Board Self-Assessment is one of the key leadership habits that highly effective nonprofit boards follow to ensure long-term governance excellence. It requires board members to look back and honestly examine their effectiveness. This allows the board members to resolve problems that could otherwise result in tension and frustration.
There are many ways to conduct a self-assessment for your board, ranging from surveys and interviews to facilitated discussion. The best method is based on the size of the board, available resources and the depth you want to take into the assessment.
If you choose the method you want to use, make sure to clearly define what you hope to accomplish by the process. Do you want to enhance accountability, improve governance, or align governance with goals of the organization? Once you have determined this, you can pick an evaluation tool.
Certain tools let you compare results against other hospitals and health systems while others concentrate solely on your organization’s governance webpage about corporate communications policy importance practices. It is important to ensure that the tools you choose are unbiased and don’t make a distinction between directors. This creates an environment where honest feedback can be given.
Many boards also employ the peer review process, which asks board members to evaluate their peers as directors. This can be a beneficial and beneficial exercise, but it’s important that the process remains confidential. It isn’t easy for certain directors to speak out against another director if they fear it will come back on them. In this instance it is usually better to let the facilitator go through the responses to determine which insights are important to share with the board.