hasten their integration and involvement. The board development committee does the matching.

The goal is for mentoring partners to meet prior to and after every board meeting during the first year of board service. The board mentors welcome the new board members by introducing them to the values, culture, people, issues, and work of the organization and serving as go-to people and sounding boards. The staff mentors’ job, when there is one, is to familiarize new board members with the organization’s current and long-term programmatic and financial operations. As both mentors get to know the new board member, they confer about how best to engage the new board member and enhance their board experience.

Mentoring to Support Leadership Succession

Mentoring can be embedded into succession planning. Prior to a chair-elect assuming responsibilities, the past and current chairs meet with the chair-elect individually and then together to formulate a development strategy that incrementally increases the chair-elect’s responsibilities, introduces them to key stakeholders, gives them more visibility, and involves them intimately in working on strategic issues. The chair-elect identifies the competencies that they need to develop and, with the help of mentors, sets milestones and timelines to help them progress. The result is that when the chair-elect becomes the chair, they are well-grounded and fully prepared to lead and serve the organization. A chair who has been through the two-year process attributes their success as chair to their mentors’ ongoing support and guidance and is eager to “pay it forward” to the next chair-elect.

Mentoring to Build Board Culture

To build, grow, and support a viable board mentoring culture:

  • Establish concrete learning objectives and long-term goals that you can measure and celebrate.
  • Secure visible support, involvement, and commitment from the highest levels of the board and staff. Involve the governance committee in developing, implementing, and evaluating the program.
  • Determine how you will pair mentors and mentees (this will depend on your goals and learning objectives).

Mentoring is a powerful tool for boards as it engages members and harnesses their individual and collective power. It has the added advantage of facilitating more trusting and meaningful board member relationships, building board cohesion, and ultimately contributing to the level of shared understanding that promotes more informed decision-making.

101 Resource | Last updated: June 14, 2024

This piece was originally written by Lois J. Zachary, president, Leadership Development Services, LLC and has been updated.