Many associations track the assets they look for in a volunteer leader. But the most valuable skills today are harder to quantify.

What are the qualifications for a great board chair? Over the years, I’ve talked with plenty of associations that have developed matrices to thoughtfully answer the question. Fiduciary knowledge—check. Industry understanding—check. Past board experience—check.

A thoroughgoing grasp of the current polycrisis and its possible future impacts on members and stakeholders while managing sometimes contradictory instincts alongside the ability to work with a diverse group of fellow board members as well as the CEO? That doesn’t fit so neatly on a spreadsheet, does it?

And yet that kind of amorphous assortment of soft skills—wisdom, stewardship, management—may be more important than the resume-level qualifications. Writing at the Harvard Business Review, business-school professor Pedro Fontes Falcão notes that the current moment has put ever-intensifying demands on the skill sets of board leaders.

“Today chairs have to manage a growing and increasingly diverse group of stakeholders whose demands often conflict, while the environment their firms operate in has become more and more chaotic,” he writes. Issues that once could be seen as ancillary to an association’s work—climate change, AI, geopolitical upheavals—are now more central, and leaders need to be better equipped to engage with them.

Falcão suggests that this new, more complex environment puts more pressure on organizations to seat board chairs who are just as skilled at personality management as they are with strategy and finance. A board needs to know more than ever—which also means it needs the humility to be honest about what it doesn’t fully understand. A willingness to call in outside expertise is essential, he writes. It needs to be in the business of foresight more than it has been, which means a chair needs to be gifted at trafficking divergent and sometimes contradictory views. They need to keep the conversations on track, while understanding that listening to robust debate is part of the job as well.

In addition, Falcão argues that the chair also needs to be a more effective partner with the CEO, working not just with the board but with other groups engaged in the organization. As he writes: “As stakeholder groups grow in number and power, the job of dealing with them has become bigger and more complex.”

None of this fits neatly into a check-list for an effective board chair. And the capabilities that Falcão talks about don’t easily reduce to rubrics like “curiosity” and “people skills.” Vetting and identifying successful board talent, in the current moment, may involve more and deeper interviewing than succession committees have been used to.

A recent PwC report on governance offered a reminder that while CEOs lead organizations, the board is where long-term power resides. A successful chair has the confidence to embrace that, along with the humility to recognize that their true legacy is the lasting health of the organization, not whatever initiative they championed during their year in charge. “Outstanding board leaders treat governance as a living system, adapting structures and processes to match strategy and turning oversight into an engine for value creation,” the report says.

Associations face more challenges than ever. Their survival depends in large part on board leadership that’s ready to address them.

The post The New Rules for Board Chairs appeared first on Associations Now.