Welcome to the Session Redefining board meetings: engaging, value added, and effective. On the right hand side of your screen you will see a window with a chat. Q&A, feedback and notes tab. You can use the chat box to chat with other attendees, but please use the Q&A box to send questions in for the presenters. You can also upvote questions in the Q&A panel if you would like to see the question answered at the end of the session, we will answer as many questions as we can. The Notes tab is there for you to keep your own notes during the session if you would like to. We also ask that you complete the brief evaluation found in the feedback tab at the end of the session. We use session feedback to continue improving what we offer so we truly appreciate you taking the time. And without further ado, please join me in welcoming our presenter, Angela Mills. Good afternoon. My name is Angela Mills and I am excited to be with you all and share with you about redefining board meetings and we really want them to be more engaging, more interactive and more value added. And I wanted to share a little bit about what my background is. It's been one filled with managing boards and many different entities across the university and within colleges, as well as alumni boards for chapters. They function in different ways, but really the principles are the same. Board members have told me that I'm wasting their time, that they would give it a year and then see what happens. And they've challenged me to make changes to board meetings that I took to heart and really, really wanted to find ways in which I redefined board meetings and moved us from a Net Promoter score, which is a way in which to know whether or not you would tell someone that they should be part of this experience too. And it took us from a level three to a level ten, the highest possible score. So I'm hoping that that by the end of the session, I will give you some tactics and approaches that you will be able to use with your boards even more than this. I've sat in different board meetings as a volunteer, and I will tell you my approach to board meetings when I was only a professional versus when I was a professional and an active volunteer for my own alma mater on an alumni board as well as other nonprofits, completely changed the way in which I approach being a manager of volunteer boards. It's made me realize just how important the experiences it is to those who give up their time, and that is by far their most valuable commodity. And it's also how important it is to engage them in the meeting and not just talk at them, but truly make them part of the meeting. So let's get into this. There's a few things that I want you to consider when thinking about boards. I want you to think about these four questions for your board in general. But even more, I want you to think about them as you approach each of your meetings. These create really the framework and foundation that shapes the approaches and tactics that you put towards your board meetings. So the first one there on the left is what is your goal? What is the role of the board that could be to govern, to advise or to actively produce leadership expectations? What outcomes are you looking for or what are you trying to accomplish from that specific meeting? What is the connection of that meeting to your strategic priorities for your institution over arching or your sector unit and specific topics you want to discuss for that meeting? Then who do you have at the table? Who serves on your board? What insights are they able to give to you that you think you can draw out of them? What representation do you have for different groups that can bring to the table and what thoughts and expertise levels? Or are they middle managers or are they CEOs? Are they just starting out in their career? Which tells you a little bit about how they approach business, how they approach the different topics that you'll be talking about? And are they open to an authentic view? You know, working with alumni, sometimes they really want this glowing thought about their institution. But the reality is, is that we need them to focus on some of the challenges we have. And so we have to peel back labor's layers sometimes and show them a little bit different view. And are they able to do that and then are they able to come at it in a way that is constructive and approachable for the rest of the board to have a conversation? But I would say that on the right hand side, is it mutually beneficial as one of the most important questions you can ask, Is it balance between the interests of the board and the instruments of the institution or unit? Are you using their time wealth? Are they having a value added experience? I had a board member once that told me that they drove 7 hours, missed three days of work, and they sat in a board meeting and not once did we really offer them an opportunity to provide us insight and thoughts to share with others. And most importantly, are they making an impact or do they walk away feeling like they have done something and helped you move your goals, your thoughts, your approach, what you're doing as an institution forward? So if you focus on these four different questions, both as the board as a whole, but very specifically for each meeting, it really helps you better understand what you're got to work with, what you're trying to do, and then how you can lead to an outcome that is both value added and mutually beneficial. So let's talk about a little bit about some of the approaches to do this. And what I have found is that whether it's academic leaders that are current academic leaders, like a department head or a dean that was a department head or administrators within the academic structure, that a lot of times they have a mindset that maybe a little bit different than a number of our alumni members come to the table with. They are more focused on the different approaches that are there that might be more corporate approach or a nonprofit approach. And so from an academia standpoint, sometimes it's challenging to talk about board meetings. But what I have found is the syllabus design approach really works well in talking with them, that you have certain topics that you cover and you have a certain amount of time and certain things that you want to integrate into it. For example, a presentation that is the same for each board meeting with the same slides and just updated information becomes very nuanced, becomes very boring to someone that's coming to multiple board meetings. If you're crafting a syllabus for a class and you have every class look alike, you wouldn't want all of the classes to have that same look and feel. And what we're finding is that in modern and interactive approaches to pedagogy and curriculum design, there's a focus on more engaging content. I would say on all of our campuses, we're seeing this across the board. So take that to the next level and apply it to your board meeting. Design. And so what you want is a mixture, much like the syllabuses where they have readings that students do prior to class to prepare them. Lectures by professors providing oral content that's especially important, and projects or labs providing hands on visual learning experiences and then group discussions. We have these interactive and informational approaches within our classrooms, and so now we should apply those to our board meetings. So if we look at our board meetings and you break them down into the informational, interactive, and the informational is more traditional approach, more like a traditional class, it is reports and updates. And we all have done this. We've had nice, pretty reports with lots of numbers on them, and we're present on them and they're very few questions and very little interaction. It's one way communication, it's passive in our approach and there's really a lack of synergy because you're not talking about it, you're talking at them about it. And that's a really important distinction in this conversation. It's also a missed opportunity to gain feedback and information and insight from board members because many of them are spending their professional careers actually reading reports and updates and synthesizing information and providing that within their own organizations. So you want to provide that opportunity for them. This is also easy to provide information, and that's why it is important for us to have reports and updates. It is important for us to share information with our board members about our institution or in that entity, because it's important for them to know what's going on. But I would say that we also need to think about how do we bring in discussion and problem solving? How do we have them as part of the approach to how we're handling the things that we are doing? How are you engaging them to ask questions and have communication that is back and forth? Our board members want this involvement, otherwise the question is why are they spending time with you as part of this? It is highly interactive sessions. It's sessions where you pose the question and folks in the room really talk through it. It's an act of learning where they are engaged in the process. So you might work through a case study with them or work through a challenge that you have. It's also a high use of synergy. It means that you're bringing real value to them being in the room with you and that they are bringing real value to the table. And together that becomes the synergy. It also, I will say, takes a little more time to prep because you have to think about it in your leadership has to be vulnerable, which means sometimes talking through different scenarios and different responses you might get from board members to prepare them for the questions or prepare them for the discussion. It's also sometimes harder to provide information. It means that sometimes as a leader, the leader has to say, you know, I don't know the answer to that, but I'll follow up with that. Now, what I would say is you actually need a combination of these two. You need meetings that have both reports and updates and discussions and problem solving. And depending on what you're focusing on in the meeting, you may lean 25% into one side and 75% of the other, or 40 and 60%. It really depends, but it is helpful to have both of these. I also will say that it takes a minute to transition into this. So if you are thinking about at the end of this presentation, applying this, it's important for you to sort of ease into that discussion and problem solving because they have to get used to engaging in that way. Now, within a board meeting design, looking back at that same layout I use for the syllabus, we're looking at a board meeting. So on the left there you have reports and updates on the right discussions and problem solving. And within the meetings you have pre reads and presentations which really focus more on your report than updates and then activities and group discussions which are really discussion and problem solving. So when we look at those pre reasoned presentations, when I talk about pre reads, I'm talking about providing straightforward and contextual information to board members that it could be before the meeting or at the meeting, but it's really helpful for it to be before they can really get an understanding and context for what you're going to talk about. Presentations at the meeting is orally delivering information that is important to the entity to share. And so it is important for you as the institution to share these things in person. And that could have a little bit of discussion in it or questions. But it's really about presenting the information and then having the questions for clarification. Now that activities and group discussions are those discussions of problem solving. Your activities could be many things on campus. It's getting them out of the conference room and it's visual and engaging learning experiences. So tours are open, houses are great options for this, or it could be bringing things to them to see like a student design showcase. Your group discussions are allowing for interaction amongst the board members, but it also could be with other entities such as other leaders, other faculty members, students, your audience. It's bringing them together to take advantage of that group thought and hear feedback. So if you think about putting these all together and your agenda just like a syllabus or just like a class design, it's about how do you incorporate those four pieces to work it together? Now, one more value added approach that you can take is this big question approach. And I'll tell you, I'll give total and utter credit to my dean. She had this thought and then it was an interesting thought because I talked with two of our board members about it and they said, Well, we actually do this in the corporate world. We have one big question for each board meeting and we really dive into that. Now, that's not to say there are some pieces that you have to do each time, but having a big question really allows you to focus in on a strategic connection for everything in that board meeting that directs you to move forward and tie it to that. So much like a syllabus for a class across the semester that covers multiple parts of the whole concept. Now each meeting covers different parts of the organization across the time. So if you have different questions for each one of your meetings over a three year board term, if your board meets twice a year, that means they've covered six different questions. It also helps them sort of see that they're moving things forward, even if they are more open ended questions that you don't actually give an answer to in the meeting. But it's really about talking about those different pieces. So when you approach this and how you do it, you're continually connecting back to the big question. So in your pre reads, you pose the question, you open with the question and you provide basic information about it. And what happens is the board members start thinking about it while they're in the plane coming there, while they're riding in the car driving there, they really start to ponder it. You also might, as part of those pre reads, provide basic information. So articles, examples here, examples of how this has been implemented and other areas and how they could consider how they tie into it during the presentation to educate board members on key points that are important to them to know that connect to the question and you understand what you are doing to present in connection to that. And so it really zeroes in on who you should have present and what they should talk about during that activities. You either indirectly or directly you want to connect back to that question and then the group discussions, you want to ponder the question or dissect different parts of it that connect back to the bigger question. And so an example of this is for us at Virginia Tech Engineering that our board focused in on. Was it engineering education as a whole? What makes Virginia Tech engineering distinctive? And so as part of that, our pre reads included data about the college and our key peer institutions, as well as aspirational institutions in an article about what engineering education is made up of today, presentations included the Dean talking about the national landscape of engineering, education's opportunities and challenges of distinguishing herself within that landscape. And then our activities included things like our living learning communities and lunch with students to share about what they hear from potential students when they're giving them tours. Our group discussions included board members and ten students that provided insight about their own student experience. Are we actually providing what we're say we're providing? And then board members would bring back themes to the whole board. And Dean, to talk about a second example of this was how to manage change within the college. We've implemented a new strategic plan and we're approaching things a little bit differently. And I would say all of our institutions at different times do this. And one of the things we have recognized is our alumni work with change management a lot and the organizations that they work in. And so they are able to give us thoughts and approaches that they use in their nonprofit or corporate world. And we have taken a lot of lessons from them. They also reinforce things that we do. So within this, we had pre reads that had reports from our strategic task forces about movement forward with the strategic plan and data about the landscape of graduate education. Presentations included our Associate Dean talking through what we're doing with graduate studies and our graduate student experience. But even more than that, she had an open discussion with board members to hear how they handled this in their organizations, when maybe team members did not feel connected to the mission or didn't feel like they the organization itself was delivering. Our activities included a tour of a new buildings research lab, which directly changed our approach to graduate education and a lunch with our department heads to specifically talk with department heads about the tactics they use and share with the department heads about what they're doing in their own organizations. And then group discussions were graduate students ten in a room with two or three board members, and they would lead them through questions and get gather feedback and then provide those themes that they heard back to the board. And Dean, with no one else in the room, it really was insightful. We actually learned a lot. And I will say the small group discussions with the graduate students actually led us to paths that we didn't even know were opportunities or challenges. So I definitely think this is something that you yourself could implement with your own board. The question is, what will you plan for your board within these four different categories and how will you put it together? And what big question will you ponder for your board? Now, I want to shift a little bit in the presentation, and I want to give you some very straightforward tactics and activities that you can do within these different arrows here. The pre reads, presentation activities and group discussions. So within your pre reads, moving to prep work is important and I will say it makes your board members feel like they need to get ready for your meeting, that they actually have to learn something before they get there. They have to get in the mindset and what really changes with that is that once they're there, they're fully engaged, they have the basic information and they can fully be involved in your conversation. It also educates board members of key facts. It provides context to them and makes them feel more prepared so that when you do have those discussions, they're more likely to step up and talk and share experiences. Potential options with this that we have seen is overview of an agenda letter from your department head, from your leader, and it really walks them through the agenda. Why are we talking about this? What are the activities we're doing and how that connects back to the question? It poses the question to them. It has presentation slides with key data points. So we have a lot of data points in a college that has right at 12,000 students. And so with that, we found that we could take that out of the board meeting and actually give it to them ahead of time. And they could go through those numbers instead of the dean walking them through their numbers. We really push them to be adults and do the pre reads as a presentation. And so they came in understanding those basic numbers, how we're right number of faculty, number of students where we were with the number of graduates last year and then we also look for articles from our institution or external readings that can be provided to them that provides that context and even videos. So the videos shown here is a video, a presentation by our Dean to our faculty about the strategic plan, and we provided an extra hour of that specifically on the topic we were focused on. It is important to deliver this through length about 1 to 2 weeks before the meeting, which gives them time to focus on it. Now, as part of this, you want to make it easy. You want to communicate clearly and concisely. And we have found that sending them calendar invites to each session with all the information in the notes and telling them that all the information in the notes really has been a game changer for anyone that has an assistant. This means that they can see what's important for them to see if their upper level executive or Tom's the assistant, will print all things so that they have it on the plane ride or for the night before the meeting to read it also allows if they're sharing calendars with spouses or partners, it allows them to see what they're going to be doing. We also break them down into each session. So we have a session on Thursday afternoon, a dinner that night session in the morning on Friday, a lunch session, and then an afternoon session. That way, if they're only coming to part of it, they have the information for just that session. It's also important and I really recognized this when I was serving on my own alma mater board. I have this life and all of a sudden the institution is inserting themselves in it and I have to be really focused in on it. And so having things that my fingertips is really helpful. And the other thing that as part of that, and I will say this has got me the most praise from the board members is sending an email 48 hours before the meeting with all of the details linked in it. So we have all been those folks as volunteer managers where we sent an email three weeks ago and said, okay, they're informed. And the reality is how many emails have they gotten since then? Can they easily find it in the inbox? So what I'm trying do is send them an email 48 hours before that synthesizes everything I've sent to them and provides links to anything that I'm providing. So whether it be through teams or through Google or another avenue that you're using to provide information to your board, it helps you provide it to them. And that way, that night, either before they leave or after they arrive the night before the board meeting, they can just sort of walk through all the details. Now, we have a tendency when we talk to faculty, say we would love for you to talk 50 minutes or there's an assumption by faculty. They're sort of ingrained that way because that's how long their classes are. And so what we have recognized is that 15 minutes is really a great presentation time where you can go into it, but you also are not going to give really heavy detail. And with us as engineers, we don't want them to get into that nitty gritty. We want them to stay a little bit higher level and we want to give an option for questions. So we actually lay out shorter presentations or multiple presentations that are 15 minutes, 15 minutes and 15 minutes and then have a 15 minute all together. Question Time for all of our panel of presenters. This is totally change the way in which our board members taken information from our faculty members and from our students. Now, the other thing we've done is we have a tendency to automatically think of our leaders and our faculty members as our presenters. And what I will say is our students are amazing. And the reality is our lungs love to hear from our students. Even if you have an alumni board in the Center Alumni Association and you have students present on things they're doing that may not connect to the alumni association, they will be completely fascinated by what students are able to do and what access they have as students of what they're doing on your campus. It's important for you to figure out how to implement this. I will say the passion is easily to be seen. They typically are excited about this opportunity because they can hone in on their presentation skills and it also allows you to sort of dig in and dig a little deeper into your institution and show more about what is happening as far as the learning process and how they're integrating this into their classroom or their full educational experience. You can do this as part of a reception and or a session and have multiple student groups are at tables around the room. And so there are many different ways you can have. We actually have moved away from faculty members really presenting, and we use graduate students to present any time we're talking about it. I call it the student magic because as soon as they come in the room, everybody's face lights out and they're just excited for the students. We also have a tendency to stay in a conference room. We think, Let's not move them, let's keep it simple. And the reality is they want to see where action is happening on campus. Choose places that are unique that when they come on a weekend that they can't have access to, that is not available to the general person or the general public. They came all the way to see you and then they never get on to campus. The number of times I've been told that and we really try to integrate this either as optional tours before they get the actual meeting started, but also one or two during the meeting. A great placement for them is right after lunch because they are a little bit more tired and it gets them moving around because you just filled them with yummy food for high meetings. You can also integrate this by having faculty or a student at the location you go to on a computer off to the side and they actually have a one on one conversation with those that are joining you virtually. Also, student board lunches. So we or this could be leaders or department heads. But what we have found is that placement at a lunch matters. So we used to have small tables of four and we'd have two board members and two students. And what we found that was for the first five or 10 minutes, everybody would talk and then there would be a lull and you would end up with the students being quiet and the board members talking to one another, either about the rest of the meeting, about the weather, what trips they're taking, but not really engaging the students. The moment that we changed to the layout that's on the screen, where it is a board member, student board member, student Board member, student it totally changed the game. The conversation is such that a board member is either talking directly with one student or talking with two students or two board members, or having a conversation with one student. We rarely have a student that is not being engaged in conversation or a board member not being in conversation. As we strategically look at the students and ask questions, want to ask for their RSVP. What are you studying? What are your career aspirations? Where are you hoping to be in the country? And that way we are able to sit them beside folks that either can help their career. Internships have been gotten out of opportunities like this or help their connections, and it really has been a game changer on both sides, actually. Have students interested in being part of these and saying, tell me about the next one. I'd love to be part of it. The other thing is we tend to think about boards being more straight forward and not being a social or too much social. But us within the academic, especially within colleges, we tend to think, okay, we're just going to have them in a conference room and just talk to them our business, and then we go on. And the reality is when you get into this more problem solving a group discussions, you need board members to be comfortable with one another. You want them to interact in a more social manner so that when it's time for those small group discussions, they are more interactive and comfortable talking with one another. You also will see a difference in how they connect with you and your team and how open they are talking with you. I will say we have a tendency to be more focused on dinners and formal dinners, and we've gone much more into our receptions that up and a station dinner because that way board members can move around and talk with more folks. And if you have different leaders on your campus coming to interact with them, they can have more people that they interact with and talk with. It's been a game changer. Now, with your small discussions, what we have found is that they're a great way to delve into a topic and talk about it with an internal constituency to the college that might bring different perspectives to the board. And what I mean by that is sometimes, for example, our graduate students will be more open with your board members than they will be with the leaders of the college. Their future is dependent upon the approval of those folks. And so instead, they're much more open and honest. We find that we can utilize this with leadership, with faculty or students, or we can connect these small group discussions to a TED Talk presentation. So that happened earlier. And then now we're going to pose the question that they'll really delve into. We also find that board members will synthesize information so they'll be in these discussions and we'll either have a worksheet for them to work through and they give it back to us and provide us insight. Or they'll have a report out which I'll talk about in a minute for hybrid meetings. You can also do this where you have one of your staff members actually have a laptop and they get that laptop, goes into a small group discussion with four or five or six other members and the laptop is sat at the table. Is this if that person is sitting in that chair and so it makes them feel that they're part of the meeting in a different way. The other way is to have a breakout group with just the virtual folks together, which allows an option. And you can do that for your virtual meetings just by having breakout rooms. If you have a couple board members that are more talkative than others. I've found that it works really well in these small group discussions to actually put them in the same group because only one person can talk. And so what it allows is for some of your quieter board members to be in another group where, you know, someone might draw out conversation, especially someone who's a teacher or someone who's good on group thought or leading groups because they will call on the different folks in the group. So it's really about sort of expanding upon a presentation on topic you've already done or providing a topic for them to talk about. Now I will say that you can take this one step further. You can have very intense discussions or lean into a topic in a totally different way. And so this is great to use with a problem or even a one off board session where you're really going to delve into a topic or a leader or part of your entity where you're just going to focus on that. This is when you have three or four questions for those graduate students and you pose it to them and you really have a problem and you're really trying to get to understand it and get insights from those students or from those faculty members or even from your audience of general alumni. And the board members can bring that information out of them and bring it back. So it's really about focusing in on a very intense discussion in a very intentional way. Now, with both of these, either a small group discussion that's more broad and open ended or there's very intense discussions. There's always the question of report out and there is the importance of not just discussing, but then coming back to the leader that they see, that the leaders then hearing it from the different small groups. And so a lot of times this will be rushed. And so you have to build time. And for this you also want to tie it back to your big question. You want to provide that direction and context. So when you say, I want you to report out about this, I'd also love for you to connect it to the big question. What did you hear that connects to that? Now there's ways to build this into the meeting. There's really two ways each group reports out, which you allows you to hear from every single group, but it tends to be very monotonous. It tends to have overlap, and so it's not as much of a discussion. The other option is you bring the board back together as a whole group and they actually have an open discussion. So Group one will share. This was something really interesting and then group four will say, Actually we heard that, but we are in a different way and so it becomes more of a discussion. Now I will say your leader is sort of got to move through that and help them through that discussion so you don't get focused in on just one piece. But it's a great way to find these aha moments where it's either, Oh, this really force reinforces something that we were thinking about or wow, that's something we had never thought about. Or that's really an issue that we didn't realize was an issue. And it really helps you dig into things and then get it back to the leader. The other thing we found is those aha moments that sometimes the board members are putting together pieces that we never thought of. And so that's really helped us to see connections that we'd never seen before. Now, executive session is another tactic we've used. This is 45 minutes. Typically at the end of the board meeting I leave as the manager of the board meeting. Our team leaves and it is only the main leader and the board members. This allows them to really get to the truth, to share anything on their mind, to talk about things like, you know, you really have a challenge with this associate dean. You really have a challenge in that these two entities are not talking. It also can be I hate this part of the meeting. We really need to change this. Please get rid of Angela. Any of those are possibilities. But what it allows them to do is really have this open conversation with the leader, with nobody else in the room. And what has come of that is typically there are emails now that are coming 2 to 4 days after the meeting that are sharing all this different insight that they started thinking about on the way home and continue to bring out things. So it really has made a difference to how they engage with us even after the meeting. Now, if we put all this together, what impact have these had? And, you know, that's really important to think about. And I mentioned the score of moving from a three to a ten, but it's more than that. We have more engaged board members. They want to actually participate in the meeting. They're if they missed it, we have a mutually beneficial equation that board members and the institution are getting something out of it. We have a more strategic focus and more direction in what we're doing and how it connects to what we're doing. We also have more outcomes that make a difference to the department or the entity we gain insight into what they're thinking and it provides us an amazing sounding board to either confirm our strategic move forward or to challenge what we're thinking and maybe move in a different direction, pivoting what our plans were and then conversations are there that board members actually want to be a part of. They are following and saying, Hey, I thought about this. Oh, I thought about this in a different way. And it really makes them feel like they're bringing value and that they're being heard. That's the number one thing that our alums talk about and donors talk about is being heard and being on a board is about them being heard. Now, I'll leave you with one last thing to share. That was a great opportunity that came out of COVID. And if you have multiple boards within your area, we tend to think that we have to have a big weekend and bring them all together and all the board meetings. And what we found is that wasn't possible for us. We have 17 boards across the college and they have meetings at very specific times for specific reasons. And so we actually bring them together virtually. The main leader, our dean gives an update and that allows her to still go to the other sessions that throughout the year of the individual board meetings. But it allows her to provide the overarching strategy and then give it out to the different boards. So it's something that's worked for us and maybe it'll work for you, but it's definitely something that we'll move forward with. So that's all I have from here. Here's my information and you're more than welcome to reach out to me. If there are questions, we don't get to you today or you just want to throw off some thoughts. I'm more than happy to listen and provide any insight I can, and I'll throw it over to Erika for any questions we might have time for. Certainly. So this question has 16 votes. We struggle with board members not reading what we send them or staying up to date on university news. So they come up to the meetings and bring up irrelevant or out of date information and ideas. Any suggestion is to help present and or handle this respectfully. Absolutely. So prep work is really important and your leader setting a tone that they are actually going to zero in on that prep work. And so I will say the first couple of meetings, you can definitely tell who has read stuff and who haven't from that prep work. And so you ask very specific questions and say, So those of you in the room that read this, let's talk about this key thing and you're specifically pointing to that. And it's it's almost a push for them to recognize that, wow, I'm not prepared and I really didn't focus on this. The other thing with that is empowering your leader. You know, so many times we are the curators of a meeting and we take things from our leader and then make it happen. Is working with the leader to manage those that asks lots of questions or dominate. And if you empower your institutional leader as well as your chair or anyone you know, that would be good at the table as other board member to sort of take that conversation and say, you know, maybe we should take that off line. That's one of the best things. Let's take that offline. Let's talk about that in the next meeting. And so or, you know, I really think you need to look at this and not so much the institutional leader, but another board member talking about that. It sort of puts them in a situation that if they're not reading it, they're not actively engaged in the meeting. So it's I don't want to say them, but it definitely makes them think before the next meeting. Great. Thank you. Second question How do you select people to invite to join the board? Are there requirements such as philanthropy? So we definitely have a layout of expectations and a roles and responsibilities when people and that could be development officers, that could be department heads put forward names for the board. I have different questions that they have to answer, and there are questions like what do they bring to the table? What involvement have they had with us? What experiences have they had in their life? What is their philanthropic involvement in the university that allows us to build a board out that has different backgrounds but also brings different things to the table? We've made a commitment with our board. We're more C-suite level board just because of what our dean is focused on, and she sees this as a leadership when I had a chapter board that I was working with to manage, help manage with the All Chapter's programing, it was really about who are the workers that I want to bring forward that have great ideas, that are positive, that have the experience. So you really want to think through what you're trying to get at the table and then who you're trying to get at the table as far as thoughts and then craft those questions for those putting names forward so that they're making a case for that. We have it that you make a gift of some kind, and giving day is a huge piece of that. And we ask all of our board, both at the college and the department level to give as part of giving day. That's actually incorporated into our all boards meeting. We also have within the College Board that it's an expectation that you make a campaign that is connected to your interest and investment in the college. And so it's twofold. I personally have the feeling that if you're on a board, you should be investing in what you are helping make decisions on. And so when I was an alumni board member and board president, without a doubt, I think that should be part of the expectations that you make some gift of some level and you decide on that level for your institution and that board that is there so that they are investing in it. Okay. We have less than 2 minutes left. And so this is the last question. How do you select people to invite to join to the I'm sorry, I've read that one already. How do you navigate when board members bring up topics that do not align with missions that can sometimes take over the meeting? Absolutely. So this is something that I definitely have struggled with in the past. I lean on to executive committee members that aren't that voice. I'll lean heavily into my chair and I will say that when I became in the executive leadership of my alma mater board, I went to the executive director and said, Hey, how can I help? Because I understand this from both the professional and the personal side of volunteering that I can say things that you can't. And so sometimes that's harder for us to say. And so I sort of talked to a few people before the meeting each time and say, you know, this person has had a challenge with this subject and I need your help. I also talk with my leader about that so that she can help with that. And she say, you know, we just can't focus on this anymore or we need to adjust to this other topic. And sometimes that means my boss takes the person and says taps on my shoulder and says, Let's go have a conversation about this. I'd love to talk one on one with you. And so sort of plan for that that somebody in the room can grab that person and take them out of the room because it's it's not always a topic that everybody needs to discuss. It's just something that they really want to discuss. Not a child not getting in challenges with job placement and things that be coming from a very specific thing. So it's important to sort of extract that out and take them into another area and have that one on one conversation. I think it's really important to look around the room and see how your board is reacting. If members are engaged in it, maybe it's a conversation you need to have, but helping sort of like making your executive members into helpers that can help navigate the conversation and that's really important. I tell my chair, I provide it talking points to him, but I tell him without a doubt, what's most important is for you to help guide us along this pathway. And so we stay tied into that Big question. And I will say the big question has definitely helped with that, that if that doesn't tie into the big question, we can say, well, we've got to focus back in on this. It's really important for this to be our focus for this meeting. We might be able to talk about that at a future meeting and I know our time is up, so I will step back. Great. Thank you so much, Angela, for a great presentation and thank you for all our attendees for joining. Be sure it be sure you go. If you haven't completed the session evaluation, please do so and you can return to the agenda to find your next session. Thanks, Angela. Thank you.

board meetings

engagement

interactive

goal-setting

small group discussions

executive sessions

Angela Mills

strategic focus