How to Conduct a Board Self-Assessment

Self-assessment of board members is a vital behavior of leadership that boards that are highly effective use to ensure long-term governance. It requires the board to step back from its day-to-day operations and examine its effectiveness. This lets the board be proactive and tackle areas that could become major sources of discontent and friction.

There are many ways to conduct a self-assessment of an entire board, from interviews and surveys to facilitated discussion. The best method to use is dependent on the size of the board, the available resources and the depth you wish to go into the assessment.

Once you have decided on the method, be sure you clearly define the goals you intend to achieve with the assessment. For instance, do you seek to improve governance, match governance with goals of the organization, or enhance accountability? Once this is determined you can then select an evaluation tool.

Certain tools let you compare results against other health facilities and hospitals while others focus on your company’s governance practices. Regardless of what you select it is crucial that the tools used are unbiased and do not call out director individuals. This will create a space where honest feedback can be provided.

A lot of boards also have a peer review process that requires board members to assess their co-directors. This is a valuable and productive process, however it is essential that the process stays secret. It isn’t easy for certain directors to speak out against another director if they fear they’ll be accused of it back at them. In this instance it is generally better to let the facilitator review the responses to determine Learn More Here about corporate governance in europe special poins which ideas are pertinent to be shared with the board.