46. The Secret Life Of Boards

Brandon M 0:06

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the operations room a podcast for coos. I am Brandon Mensing. I'm joined by my lovely co host, Bethany Ayers, how are things going, Bethany,

Bethany 0:15

I have my youngest son who's little over 13, flying all by himself to Geneva, and back this week, we've been on three for years. It's super cheap. And it also used to have free international roaming, which is why I chose it. Then Brexit happened, and now it has no free roaming anywhere out to now does so moved myself to Oh, two last month, it was easy, no problem. I thought, Okay, I'll move my son before he goes to Geneva. And this way he'll have full phone access, tried to do it online. I thought I had done it online. But what I had managed to do was port my son's number two, my plan. And my phone number that I've had for 20 years, went into the ether, having been categorised as a temporary number, and tried to do to FA without the ability to have any texts that he sent to you. And it happened Monday morning, two hours before he was flying to Geneva. So not only did he not have a phone to use for free with international roaming, he had no phone number because his phone number was now on my phone. So I spent an hour on the phone with oh two, they tried to help all of these things. Then they said to me, we need you to talk to our specialist team. Are you okay? If we raise a case? I said yes, I'll definitely take a case. And she said the specialist team will deal with your case, in the next 24 to 48 hours. And then I waited. I always had my phone on silent, I had not on silent. I didn't realise how many things make noise on my phone. But none of them were a phone call from oh two, I finally give up phone them go through some completely new phone tree that wasn't the phone tree on Monday. She pulls up my file starts to try and read the case notes doesn't make any sense. I said, but that's okay. I just want to talk to the specialist team. I have a case number. And it looks like oh no, your case is closed.

Brandon M 2:20

That is not what you want to hear.

Bethany 2:24

At all. At that point, I was so close to crying. And she's trying to read the notes. She's like just doesn't make sense. And let me just tell you what happened to go through the story again. And I said, I just want my number, please kind of my number back. And she's like, Well, it's been a couple of days. Let me just see if it's still available. My stomach just dropped. And I was like, Oh my God, how could this not be available? And she looks and she says Oh no, it's still available. So she fixed everything on Tuesday, I am still waiting for my sim. But in theory, my symbol arrived one to three days later. So technically, we are in that one to three day range. And then I will have my number back. And my son will have his number.

Brandon M 3:01

So we have got a great topic today, which is The Secret Life of boards. And we have two amazing guests for this, which is Helen hopper and joy Horoskop. And they are the authors of that same title, which is The Secret Life of boards. One of the topics that we talked about with joy and Helen was this idea of bullying that occurs sometimes in board meetings with either certain individuals or a couple individuals working together in tandem, and how to manage that. If you have bullying happening in some form and board meetings, what do you do?

Bethany 3:33

When I was reading the book and the section on bullying. I also realised that I think I can sometimes or have in the past been a bully as the leader of my team meetings, not on purpose, but when under stress can become quite cutting and can give more slack to my favourites and more shit to the ones that I think are underperforming. And then that was pretty much the description of bullying. So I think that there's a wide spectrum. I just made me bullying light.

Brandon M 4:19

There's just a broad range of behaviours and to categorise everything as bullying, it's almost like you make vast assumptions when you put out the word bullying, to be honest. And the fact of the matter is, nobody sees themselves as bullying. But people have behaviours where things come across to other individuals. And people interpret things in different ways. We all get caught up in situations that are high stress scenarios and when our backs against the wall and there's kind of incoming fire, you respond and sometimes your responses aren't the best.

Bethany 4:49

So I guess maybe there's a difference between like long term sustained bullying, and one or two meetings where somebody is in the ship seat I have to say that I have not been a witness to the long term. But I have been there for the very uncomfortable meeting where one person is being not just singled out, but overly criticised. And they're not being an end to it. Have you seen that?

Brandon M 5:21

I've seen situations where people are being attacked in ways that are unhelpful, and you can see it very clear. And you can see it immediately, they can see it in their eyes and the feel in the room. And you have like one of three responses, typically, one is to let it ride. And then to do a follow along with that person at a later point to really talk about that usually quite fast, either directly after the meeting, or within kind of the class of 24 hours, depends on the person that I'm dealing with. The other one is to intervene and step in, which I've done on occasions as well, and to redirect it into something else quite quickly. And again, flagging in the back of my head is something I need to speak about with that person. And then we'll get on to thinking about do

Bethany 6:03

nothing, stick your head in the ground. I've definitely done that one.

Brandon M 6:09

I think once you start getting to our levels, if I'm going to do nothing about it, nobody is so the burden of responsibility sits with you at the end of the day to ensure that the health of the organisation, and even if it's the CEO, behaving in ways that are unhelpful, and you have to be in a position to address it in some form, whether that's in the meeting itself or with us after the meeting. And actually sorry, the other option that I was thinking about that I've used a couple of times as well, is to wrap up the meeting immediately, which is like, look, let's park that Bob or Jane, in terms of your feelings right now. Let's go back to this at a later point, I think probably the most appropriate thing is to really digest where we're at right now in this meeting, think about it and come back to at a later point, because going forward at this point is not gonna be helpful to anyone. So I think that immediate parking scenario is also a valid option. I've

Bethany 6:55

brought it down to level of leadership team meetings, if we bring it back up to the original question around board meetings. That is really where having a functional board makes all the difference. And having a strong chair assuming the chair is not the person who's doing the bullying. I would reference back our chat with Keith Wallington on setting out the rules of engagement to begin with, what are the values? What are the behaviours? What are the expectations, and then also having regular board evaluations, so that you can call out inappropriate behaviour. And there's already a framework for that

Brandon M 7:31

everyone, including the board needs to have a retro, and part of that retro should be feedback that's been given from each person in that board meeting, in terms of their experience, was it effective, and really thinks that we can do differently going forward? I think, to your point, having a chair person plugged in engaged, caring about the stuff is the critical piece, because the fact of the matter is, I've worked in many businesses where the chairs are not plugged in.

Bethany 7:55

Yes, I think it's very important to have retros for boards and every team in your organisation. But there's also an important part of having the agree meant at the start, which includes the fact that you're going to have retros, and looking at things, but you need to have that. We used to call it a team canvas, at peak. And so that was sitting down for depending on the size of the team and how long the team is going to be in existence an hour to half a day agreeing. Why are we a team? What are the values of the team? How do we like to work? How are we going to deal with conflict? How are we going to decide if we're doing a good job? And retros? How are we going to work together? How are we going to communicate? And what is an expectation of what good looks like? And so then you have a pre agreed contract that you can pull people up against and it also just gives a lot of structure and agreement on that team. And it stops some of those conflicts from happening down the line.

Brandon M 9:02

Do you apply that across all new teams that you're working with, regardless of time durations, people in those those teams and so on?

Bethany 9:12

Yeah, so let's say it's a working group for two months, then you might take the first meeting. Oftentimes, working groups will have lots of different levels of seniority. So you need to address who's the decision maker? Are we a group of decision makers? How do we handle the power dynamic? And what I really enjoyed about Helen enjoys book was it's just about the psychology of the boards and the psychology of what are you bringing to the table and what bad behaviours are you doing? And why do you have all of that ego? And it was interesting where they spoke about, it's coming from insecurity. And so You're belittling somebody else because you don't really understand your role in the board. or you don't know how to move away from being an operator. And you think your job is to catch people out rather than actually help grow a business. And it is old school. And it is pretty. I'm being possibly sexist here, but it's a pretty man thing to do. And the fact that most boards are full of middle aged and older men who find these things fluffy, I don't have a point, I just think it's ridiculous. And we need to modernise boards, and the expectations of those boards. And we need to expect more from our chairs. If

Brandon M: 10:36

you just had to give us like your top three tips on kind of effective board meetings.

Bethany: 10:43

So one is we're talking about setting a strong chair, whose job is to run the board like the CEOs job, or the CEOs job depending on the the exec team. So creating a safe environment, facilitating getting to know each other board dinners are great. To your point of not you only see each other once a quarter, maybe on a zoom call, maybe in real life. Should you meet more often when the board is new, have a board dinner the night before invite senior execs to that meeting so that you have the informal getting to know each other as well as the formal meeting, a good reading deck ahead of time and a clear agenda.

Brandon M: 11:27

The couple ones that I would think about. First one is what you just said, which is before the board meeting happens having a consistent repeatable metric readout alongside have a bit of a commentary going out to the board members for that part of it is normally done, but also digestible, ie it's very consistent. So every time I look at page four, as a board member is the same page for in terms of the KPI readouts, I don't have to figure things out, as I'm kind of reading through it, I think the common complaint that I've received from board members is every board pack we send is different. And they have to figure things out. The other one is a bit of like a weird one. But I always find it very useful, which is starting the board meeting around something really positive, that's happened within the organisation of the last six weeks or three months. A is to kind of disarm them a little bit, but also just kind of put the meeting on the right tone as you're heading into the session itself. Where, informally, yeah, we've had this phenomenal thing occur, you know, this is why it's super interesting. And the board gets a little jazzed up or excited, and so on. So kind of it lifts all boats as you head into that board meeting. And then the third one I would think about is really making an ask of the board each and every board meeting that you have, what do you actually want from them and formalising it for the actual ask,

Bethany: 12:39

I would have to agree on that final one, just because sometimes there's not always an action. But this ties to my point around having a good agenda. And so the agenda shouldn't just be a read out of your deck, there should be clear understanding. And actually, this is something that is splitting the agenda by governance and guiding. So what are the things that we need to know about and sign off on? And what are the discussions around strategy dynamics hiring, that you're looking for input, but it's not actually our final decision. It's not the right place to the board to have a decision on those. And so kind of what are the things that are Board approval? And what are the things that are guidance, and some of that guidance may end up being homework, but not always. Alright,

Brandon M: 13:28

so with that, let's go on a quick break. And when we come back, we will have our conversation with Helen and joy and all things about boards and the secrets that underlie them. So let's do that.

Bethany: 13:42

I've done five years of therapy myself and spend a lot of time on self contemplation and so understand the idea of transference and projection. But reading your stories, it's made me like reexamine how I act in groups where my motivations come from, and not just necessarily in groups, but in certain relationships. So like, why does this person bother me as much as they do? And they always there's always the old adage of, well, they're reflecting something back and I'm like, do they really? I don't know. And then I was like, okay, yeah, yeah, again, I need to go and look at what is it that is upsetting me in myself, that I have decided that the other person is at fault. I normally can see it in others and forgive it, and just be like, oh, yeah, he's putting everybody down. Because actually, he doesn't feel good himself. But it just was very uncomfortable to notice where I might be doing it myself. So

Helen: 14:39

thinking about when we're brought in to work with boards or teams, we're often brought in and someone will explain to us the problem this person has got or this pair of Gods of this executive group have and very rarely will people say, I want to look at myself and understand my own reactions and contribution to this. And so through the book, we're really advocating exactly what you're talking about there, Beth, which is cultivating this awareness. And we identified seven difficult dynamics that boards can experience things like a seesaw dynamic between a power between execs and non execs. And how you might notice that, do you feel get a feeling that someone's muscling into your territory? Or a sense that they feel you're muscling into theirs? Or, you know, are they paying lip service to agreements or shutting you out of things? So ways of becoming more tuned in to the fact there's a dynamic there? And then rather than trying to work out who's to blame and what needs to be done to fix them? Or get rid of them? To look first, yourself? What might my contribution be to this? I got seven chapters on different dynamics. And each one has some questions, you might ask yourself to just pique your own awareness of what your contribution might be. So perhaps what story am I telling myself? What are you not seeing what might not be true? How might it look from someone else's perspective? And what might they say? And that comes on then to the second part, the book is called The the art and psychology of boardroom relationship dynamics. And the art is a is an acronym for this awareness for the a the RSN, relating the relationships, because really the only tool at our disposal for improving relationship dynamics is our relationships with other people. And it's unlikely that they're spontaneously going to change. And so that puts the ball in my court to think well, what do I need to do? If we're in an awkward situation? What's the conversation that we might need to have? Do we need to get clear about our agreements? So thinking about that seesaw of power dynamics? Have we actually agreed what the different roles are on the board and, and where the boundaries are between exec and non exec responsibilities, for example, we got really clear about those. And then the tears tactic, for example, where people are falling out on a board, one of these board members, you know, you're expecting massively strategic insights. And then they say something really practical. You think, Well, that is a massively strategic insight, actually, why don't you go and visit a far flung part of the operation together with this person, on a train or in the car and have a conversation, as you go and learn a bit more about them, they learn something about you. And when you do something together, it becomes harder to see then that person is a difficult person that needs fixing, or exiting, and more easy to see it as a relationship that you can both work with and bring something to one

Brandon M: 17:48

of particular interest, I think, for both you and myself is this question of how do you deal with bullying, or coercion. One example I'll throw at you just in terms of a scenario that I've dealt with in the past, where I walked into new organisation, as a senior executive, I was asked to look at their board dynamics, they had each leader functionally get up there to talk about their results. And the board was essentially attacking them, making them feel terrible about what they were doing. The feeling across leadership and that company was that they felt like ridiculed schoolchildren. And that's literally how they phrase the back to me, which they felt very diminished. And they felt like they were reporting into the school headmaster in this case, and they felt terrible about the experience. And they were dreading each and every board meeting as it happened. And I remember working with the founder of that business. And the way of dealing with it was to exit half the board, essentially, not the employees in this case, but actually getting rid of the board members themselves. And that, to me, was the fastest, most effective way to deal with this and not have to delve into a big round of dynamics of the team decided the other and we were positioned to do it. But if you had to work with that board, and you didn't have the option of actually getting rid of them, what would you do to to deal with that dynamic?

Helen: 18:55

We often assume that bullying is intentional. And I think that's because the experience of being bullied is so powerful. And it's almost hard to imagine that the other person isn't trying to exert that power, but surprisingly, often, I think, is unintentional unconscious. There's a complete lack of awareness of the impact of actions. And we see people that have got to very senior positions across a large number of organisations that perhaps just haven't had the feedback over the years and have been gradually enabled into patterns of treating other people that are pretty unacceptable. And the more powerful you become, the less people are likely to tell you. I do think it's good to give the person the chance to see to hold up the mirror and say, What I'm seeing is that, you know, basically it's like the headmaster's office in the boardroom and you're giving everyone a fail, and that's a surefire way to destroy creativity products. Have a team motivation value in your top team and down through the organisation? I don't know, if you're aware this is happening, I can see it very clearly. Is that something you can recognise? And is that something you'd want to try to do something about? So it's a very clear and direct conversation, it takes a fair amount of courage. And often it takes an outsider as well, to be able to come in and say that very clearly. And I think that conversation will from that, you can usually tell whether you can change the person or change the personnel, it becomes pretty clear. So

Bethany: 20:36

I found the bullying chapter quite uncomfortable. Because, again, I think if you'd asked me, Do I think that I'm a bully? My answer would be no. But there are behaviours within that, that I definitely recognise I've done. I know in myself that I tend to have favourites. And so the board dynamic is different. But in within the organisation, with that power differential, sometimes it's a bit lonely, you don't get to have as much fun because you have to, like constantly be thinking about everybody else. And so that combined with the power dynamics chapter just made me feel like maybe I should never speak in a board. Again. It's not the right answer, but I was just like, really pretty self critical reading through them.

Helen: 21:22

I think that awareness is completely key. Plus, checking in with the other person, being aware of those signals of how they're receiving things, what's coming back at you. So keeping that awareness going as you as you relate to somebody. The other thing to say is, I think we've all got, we talk about the Drama Triangle in bullying. So we talk about the health situation can have three roles of an aggressor, a victim, and a rescuer. And often a bullying dynamic will fall into that pattern, and bystanders as well, who were not intervening for whatever reason. And we all have the capacity to be in any of those places, and have an probably will again, so I don't think it's about completely banishing, or censoring ourselves so that we never do any of them. I think it's the awareness piece is so important.

Joy: 22:14

Yeah. And also being an authentic leader, you're being your authentic you. And if you're not, it's much more tiring. You're sapping for yourself, sharing your values, and just being open as to why you're saying what you're saying. It's really helpful for bringing people together. Because if people learn, that's how you are, they then have permission to tell jokes themselves, they have permission to debate in what a vibrant, productive board meeting you're going to have. And it's role modelling from the top.

Bethany: 22:42

So one of the things that didn't necessarily cover in the book, but it's I think I'm experiencing a bit is almost the opposite of the seesaw, where there's a power vacuum rather than two areas fighting for control. And this is where I was like, Oh, am I being a bit of a bully? Or am I over dominating, or because I don't think I'm like, taking over control, but there's kind of like nobody doing it. So it's almost like I'm filling a vacuum rather than the other way. And then I wonder, Am I overstepping the mark. But if there's nobody to hand it to? Or to be doing it? Did you come across that dynamic at all? In the research,

Helen: 23:23

I don't want to turn this into a coaching session for you, but you're bringing so many lovely dilemmas. It's such an open way. Again, it's the conversation about what you would like to see, sometimes it's stepping back putting the thing down, if it's a task or a decision. And if people are used to one person doing it and doing it, well, actually, why wouldn't we just continue like that, because I'm happy they're doing it, you know, it's happening? Well, sometimes we've got to put things down before other people will pick them up, we'll see the need and the lack of the gap. And that is really, really uncomfortable. And often takes, you know, you're stepping back, but you're also encouraging, believing they can do it and inviting them in.

Bethany: 24:07

So one was for a long time, there was nobody to come in, because it's a growing team. And so I was helping hire the person to do it. And then secondly, I often get invited into things. And then I feel like maybe I should not be setting strategy at this level of detail. Like this is disempowering of the leadership team. And I have not asked to be there. And so I don't really know like at what point can you say actually, this is inappropriate of me to be involved at this level. This is what I think you should do. And kind of like struggling with those dynamics at the moment. In

Joy: 24:44

our research, we looked at how important it was to work out what level of work you should be doing because if you're not doing the work at the right level, then you're losing opportunities. You know, the board should be doing it at the strategic influence in the industry level. If you're down in the weeds, then you can't be Doing that I'm sure that positively you can say, well, could we have a discussion about whose role is it what I'm noticing, I'm feeling uncomfortable as to how you receiving the way I'm communicating to you. So yeah, going back a step. And unpicking what's happening is usually useful. And actually having the confidence that you're not alone that probably if you're perceiving that others are too, or if they're perceiving something different, it would be really useful to hear that. So, you know, some boards would have a proper conversation at the end of each board meeting saying, How did it go? Sometimes that's just a tick box on some balls. But if you've got a proper relationship, where you're having these deeper conversations, then you're going to be able to have a more proper, you know, really be honest, and about what's going on for each of you, which is really important. I

Bethany: 25:48

don't think I've quite figured out joy to your point of like, what is the responsibility and what is not? If you're not the chair of the board, how much of a leadership position can you take in the board. And so I'm in different boards that are run in different ways, we have one that's talking very much like you're talking about joy, where we do canvases at the start of the year, we understand our roles and responsibilities, we fill in surveys every quarter around how we've been in different ways. We discuss them, and we really work as like a team. And then other boards I'm on do not function that way. And so I don't really know how I would facilitate those conversations. get everybody on board with it, it's really the chairs role. But if the chairs not keen, then what do you do? How

Joy: 26:36

fantastic that you've got that knowledge from another board that you could bring to that new board, the second board, and to share it, and try and share it and move the conversation on there, or have a one to one with the chair about it? What's happening here, and then make the decision that is this the place for me if it won't move, because there is a risk if and often it chairs maybe don't realise they're doing that or often the chair has a portfolio of a number of different board positions, don't they is often a time thing. And in any one of those portfolio companies maybe something that's going rather arrived, and you don't know what else is going on in their life concerning that. So that's why it's really important just to surface it and have the conversations and then you have a choice of where you behave. And

Helen: 27:23

I think there's something really interesting there for people looking at if you're thinking about joining a board. And you know, you've been invited, and often you feel like you're being interviewed, this will seem really important to your due diligence on the board and find out did they do this kind of thing? What are the dynamics? Like? What do they have in place to make sure that it's working as well as it can? And then you really know what you're getting into.

Brandon M: 27:47

The other thing I was just thinking about was this question of engaged boards, because I've been in boards before where Jane comes in. I know James can ask the same four questions. So I know Bob's gonna look at x, and he's gonna tell me why. And it gets into this scenario where you really don't feel like you're getting any value from the board. And they're not really engaged, because they're just going back to previous talking points. How do you break that cycle?

Helen: 28:11

Well, I would say do a review and talk about it. So I think it's good practice to do a board evaluation, I think every three years is the recommendation in the UK at the moment. And to me that should look like each person saying what they think is working well, what's not working well? Where are their stuck patterns? Where is their opportunity to add value that's not happening at the moment, and potentially to give feedback on fellow board members as well. And then to have a facilitated session, where you, you look at the results of that review and try and work out what to do about it. I think in the same way that you'd probably look at an operational issue, it kind of step back, look at what was happening and what were the effects and where are the opportunities to tweak or, you know, do major surgery even. It's the same, but it's a more subtle process, because a lot of it is relational and intangible.

Joy: 29:11

When I've seen it work well was was where it was normalised. So a group having a really honest conversation. And somebody started by saying, I know this is the way that I always bring up this talk point about finance, I know that's always at the top of my mind must be irritating to the rest of you. It's about being really open and honest and transparent. We've got transparency. In the operational side, you want transparency in the relational side as well. But

Bethany: 29:38

I think being transparent yourself is harder. Like it's definitely it's been a long journey with a lot of therapy and a lot of experimentation over a lot of years to be able to be open at all. And I remember what it was like and the fear of just surfacing anything. It's really really scary before you start to do it.

Joy: 29:58

Which is all I think The chair and the CEO have a role because if they're doing it, and I've seen good chairs, and CEOs do it, and then that sort of gives permission to others as well.

Helen: 30:09

I think that's right. Permission is important from others, it's important to show openness yourself. Also asking for what you want is remarkably hard. If you can sit at five board meetings and just think I'm not getting what I want this kind of surprising in a way that under six, you wouldn't say what I'd really like is X, Y, and Zed, you know, but we don't we go home and grass to our other handful and talk about it. Or

Joy: 30:33

it might come out in a way you didn't want it to come out, because the frustration has boiled up. Inside. There was one wonderful interviewee who said, you know, I used to sort of try and calm everything down and keep, you know, make sure that everything was smooth and avoid conflict. And then, as I grew more and more experienced, I just thought, bring it on, come on, bring it on. Because that way it's surface, because otherwise, it's just going to be going on behind the scenes and impacting our performance.

Helen: 31:00

I think the ideas from psychological safety are really important. And it's really about inviting contribution as a chair or CEO, or to anybody else around the table, inviting contributions, really listening to those properly, and responding appropriately. So equally, if someone's doing something that isn't great, having the courage to say that and be clear about on this board, what we want to see and what isn't going to help us do the work we need to do together. So I think over time, if you can through how you are and how you treat others create that sense of psychological safety, you're most likely to get the best from everyone around the table. If

Bethany: 31:46

our listeners could only take one thing away from today's conversation, what would that one thing be?

Joy: 31:52

Whatever your experience on the board is quite normal, others will be experiencing it. So reach out, have the conversations, because you are not alone. People might have an other perspectives, but you're all defending yourself against pressure in slightly different ways. And that's how it's manifesting itself. So please talk.

Helen: 32:12

If you're feeling uncomfortable with a dynamic on a board, take a deep breath, step back. Ask yourself what your contribution to that might be, why you might be feeling that way. And you know, is that one thing, even a small thing that you might be able to do that might shift things slightly and start there because you know, the journey of 1000 Miles starts from step. So

Brandon M: 32:37

thank you, Helen Harper for joining us and joy heart cup and if you like what you hear, please leave us a comment or subscribe and we will see you next week.