Communicating Governance: Why it’s hard, and what you can do about it
Organisations often struggle with the challenge of communicating what the board is doing and why. Too often, stakeholders only pay attention when things are going wrong. How can governors do things differently?
Over many years of participating in school evaluation, I have consistently found that some of the standards in which it is most challenging to secure positive community perceptions are those related to communicating the work of the board. Often, parents, staff and students may have little clue as to who sits on the board, let alone what they are doing, or why.
There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, a lot of the board’s work is, by its nature, confidential. Sensitive commercial or HR matters are worked on and resolved behind closed doors for a reason. Secondly, boards are busy (and generally staffed by volunteers who are snatching time between other professional commitments), and focus most of their time on the ‘doing’, leaving less time for saying what they have done after the fact.
A third, less tangible but still powerful, reason is that, when handled badly, communicating the board’s work can sometimes lead to challenging behaviours by other stakeholders. For instance, in communicating about decisions they have taken, even if the board is very confident in the rectitude of their stance they may be anxious (and not without reason) that those who might find their decisions contentious would be prompted to become actively resistant. School leaders may also be anxious that increased awareness of the board (and especially who sits on it) could lead to an increase in dissatisfied stakeholders reaching out to the board directly and attempting to circumvent the role of managers.
However, the key to managing these considerations lies in what is communicated, and how.
To combat pressures on their time and ensure communication is seen as a core activity rather than an afterthought, boards may like to invite communications staff from the organisation to sit in on certain sessions, especially those devoted to strategy and futures-thinking, with a mandate to produce content that allows key developments to be shared with stakeholders. They can consider agreeing with the organisation’s leaders a certain communications cycle (for instance, one story per board meeting), making sure to use the organisation’s existing communications channels rather than creating new ones for themselves (which are likely to be harder to maintain and limited in their natural audience).
Critically, boards should be intentional and selective in what stories to highlight from their work. Communicating in ‘peacetime’ (i.e. when things are going smoothly) is vital as it helps the community to feel confident in the board during periods when things get tougher. Longer-term strategic developments should be the focus of such communications; they can be spoken about as prospective endeavours (“We are going to do this”), or credited as past endeavours (“Because of the board’s input, we were able to do this”). There need not be mutual exclusivity between what management are saying about their work, and what the board can say about its work – for instance, the creation of a new team, facility or programme can be credited simultaneously to management for its implementation and to the board for steering the strategic direction of the organisation.
The voice of the board, in any communications it puts out, should be collective rather than individual. While transparency about who is on the board, what their role is etc. is important, this can still be achieved while also speaking of the board as a unified entity – for instance, by featuring a group photo of the board in session, and by avoiding reference to individual governor perspectives which should remain private. To avoid stakeholders ‘working around’ the management, the board should – as it writes about its work – credit the relationship between the board and the management as being key to the work of the organisation. The message from governors should be clear: “We set the direction, and then we entrust the implementation to the leadership”.
Proactive, ‘peacetime’ communication – which is built around strategic initiatives, utilises the organisation’s existing communications capacity, and emphasises the partnership between governance and leadership – can ensure positive community perceptions about the work of the board. While it can be challenging to get it right, the rewards are well worth the effort.