7 Qualities of a High Performance Board

1. Strategic – A board that strives to be strategic makes a constant and conscious effort to ensure strategic focus to every issue it deliberates.
2. Healthy Skeptics – Questions at board meetings should be clear and direct, not obtuse; open, not closed; positive and building, not negative and tearing down.
3. Diligently Prepared – Directors cannot expect to move to the level of adding value and innovation to an organization if they are not prepared.
4. Diversely Competent – Innovative boards have diverse, skilled, experienced, competent people on them.
5. High Expectations – Not only should board members prepare diligently; there should be an expectation that everyone will have prepared with that same level of diligence.
6. Delegate – Shaping the right committees, populated with the right people, who have the right skills, allows the board to delegate and trust their work.
7. Empower and Encourage – Trust, but verify. A Board should never substitute its own judgment for management's – but it does ensure that management is exercising sound judgment.