Q: 

“I just left a board midway through my second term, as I just couldn't handle the fact that most people couldn't be bothered to check their emails. More than half of the board would arrive unprepared at meetings, without reviewing the agenda or doing any of their expected tasks/committee work. Important decisions would be delayed months due to board members being so poor at communicating with one another that they don't get anything done. 

The Board Agreement that all board members sign asks for board members to check email at least once a week, and to reply within 48 hours. I know we all have busy lives, but the lack of responsiveness meant that myself and a few others had to make up for everyone’s slack. And despite the fact that so many board members were not following the expectations in the Board Agreement, there was never a question of removing anyone from the board.

How do you create a culture where checking email/staying in contact (even being prepared for meetings) is consistent for everyone?”

A:

Ah, I feel the pain of unanswered emails. Who among us has not gritted their teeth while sending yet another follow-up that starts with ‘just a friendly reminder . . . ’? 

The situation that you’re describing is what I refer to as ‘uneven board engagement’, and it’s an incredibly common experience. This is where a small number of board directors are highly engaged - stepping up into leadership roles, dealing with emerging issues, pushing committee work along, etc - and the remaining directors tend to stick closer to the minimal end of the engagement spectrum, which usually looks like showing up to board meetings (sometimes unprepared, or inconsistently).

Some of this dynamic is just the natural flow of human systems. In a board, there will always be people who have more or less time, interest and capacity to offer, and that can shift quite a bit throughout terms - babies are born, people get sick, jobs change, life happens. I do think that we need to accept this reality, and design for it, especially if diversity and equity matter in governance; having engagement norms that fit wealthy retired white folks is not conducive to encouraging participation from, well, most people. 

But when the uneven engagement is having a negative impact on your organization - you mention delayed decisions and board attrition, both red flags - then we’re not talking about a ‘natural flow’ but a constraint that needs to be addressed. So let’s start by trying to understand what might be driving the behaviours, and some options for shifting the outcome.

Why Don’t People Follow Policies?

Anyone who has been following this newsletter knows how often I talk about clarifying expectations for board directors. But what happens when the expectations are laid out - as in your Board Agreement - and people just ignore them?! Policy matters (yes, even when people ignore it!) but policy alone will never solve a problem. I have created some helpful governance shorthand that I call the 3P framework: People, Power and Process. These Ps represent the three domains of governance systems, and we always need to be considering them together.

Typically, in nonprofit governance, we focus almost exclusively on process - we have a policy! - and don’t give much thought to the people or power components of the trio. So I could give you some advice on how to improve your policy (and I will, below), but it likely wouldn’t make much of a difference on its own. 

We need to think about the people who will be using that policy: what are their roles, motivations, needs, skills and capacities? How do their individual backgrounds, experiences, identities and relationships show up in their role? And we also need to think about the power dynamics involved: who gets to ‘make policy’ and who has to ‘follow it’? Why do we apply policy strictly to some people and not others? What does accountability look like, and who enforces it (this is the key question here!)? When we apply these kinds of questions to the situation, we can start to generate a more nuanced understanding of what might be happening, and we also open up a lot more space to manoeuvre to try and resolve the issue.

For example, we might realize that people are not following the policy because they don’t know it exists, or have forgotten about it. They may not have the capacity to follow it; the expectations may not align with their availability or communication preferences. They may want to follow it but are overwhelmed with other responsibilities or have cognitive limitations that make follow-up challenging. They may not believe that the policy applies to them, or they may feel that their compliance doesn’t really matter. Or maybe they have just noticed that most people aren’t following the policy, so it feels okay to keep ignoring it. 

From the power perspective, there are two main issues to consider. If the policy has established norms that simply don’t work for the majority of directors, and everyone is just expected to follow along anyway, noncompliance here could actually be a sign of pushback. The second consideration is that there are likely no accountability mechanisms in place to address noncompliance with the policy. This is a really important piece of the puzzle, because ultimately, the board needs a way to manage compliance with its own policies, in a constructive and enabling manner.

Peer Accountability on Boards

So how do you build out accountability structures for board policies? Because boards are shared leadership structures, peer accountability really matters; if board directors aren’t willing to hold themselves and their peers accountable for reasonable, ethical and values-aligned behaviour, things can really go off the rails. This is not something that many boards do very well, in large part because peer accountability is hard! It requires the right kinds of processes, a willingness to address formal and informal power dynamics, and the ability to have difficult conversations. But here are a few approaches that I have seen work well: 

• Repetition: Read and revisit important policies, like your Board Agreement or code of conduct, regularly. Reference it during recruitment and orientation. Include it in every board package. Speak about it at meetings at least twice a year. Not only will you make it hard to ignore, but you’ll create opportunities to discuss use cases, nuances, and revisions. Peer accountability becomes a lot easier when everyone is familiar with the documented expectations.
• Invite reflection: At the end of every board meeting, invite directors to take a moment to reflect on their own preparedness and engagement, and discuss the board’s performance as a whole. Holding space for this kind of reflective practice can help people who want to improve be reminded of their intentions, and it can also provide an opportunity to discuss any concerning trends - like uneven engagement! - in an open, constructive way. This can be a great complement to regular board evaluations that may have more structured reflection questions around preparedness, engagement, capacity etc.
• Clarify accountability steps: In your policy, include a section on accountability where you spell out what happens when board directors fall out of compliance. This should be handled in a constructive way, ideally encouraging self-management, but also creating a pathway for peer-led accountability. Initial steps might include simple things like self-reflection or accountability buddies, a plan to address barriers, or a reminder of the personal and organizational risks that come with low engagement. Escalated steps might include a conversation with the board chair, and ultimately a request to step down from the board (removal of directors would typically be reserved for egregious situations where there is evidence or risk of harm or legal concerns). Everyone should understand what those steps are, and be ready and willing to follow them as needed.
• Build capacity for difficult conversations: All directors should be supported to engage in difficult conversations at the board table. This includes training that empowers directors to lean into the power and responsibilities of their role (too often, people shy away from leading peer accountability processes because they’re waiting for the chair to do it), as well as skill building around dialogue and conflict management. And you also need to nurture a board culture that allows these kinds of conversations to happen! 

A Few More Things Worth Trying

Aside from strengthening your accountability mechanisms, there are a few other considerations that came to mind when I read your story, that might be helpful in this or similar situations:

• Address barriers: Find out what barriers are getting in the way of email responsiveness or other forms of engagement, and do whatever is feasible to design around those barriers.
• Reduce the need for responsive communications: A well structured board wouldn’t typically have an ongoing need for time-sensitive email communication in between meetings. Take a look at the nature of these communications and see what can be done to limit their use; maybe more delegation in decision-making power, better policy structures, or a revised approach to meeting frequency or structure.
• Limit board terms to one year: I am a fan of using one-year, renewable terms for board directors. This allows people the flexibility to gracefully bow out when their volunteer capacity changes, and it makes it easier to move on from under engaged directors - instead of removing them from the board, you can simply not renew their term.

Balancing Out Board Engagement

Uneven board engagement is a common and frustrating experience. It’s easy to assume that your fellow board mates are just slacking off, but in most cases, the underlying issue is more complex. Taking a 3P approach that considers people, power and process will help you find more sustainable solutions, and uneven engagement can usually be addressed with a mixture of improved infrastructure, greater role clarity, stronger accountability, and a willingness to have hard conversations.

Takeaways

• Uneven board engagement is common. Every board should expect to see a range of engagement among board directors, but when under-engagement starts to affect governance, it’s worth addressing.
• Policy alone won't fix engagement issues. Documented expectations for board engagement is essential, but not enough on its own. Considering the full breadth of governance systems - People, Power, and Process - will help build more effective and sustainable solutions. 
• Be intentional about building peer accountability on boards. Boards need the infrastructure, skills and culture to support reflective leadership and peer-led accountability; it’s not going to just happen on its own.