What's Love Got To Do With It?

Building Trust Between CEOs and Newly Appointed Board Chairs
Timothy G Campbell
This article provided by the Engstrom Institute

Longtime CEOs and board chairs acknowledge that trust is "every leader's greatest strategic asset," and is a "key element of performance." However, despite many articles written about the subject, CEOs desiring to build trust with a newly appointed board chair are still left wondering how to do so. A closer look at what trust is, and how trust is enhanced will reveal five critical mechanisms useful to CEOs for building trust with newly appointed board chairs. While focused on the higher education context, the author offers insights and principles that are rele-vant and applicable to building trust relationships in a wide range of settings. Five practical and reflective questions are offered to help CEOs assess how they are fostering trust with their board chair. Examples from Mark Yudof's appointment to the presidency of the University of Califor-nia system and the author's interview with President Scott (a pseudonym) from a Midwestern college illustrate the theme of enhancing trust.

Establishing and maintaining trust is critical to a successful tenure as CEO.

Edward Penson, general chairman and senior scholar of Penson Associates, Inc. empha-sizes the necessity of a strong relationship between the board and president stating, "There is al-most nothing more important, in the long run, than what universities do with us and for us, and what we do with and for universities, now and in the next decade. So there is a lot at stake in the relationship between boards and their presidents" (1995, p. 3). Although the relationship between boards, and in particular the board chair, and the president (henceforth CEO) is complex and cannot be reduced to formulas for success, we know the effectiveness of executive leadership is measured by the health of these associations, so it becomes appropriate that establishing and maintaining trust is critical for a successful tenure as CEO.

Scholars disagree about what the components of trust are, however, there are five things I recommend, which consistently emerge as the most fundamental mechanisms for enhancing trust: initiating communication, frequent contact, complete candor, experience with an individ-ual, and understanding one another. Ann Die Hasselmo of the Council of Independent Colleges and Universities says this recipe for success might not be so simple stating "effective board rela-tions is a somewhat elusive concept and a mysterious challenge." While I agree "how-to" advice only works when it works, I believe these mechanisms at a minimum provoke some necessary questions for first-time and even veteran CEOs, and conclude they work together to create op-portunities for developing the CEO and board chair relationship.

WHAT IS TRUST?

Trust is about the readiness to do something together.

Trust is about relationships. It is about the readiness to do something together. Drath suggests in his article "Leading together: Complex Challenges Require a New Approach," when leadership has varying levels of readiness and there are conflicting beliefs about how best to accomplish this leadership it is much more difficult to develop organizational direction and achieve the trust necessary to moving the organization forward. An example of leadership that was ready to do something together is President Yudof and the Board of Regents of the University of California (UC) system.

In response to concerns from faculty leaders and senior university officials of the UC sys-tem who felt, "[Board Chair] Blum and other regents ha[d]...been 'micromanaging the univer-sity" (Lederman, 2008) since losing confidence in former President Robert C. Dynes, Yudof made clear his philosophy about leading the UC system. Said Yudof, "I didn't want the job if the university system would be run by the Board of Regents." Moreover, Yudof stated "he would not tolerate intrusion by regents into management of the institution" and "had both 'sought and ob-tained' assurances that the board would back off." For the board's part Chairman Blum said, "We all were looking for a strong leader so we could go back to doing what boards normally do." Essentially, by presenting themselves as partners ready to address suspicions about the structural leadership of the UC system President Yudof and Board Chair Blum acknowledged it is the president and the board of regents who together are responsible for the leadership of the institution (Taylor, 1987). President Scott supports this example saying, "Trust is about getting the right people with the right relationships," a point that needs emphasizing since so many peo-ple believe structures and organization charts ensure effective functioning.

We trust based partly on our perceptions of competence.

Although President Yudof's appointment "has to date been welcomed with a savior-like embrace by the many Californians who have watched their world-class university go through several years of hard times" (Lederman, 2008), all are not convinced of his much advertised competence. Phrases like "I believe the faculty will be pleased with his appointment" and "I hope we can continue and improve" suggest present perceptions of competence needs confirma-tion (Tway, 1994).

In thinking about perceptions, President Scott urges that competence may shorten the time to develop trust, but until it's been tested trust has not been established. What's more says Scott is the "more visible the leadership role of the individual, the more you have to check them out." In other words, a ten-campus University of California system, President Yudof himself has dubbed "the premier public university system in the world," demands a whole lot of testing be-fore concluding both the public and the board of regents can trust President Yudof.

Even though a CEOs relationship with the public and the board is important, I disagree they are as important as a CEOs relationship with the board chair. Of course, some may chal-lenge this assertion, but as President Scott observes, "You've got to have a relationship with the board chair whether you think they are competent or not!" Establishing and maintaining this critical alliance requires trust, but how does a CEO grow this trust? I offer five recommendations useful to CEOs for building trust with board chairs, and particularly newly appointed board chairs.

How Do We Enhance Trust?

1) Trust is enhanced through initiating communication.

Communication continues to be offered as essential for building effective working relationships between the CEO and the board chair. Phrases like "no surprises," and "tell early and often," are common when discussing how CEOs can strengthen partnerships with board chairs. In Fain's recent article, "For Trustees, Faith in College Presidents Lies at the Heart of Good Relationships," he concludes from a survey of trustees the importance of the president's role in communication stating most board members rely on "briefings from presidents as their most important source of information." Similarly, Michael Bastedo of the University of Michigan explains while "The board has direct authority over the president, and can hire and fire the president at will...most boards also expect the president to set the agenda of the board," and "manage communication among the trustees." Though I concede the majority of responsibility for communication among board members, and specifically with the board chair, falls to the CEO (Gade, 1989), I insist that the admonition to communi-cate needs broken into two smaller parts: frequent contact and complete candor.

2) Trust is enhanced through frequent contact.

Frequent contact (Leveille, 2006), while defined as a specific number of occur-rences in a given period, will be different for each CEO and board chair relationship. No mat-ter how big or small the number of occurrences though "no surprises" for the board chair is the ultimate goal. Whereas a "no surprises" approach is best done through face-to-face meet-ings, opportunities for frequent face-to-face contact with your board chair is made difficult because board chairs don't work in the organization of which they chair, and possibly do not even live in the state. Quoted in Pope's 2004 article, "A Conceptual Framework of Faculty Trust and Participation in Governance," Dufty (1980) writes that physical distance adversely affects trust, which has important implications for maintaining frequent contact with your board chair through email, memos, and phone calls. As a result, figuring out what "frequent contact" means for your board chair becomes necessary and may require many adjustments in the frequency of emails and memos sent, as well as phone calls placed. Finding the right balance means asking your board chair how often they would like to be in touch, through which medium, and if it's email, how short or long messages should be to maintain polite-ness.

3) Trust is enhanced through complete candor.

The CEO enhances communication, and by extension trust, with their board chair through complete candor (Leveille, 2006). One reason more than the board of regents has praised the appointment of Mark Yudof is because he is "known as much for his good humor and candor as for his strong management and leadership skills" (Lederman, 2008). Sharing an abundance of pertinent information before it has been asked creates the sense of openness and of honesty. According to Stephenson, Dean of the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario, "Leaders must create a climate of trust and compassion based on open communication from what they say to how they listen, to how they act on what they learn." Quickly sharing everything relevant to moving the conversation forward, and offering thoughtful and thorough responses to questions posed will help CEOs nurture a climate of trust – "their most precious asset."

4) Trust is enhanced through experience with an individual.

Trust takes time and is enhanced through experience with your board chair. In Penson's (1995) manual "Board and President: Facilitating the Relationship" the presidency is described as the "product of the board-president relationship," as "the embodiment of the strengths of the board and the strengths of the president joined in the interests of leading the institution even under the most challenging conditions" (p. 4). This joining of personalities in one sense is automatic because of the governing structure of non-profit organizations, but in another sense calls upon both individuals to take a more deliberate look at one another in various situations. Listening and watching how the other person responds to criticism, to praise, to moral or ethical problems, or to what extent the individual follows through on promises made, are all a part of experiencing an individual. For instance, paying close atten-tion to the language used by President Yudof in favor of strong accountability measures pre-sents Chairman Blum and the campus community not only an opportunity to "experience" President Yudof's convictions, but also the manner by which he expresses them. "I made my position clear before I came, but everyone was ready to take this path," Yudof said of his ex-changes with the campus community. "The regents have been eager for it, the staff has been working on it, and the faculty leadership and Academic Senate were fine with it. I really didn't get any push back" (Lederman, 2008).

CEOs and board chairs are joined in an "exchange relationship. If either mem-ber … experiences lack of trust, it will be difficult to maximize the potential positive outcomes evolving from this relation (Brower, Lester, Korsgaard, & Dineen, 2008; as cited in Scandura & Pellengrini, 2008, p. 108). President Scott himself says, "Trust is one of those ideas where you never get there - you're always in process. How many times do you have to show you're not going to strip a department's budget before they believe you? How many times do you have to model before people have a trust level? Trust is experiential." It follows then, the re-lationship between CEOs and board chairs calls for unwavering dedication to first understand and then to be understood.

5) Trust is enhanced through understanding one another.

To enhance trust between the CEO and the board chair it is necessary for both to understand how each view their own roles. Getting beyond starting assumptions and posi-tional titles provides opportunities for learning about what each believe occupies most of their time, what each believe to be the most pressing challenges and how they will begin to tackle them, and what each believe to be the obligations expected of them outside of the nor-mal boardroom meetings. Says Pocock (1988), "Whatever the exact embroidery of the rela-tionship the basis must be a clear understanding of the responsibilities and authorities of each position, an intuitive grasp of the times when each should take the lead on an action or issue, and an underlying sense of the paired role in institutional leadership" (p. 16; as cited in Gade 1989, p. 26). Even though understanding one another may seem trivial, "The more your boss understands your world," President Scott asserts "the better the communication is." Put an-other way, because the majority of responsibility for communication with the board chair falls to the CEO (Bastedo, in press; Fain, 2007; Gade, 1989), taking time to better understand one another is not an option.

Critical Mechanisms for Presidents/CEO's to Enhance Trust

After considering the five mechanisms (i.e. initiating communication, frequent contact, complete candor, experience with an individual, and understanding one another) for enhancing trust between CEOs and newly appointed board chairs, I believe there are five critical questions a CEO should be asking themselves about their own efforts to enhance trust with their newly ap-pointed board chairs:

1) In what ways have I initiated a discussion(s) with my board chair this week?

2) Have I had a recent conversation with my board chair about the quality and quantity of con-tact I need from them? Or, they need from me?

3) Does my board chair believe they are fully informed beyond the pressing issues of our or-ganization?

4) Do I need to clear up any unresolved concerns between the board chair and myself?

5) Are my expectations of the board chair's obligations outside the normal boardroom meetings in line with what they believe to be true?

Tim Campbell is a Ph.D. candidate in the Higher, Adult, and Lifelong, Education program at Michigan State University (MSU). His research interests include leadership-organization fit, presidential relationships, and organization theory. As research assistant for the chairperson of the Education Administration Department at MSU, Tim has presented on and wrote about partnership capital theory, and has also taught topics in educational leadership. Timothygcamp-bell@mac.com.

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