Does your board struggle with communicating effectively as a group? We can help with that. Check out this Key Messages document.

Your board is in the communications business. To effectively lead organizations, boards have to listen to the people they serve. They need to know what questions to ask, and how to reach people willing to answer these questions.

Let’s Avoid a Failure to Communicate

While being active listeners is a big part of the board’s job, the other part is being able to communicate back to the people to whom the board is accountable. This is exclusively a board function, and cannot be delegated to anyone else.

What makes this function so challenging is that each board is a group authority comprised of individuals who have their own ideas, perspectives, and ways of describing things.

We know that diversity of opinion prior to making decisions is valuable and necessary. After decisions have been made, however, most boards want to be able to clearly explain their decisions without sounding muddled, divided, or ineffective.

That’s where having key messages comes in handy, especially if more than one director will be speaking publicly in their capacity as a board member.

Policy … What?

Communicating about the board’s decision to use Policy Governance (a.k.a., “the Carver model,”) is especially challenging. First, board members need a common understanding of what Policy Governance is, is not, and how it works.

That, however, is usually not enough, since boards cannot expect key stakeholders or members of the public to be equally well-versed about what Policy Governance is. If you try to describe Policy Governance using Policy Governance terminology, you risk losing and confusing people, when the real goal is engaging and attracting people.

How to express the “Why” of Policy Governance

To help boards overcome these challenges, we offer a set of Key Messages for Policy Governance Boards. This one-page download provides five reasons for using Policy Governance, with two explanatory bullet points for each. With these key messages in hand, every board member can confidently express the “why” of Policy Governance.

Of course, we only recommend using these key messages if your board has been fully trained and is applying Policy Governance principles. To find out more about Brown Dog Consulting’s board education and coaching services, including suggestions on how to customize these key messages for your board, please set up a call with us here.

See also: Understanding the One Voice Principle and Top Five Reasons We Use Policy Governance Principles.