How to Conduct a Board Self-Assessment

Board Self-Assessment is one of the most important leadership practices that click Corporate Communications Policy over here now high-performing nonprofit boards practice to ensure long-term governance excellence. It requires the board to take a step back from their day-to-day activities and review its effectiveness. This allows board members to address issues that might otherwise cause friction and anger.

There are a variety of ways to conduct a self-assessment on your board that range from interviews and surveys to discussion groups that are facilitated. The best approach will depend on the size of your board, the resources you have available and how much depth you’d like to go into the assessment.

Once you have decided on the method, be sure to clearly define the goals you intend to achieve through the evaluation. Do you want to improve accountability, improve governance, or align governance with goals of the organization? Once this is determined you can then select an evaluation tool.

Certain tools allow you to compare your results with other health systems or hospitals and others focus solely on the governance policies of your organization. Regardless of what you select it is essential that the tools used are impartial and do not call out the individual directors. This will help create a safe environment for honest feedback.

Many boards use a peer-review procedure, which requires directors to assess each other. This can be a beneficial and beneficial exercise, but it’s crucial that the process remains confidential. Certain directors might be hesitant to criticize a director due to fear of negative consequences. In this case, it is often better to let the facilitator look over the responses to determine which information is relevant to share with the board.