In this episode hosts Joe Ayoub and Raza Shaikh welcome Susan Leahy, the founder of Robert’s Rules Made Simple. Susan has trained and advised thousands of board members, board chairs and others on how to master Robert’s Rules of Order, to help lead and participate in productive meetings.
Key Takeaways
1. History of Robert’s Rules of Order
- Robert’s Rules of Order is a decision making process developed in the 1800s by General Henry M. Robert, who was frustrated by disorganized meetings. Roberts created a guide, first published in 1876, which summarized and simplify parliamentary procedure to make understanding how to run an effective meeting accessible to everyone. It has, over the years, evolved into a detailed 700-page reference guide.
2. Susan’s journey to Robert’s Rules
- Leahy was first introduced to Robert’s Rules when she and her mother enrolled into a local junior college course to learn about how to run an effective meeting. At that time, Leahy’s mother served on an all-male city council board and found that during the meetings, discussions and decisions weren’t clear. Understanding Robert’s Rules gave her mother confidence in the meetings and she was able to find her voice and she was able to be of service “ and she was able to find her voice and she was able to be of service.”
- Susan began using Robert’s Rules in high school and at college in connection with student government and became known for running effective meetings
3. The value of effective board meetings
- Robert’s Rules of Order increases the likelihood that meetings will be productive.
- At its core, the Rules are about promoting clarity and action. By following the Seven Fundamental Motions of Robert’s Rules meetings become more productive
- Robert’s Rules is only used to handle the business of meetings, not the entire meeting. Once board members learn the basics, then the board’s productivity increases exponentially.
- Robert’s Rules are intended to provide everyone in the boardroom with a “common language” to help foster productive discussion and decision-making regarding the business of an organization.
4. The role of a parliamentarian in board meetings
- A parliamentarian is a resource for the chair, ensuring meetings stay on track. The chair ultimately makes the final decision but can consult with the parliamentarian whenever needed.
Quotes
”When you are on a board, you’re either handling information items or business items, and when it comes to the business of a board, everyone on that board needs to understand the decision making process they’re using in order to be productive and drive action.”
”You do not need to be a parliamentarian to use Robert’s Rules of Order. It is a reference guide there to support you in making business decisions. That’s important because if people do not have a common understanding about how you’re making business decisions, it’s can create tension, mistrust, frustration – and it’s going to waste a lot of time”
”What we do is put an emphasis on providing training that’s going to make us more high functioning. How are we going to not just get it “right” how are we going to be healthy? And that’s why I focus on healthy board dynamics and using Robert’s Rules of Order as a tool to leverage a healthier dynamic on your board.”
Links
Guest Bio
Susan Leahy, MA CSP, is a dynamic and highly engaging speaker, trainer, and facilitator specializing in board development, leadership, and effective meetings. As the founder of Robert’s Rules Made Simple, established in 2004, Susan has empowered thousands of board members, board chairs, and support staff to master Robert’s Rules of Order, transforming meetings into productive, efficient, and empowering experiences.
A sought-after expert in communication, leadership, and group decision-making, Susan has worked with organizations of all sizes—from nonprofits to Fortune 500 companies and government entities. She is the creator of the acclaimed “Chair a Meeting with Confidence” program, designed to help board chairs lead with clarity, authority, and ease.
With a Master’s degree in Applied Behavioral Sciences from Bastyr University, Susan combines deep expertise with a refreshingly engaging approach. Her unique background—being raised by a professional clown and a career Marine—shapes her signature style: energetic, impactful, and highly memorable. She has a rare talent for making even the most complex or dry topics both accessible and engaging, leaving her audiences empowered and inspired.
Transcript:
Joe: [00:00:00] hello and welcome to On Boards a deep dive at what drives business success. I’m Joe Ayoub and I’m here with my co-host Raza Shaikh twice a month. On Boards is the place to learn about one of the most critically important aspects of any company or organization. its board of directors or advisors with a focus on the important issues that are facing boards, company leadership.
And stakeholders.
Raza: Joe and I speak with a wide range of guests and talk about what makes a board successful or unsuccessful, what it means to be an effective board member. And how to make your board one of the most valuable assets of your organization.
Joe: Before we introduce our guest, we want to thank the law firm of Nutter McClennen Fish, who, again, are sponsoring our On Boards summit, Nutter has been an incredible partner with us in every way. We appreciate all they’ve [00:01:00] done to support this podcast.
Our guest today is Susan Leahy. Susan is the founder of Robert’s Rules Made Simple through which he has empowered thousands of board members, board chairs, and support staff to master Robert’s Rules of Order, helping to transform meetings into productive and efficient experiences.
Raza: Susan is a dynamic and highly engaging speaker, trainer and facilitator specializing in board development, leadership, and effective meetings. She has worked with organizations of all sizes, from nonprofits to Fortune 500 companies and government entities. She is the creator of the acclaimed Chair a Meeting with Confidence Program designed to help board chairs lead with clarity, authority, and ease.
Joe: Susan has a degree in applied behavioral sciences, which [00:02:00] combined with her deep expertise of Robert’s Rules, gives her a rare talent for making even the most complex or dry topics, both accessible and engaging. Susan, it’s great to have you with us today on On Boards.
Susan: I am glad to be here, Joe, Raza and everyone out there. I am glad to be sharing a little bit of life with everyone.
Joe: All right, so if I mention Robert’s Rules of Order, unless I’m talking to a chief governance officer or maybe a parliamentarian or someone who uses it in meetings on a regular basis, the usual reaction is people’s eyes glaze over. Our hope is that this episode will change that for everyone listening to this show. So, let’s start with the basics what is Robert’s Rules of Order? How did it come about, and what was the original idea behind it?
Susan: I think simply put, because that’s what I [00:03:00] like to do is make things simple, Robert’s is nothing more than a decision making process. When you are on a board, you’re either handling information items or business items, that’s it, and it’s important to understand that when it comes to the business of a board, everyone on that board needs to understand the decision making process that they’re using in order to be productive and drive action.
Robert’s is a decision making process and it was developed way back in the 1800s by a general in the Army named General Henry M. Robert, and he actually was so confused by the stuff, he wrote a small book that he self-published as Robert’s Rules of Order. People loved his meeting so much, they kept asking for his rules, and he published it for the first time in 1876, so that’s a little bit of [00:04:00] history about where Robert’s came from.
Joe: And his goal was to summarize what was then the basic parliamentary law.
Susan: The book houses what’s called parliamentary procedure. He wanted to make it simple. And so what we as human beings have done over the years since 1876, we’ve revised the book literally a dozen times and we’ve taken it from a small pamphlet to a 700-page book, and the book, in my opinion, is part of the problem. It’s too detailed for what the majority of board members need to understand. You do not need to be a parliamentarian to use Robert’s Rules of Order. It is a reference guide that is there to support you in making business decisions.
Now, why is that important? That’s important because if people do not have a common understanding about how you’re making business decisions, it’s going to create tension, mistrust, frustration and dare I [00:05:00] just say, it’s going to waste a lot of time.
Joe: Right, and that is obviously something that no board, no board chair, no CEO ever wants to happen. Board time is so precious as it is. One thing you said when we spoke the last time was that, and I thought this was a great way to look at it, Robert’s Rules of Order increases the likelihood that meetings will be productive, and that to me is such a great way to think about it to kind of counterbalance people’s sometimes kind of response, “Well, we don’t need that kind of formality.” But as you put it, it’s not meant to make it formal, it’s made to make it all accessible to people.
Susan: Yes. Now, what makes it feel inaccessible is that people don’t have a common understanding of the basics, and so I’m actually going to go back a little bit because one of the key conversations that I have when I go in and I work with any boards is I give everyone an equation and I say, time equals what?[00:06:00]
Joe: Life.
Susan: Right. There we go. You know the answer here, but what we inevitably hear is that time equals money. don’t really anchor into the reality of why is it so important to save time in our meetings. Yes, you are saving your organization money. Yes, you are saving and being more productive, but at the end of the day, the life of every single person in that room matters.
If you are a board of directors that can operate at the level of life, then that’s going to trickle down into your organization because the life of your employees matters. And if we can be playing the game at that level, then all of a sudden the decision making process becomes that much more important because we’re valuing the life of the individuals who are in the room and those who were impacting with the decisions we’re making.
Joe: So, let’s go back to how you first got turned onto Robert’s Rules, not typical, I think, story.
Susan: It is not [00:07:00] a typical story. So, I love that you’re giving me the space to share this story. So, my mom actually served on the city council of our small town in California and she served on an all-male board, and I remember when I first watched one of the city council meetings, my discussion with my mom is, should we walked out the meeting? I said, “When do you guys actually get work done? Felt like there was a lot of discussion and people didn’t understand what was happening.”
From that one conversation with my mom, she kind of talked about this tool called Robert’s Rules of Order, which they were supposed to be using in their meetings, and my mom didn’t really understand or have any training, and that’s actually very common. There’s a lot of people who are desiring to serve on boards who are well intended, that have passion, but they haven’t been trained. And so it’s that sense of, “Well, where do you go to seek out that training?”
So, my mom and I actually enrolled in our local junior college, and we took a class, it was a mother-daughter bonding experience back when I was a teenager, and [00:08:00] so that’s when I started to learn about Robert’s Rules of Order and the mechanics of running really good meetings. It was an interesting tool that I then started to use through my student government career, my student leadership career, and I kept getting elected to the office of president.
It wasn’t because I was the most political, it wasn’t because I was the most popular, it was because I could really run a great meeting, and that went all the way through my college career. I literally had the student body president watch me chair a meeting in my College of Agriculture. I have a degree in food marketing and agricultural business. But he saw me chairing a meeting in my college and he literally after that meeting walked me down and introduced me to who then became my running mate, Annie Lou, and it was because I could run a great meeting and it has been a skill that has served me for my entire career and has then become my career from my college career. I then started running meetings.
Joe: So, I think the fact that you [00:09:00] learned it with your mother in this very comfortable environment may have started you on the road to not view it as most people view it, which is some foreign language in some ways. For you, it was just part of what you were sharing with your mother and she was doing it, because as I recall, she was the only woman on the board. She couldn’t get awards in edgewise, but once she learned the rules, suddenly things shifted.
Susan: She was able to find her confidence and she was able to find her voice and she was able to be of service. Now, the twist in this story for me, and maybe where my passion for this really comes from, is my mom served on that board for five years. And while I’m not saying the board gave her cancer, I am saying it didn’t help with the diagnosis that she received not too shortly after exiting the board.
I then went on to get a Master’s in Behavioral Science, and I’m interested in interpersonal communication and human behavior and I care about people, and what I saw is that there was a direct [00:10:00] correlation to the toxicity of that board and my mother’s illness and I really look at Robert’s Rules of Order as a tool that can help foster a healthier board dynamic, one that really helps us remember that time equals life. And when we can connect that way, then we can be the ultimate of productive.
Joe: So, you first produced a video called Robert’s Rules Made Simple in 2004. What caused you to produce it, what was it and what has happened since?
Susan: Well, I decided back in the day, let’s try to produce a training video, and as I think I shared with you not too long ago, at the time I was dating an editor in television and film, and so he had his expertise, I had mine and it was our very first kind of joint project, and I think Robert’s almost kind of helped us get married.
Joe: Wow.
Susan: It showed that we actually had complimenting skills and we could [00:11:00] work together. And the really wonderful thing about Robert’s Rules of Order is my husband has never sat at a meeting table. That’s not his world. He’s never been on a board. But what’s so fascinating is because he’s watched my videos, produced my videos, he actually uses Robert’s Rules of Order as a way of communicating with me in our marriage, and so once you understand Robert’s formally, you can apply it informally in any space where you’re looking to get something done.
Joe: I think using it in marriage is probably a different episode than today.
Susan: I think so.
Joe: I get it. It’s a common language.
Susan: It is a common language, yeah. And it’s giving order, and I always say this about boards, and you could probably say this about marriages, is that marriages don’t need to learn how to be dysfunctional, just like boards don’t need to learn how to be dysfunctional. We’ve got that pegged. But what we need to do is we need to make an emphasis on providing training that’s going to make us more high functioning. How are we going to not [00:12:00] just get it right, how are we going to be healthy? And that’s why I focus on healthy board dynamics and using Robert’s Rules of Order as a tool to leverage a healthier dynamic on your board.
Raza: Susan, let’s drill a little more into this. What is it about Robert’s Rule that makes board meetings more effective?
Susan: Well, first of all, it’s how you make business decisions, that will make your board more effective. Your board isn’t a board if it isn’t making business decisions, and if there isn’t a common understanding of how we’re going to get to those decisions, then what you’re left with is confusion and a little bit of chaos that can breed mistrust, and are there other ways that boards could be making business decisions? Yes. They could just be using general consent. They could be using Sturgis. There’s other ways.
But if your constitution, your bylaws, say you’re going to use Robert’s Rules of Order in order to make business [00:13:00] decisions, then it’s important that everybody understands the fundamentals of that decision making process, and that’s what I focus on at Robert’s Rules Made Simple is how do we take that 700-page book and not make it daunting, but make it something that feels like we can learn it collectively in a short period of time and get it and put it to use quickly.
So, I’ve come up with a roadmap that I call the Seven Fundamental Motions. So, I want to make sure everyone on the board understands the seven fundamental motions. And when everybody understands those, that those terms, those seven fundamental motions, we collectively understand it, then the board’s productivity increases exponentially.
Raza: Would you say that is likely the best way for training boards and board members about Robert’s Rules to bring it to the 80 20, 80% of the benefit is coming from 20% of the book, I guess, and you’ve [00:14:00] made it really simple. Maybe talk about what are the seven questions and seven motions.
Susan: Yes. So, before I introduce the seven fundamental emotions, I share Susan’s three laws.
Raza: Okay.
Susan: And so I think this is what’s really key to setting your board up for success. The first law is that everyone on your board has to commit to learn the basics, that Robert, and number two is that Robert’s Rules of Order should be used as a team building tool, and number three, meetings should not be a waste of time.
So, I start with those three laws because I want to create a global commitment on the board that everyone, it’s not just those people who are new to the board, it’s everybody has to be engaged in this to make sure that we’re all at the same level and we have the same level of understanding, because that’s where it breaks down a lot of times, as you’ve got Stan who’s been on five boards, you’ve got Martha who’s brand new to a board, you’ve got James who maybe has some experience [00:15:00] but is still feeling like maybe he wants more education, and we just make assumptions about everybody’s experience with Robert’s. We need to make sure at the beginning of the term, everyone’s committed to going through the same training so that we know we’re all speaking the same language.
And then after I share my laws, that’s when I introduce Robert’s Rules of Order, because I want to make sure we’re not using Robert’s as a weapon. How many times have you been on a board and there’s that one person who has more information or more knowledge, and it feels like they’re able to kind of use it as a manipulative technique or make other people feel intimidated.
It’s intended to make everyone use a common language as opposed to one person using it to have kind of control the conversation.
Yeah, and if you don’t have a common understanding, what happens is it does feel like a weapon and it can feel divisive and manipulative.
Raza: Susan, going back to the modalities of how people learn, and different people learn in different ways and you [00:16:00] have provided many ways for boards to come up to speed to that. Talk a little bit about that.
Susan: So, I am not a reader. That’s not how I learn. And Robert’s Rules of Order is a 700-page book, I have made it all the way through the book, but I did it while I was climbing on a stair climber. I had to keep my body moving because it too made me fall asleep. While I find many parts of it riveting, most of it is as interesting as watching paint dry.
I know for me, I’m not a reader. I know some people are, so we do have e-books that we provided in the course, but most of my training is delivered via video so that people can actually see the language in action. There’s also scripts so that people can read along while they’re watching it. I want to make sure that this is accessible to all the different types of learning styles.
Raza: That is a tremendous resource.
Joe: So, I want to go back to something you said earlier as to when Robert’s Rules is really used in a [00:17:00] meeting. So, it’s not necessarily used during the whole meeting. It’s used during what you were referring to as the business portion of the meeting. Just update us a little bit on what that means exactly, and then we’ll talk more about it.
Susan: I’m really glad, Joe, that you’re saying this again and having me kind of repeat this because this is the misnomer, people will say, “Oh, well, we use Robert’s Rules of Order to run our meetings.” And I’m always like, “Oh, you only use Robert’s Rules of Order to handle the business of your meetings.”
Now, I’m an auditory learner, so I’m going to take you through one of my kind of auditory exercises, so I know that this is a podcast, so perfect venue for this. I want you to think of information items as just information. You want to move through them like this. Come on, let’s go, let’s go. You’re quickly guiding people through, you’re moving them along. That’s what information items should feel like in a meeting because information items are of no consequence. They’re just information.
But how many times in meetings does the entire meeting get [00:18:00] taken up with information items and then you zoom through business? You’re there to handle the business of your meetings, so information should be quick. Members should be rigorous in their discussion because all they should be doing is asking clarifying questions. There’s no debate happening during an information item. There’s no real deep discussion happening during an information item. There’s no opinions being given during information items.
Joe: We all know that during information, people argue about that, too.
Susan: I watch that, I find that that’s a training opportunity for a board to invite the members to be more rigorous with how they’re using their voice during the meeting. So, information should sound like this for all my auditory learners out there, let’s go, let’s go. Business, Robert’s Rules of Order has a rhythm and it is a predictable rhythm. You make a motion, you ask for a second, you repeat the motion, you ask for discussion, you discuss, you vote.
And I love this [00:19:00] idea of the rhythm because the rhythm creates a predictability, and the predictability creates a feeling of trust in the process. But if you haven’t learned the rhythm, then when you use Robert’s Rules of Order, it sounds like there isn’t a rhythm, so that’s one of the things that I teach when I work with my board chairs is the predictable rhythm of Robert’s.
Joe: So, one of the things I asked you when we talked earlier was, in boards of, let’s say, a certain size, I suppose if it’s a very small board, the answer to this would be no. But in a larger board, what are your thoughts about having either a chief governance officer, an official parliamentarian, does that matter or is it enough if the chair is really well trained?
Susan: So, I am a big believer in setting your board chair up for success, and so I look at the responsibility of the parliamentarian as being the person that the chair can go to if he or she gets lost. What inevitably happens, and I talk about this in my [00:20:00] chair meeting with confidence online training, what inevitably happens in a meeting when the chair gets lost is everybody like surprisingly becomes an expert on what the chair needs to do, and so everyone has an opinion and everybody speaks and it becomes chaotic.
So, the role of the parliamentarian isn’t necessarily to be the person who knows most about Robert’s Rules of Order. They’re there to be the person that the chair says, “One moment please. I’m going to confer with the parliamentarian so that he or she can kind of take a deep breath, get themselves back on track, and then let everyone in the meeting know where we are on the agenda and how we’re going to proceed.”
Joe: So, when the parliamentarian gives her or his opinion, does the chair have to accept it or can the chair determine how they want to proceed based on the information, but not necessarily follow what the parliamentarian has said?
Susan: Again, the parliamentarian is not running the meeting. So, ultimately, it is up to the chair. And [00:21:00] what I would encourage the chair to do is to make sure that they’re developing a relationship with a parliamentarian that feels comfortable enough to, well, is that parliamentarian just going to shout out the answer, or is the parliamentarian going to confer with the board chair, which I think that looks a little bit more eloquent in my opinion. Because if all discussion has to go through the chair, then let the discussion between the parliamentarian go through the chair and then be disseminated out. But if you do have a parliamentarian that’s really well versed, hopefully he or she is a great teammate to the chair and is really trying to set the chair up for success, not compete with the chair.
Joe: I just love that point because we talk a lot on the show about how vitally important the role of the board chair is, and so anything that you can do within the context of the meeting to make that chair successful is obviously a great thing. And the way you’ve put it, that the parliamentarian is there to support the chair and really make the chair more effective, I think it’s a great way to look at it.
Susan: [00:22:00] Well, Joe, let’s go one step further because this is what I don’t think we think about related to this because we don’t talk about a board being a healthy board dynamic. The truth is every single board member should be advocating for the success of the chair.
Joe: Absolutely. Of course, of course. But that’s not how it always works. I don’t want to spend a ton of time, but maybe go through the fundamental seven questions just so people understand what you’re talking about.
Susan: We’re going to give the roadmap. So, all of these are motions, and one of the things that I say is that you need to understand a motion is nothing more than a question. That’s it. That’s how you introduce your business question. The first one is the main motion. So, when you hear main motion, you should think main question. You should always have a main motion or a main question on the floor before any discussion occurs. Because if there is no question, there should be no discussion. So, you have the main motion. You have an amendment. The amendment allows you to add something, to subtract something from the main motion.
The next motion is amend [00:23:00] the amendment, which allows you to add something to or subtract something from the amendment. Again, this is how we’re making our decisions and making the motion more robust.
The next one is postpone to a definite or certain time, refer to a committee, lay on the table, and my favorite is previous question, which when you hear previous question, you should think previous motion. So, what that’s saying is we’d like to stop discussion and vote on the previous motion, the previous question.
Joe: means the motion that’s on the table at the time.
Susan: Now, if, let’s say that we have a main motion and amendment and amend the amendment and someone moves the previous question, and if the previous question passes, which are we voting on? We’re voting on the amendment to the amendment because it’s the previous question, the most recent, so there’s a hierarchy or precedents or precedents in Robert’s as you [00:24:00] kind of make your way up, so you must vote the same way down in order to get to that main question.
Joe: One thing I wanted to just repeat is the practice of repeating the motion, because I know I’ve been in board meetings when it’s just kind of get lost about what you’re actually talking about.
Susan: So moved.
Joe: Exactly. They’re so moved and I get it. I do it too. I get it. But I think having it so that the members of the board are always familiar with exactly what the business is, is really critically important.
Susan: This is one of the pieces that I teach when I go in and I work with board members around how to be rigorous with their discussion and debate. Very few people have ever really learned how to debate a business motion, and so I have three very simple steps because repetition is key in focusing everyone’s attention.
So, the first step is just, again, repeating, regarding the amendment to the [00:25:00] amendment. So, you make sure everybody knows what we’re talking about regarding the amendment to amendment. Second step is it’s my opinion, A, B, and C, and then the third step is so important but overlooked a lot of times, tell people how you want them to vote, so vote for this amendment to amendment, vote against the amendment to amendment. How many times have you been in a meeting where somebody takes up a lot of space and they say a lot of things, but you have no idea what did you want me to do based on every single meeting you’ve been in.
What we need to remember is we are there to influence as well as be influenced. We live in a world of influencers, and to me that’s a little bit imbalanced because being an influencer, it’s a stale relationship. You need to be able to be in relationship where I can be the influencer, but I can also be influenced. That’s what a healthy dynamic is, and we put too much emphasis on the influencer and not enough emphasis on how healthy it is to be able to [00:26:00] be on a board where maybe I said to everyone, “Well, I encourage you all to vote for this,” and then someone stands up, has a different opinion, and you influence my vote, and it’s a healthy enough dynamic that I could actually change my opinion, even though I stated it one way, that’s a healthy dynamic.
Joe: It sounds very civilized the way you’ve just described it.
Susan: And it’s refreshing and it’s high functioning.
Raza: So, Susan, I did order a copy of the Robert’s Rules of Order’s latest edition. I did not read all 700 pages, but flipping through it, I did see that there is a chapter and a section on what we all now face in this new world, especially post-COVID, which is virtual meetings, video meetings. So, talk a little bit about how Robert’s Rules and its principles can be incorporated into online and virtual meetings.
Susan: [00:27:00] Yeah, and again, they’re incorporated by making sure everybody understands the fundamentals of the language. They understand the seven fundamental motions. So, when it comes to a business decision, we’re going to entertain a motion. We’re going to ask for a second. We’re then going to repeat the motion. We’re then going to ask for discussion, so there’s this understanding of how we’re going to do it.
Then what Robert’s talks about related to the virtual environment is that it’s so important that before any of that business is handled, before any motions are made, that everyone on that meeting understands how they’re going to administer their vote, how you are going to be entertaining discussion. So, all of the nuances, are you going to have your cameras on? Are you going to have your cameras off? How do you raise your hand to be recognized? So, all of the nuances of that virtual environment need to be defined clearly before you engage in any business.
Information, it’s not that important. Joe’s got a presentation that’s going to go 15 [00:28:00] minutes. Raza, you’ve got five minutes and then we’re going to finish up with any clarifying questions you have. Not a big deal how to handle information, but what Robert says is when you start handling your business, make sure all of those things are defined with respect to how your organization is going to handle them.
Raza: But even defining rules such as, please keep your camera on, it shows respect and presence in the meeting helps make it a more effective meeting, how to juggle with should I actually raise my hand on the video or should I use the virtual meeting’s hand raise button from that software really helps you define those rules to make virtual meetings more effective.
Susan: And Raza, I think what you’re saying is really important because what we have to do is we have to empower the board chair because sometimes I think it can feel like, “Am I playing school grade teacher? Is this a little too elementary?” No, it’s not. When you are in a virtual environment, especially as the [00:29:00] chair, before you embark on any business, make sure people understand how you’re conducting the business, because what you don’t want to have happen, and when I work with my board chairs, I make sure that they get really good at defining the rules before they engage in business because nothing is worse than getting into business and then having to go, “Okay, wait a minute. We’re all confused at how we’re going to do this. Let’s backtrack. Now, I’m going to tell you how we’re going to… Please, if everyone would mute your phone.”
And now, we’re wasting life, and so we have to make sure that we empower our board chairs to feel confident enough to have their list of rules, to read their list of rules before they embark on any business.
Raza: And Susan, I love that idea of that confidence training for board chairs. So, talk a little bit more about that. How do you do that? How do you make a chair more effective with training?
Susan: So, this is [00:30:00] where I think my unique background comes into play. I have my Master’s in Behavioral Science. I’ve also studied every leadership training you can imagine, from Seven Habits to Stephen Covey’s situational leadership, everything in between, and I really enjoy the art of facilitation.
When you think about public speaking, public speaking becomes public the moment you walk outside your front door. So, the first thing that I tell my board chairs is that somewhere in your life you’re already a confident public speaker. So, my training method is never about helping people find that they’re not confident, it’s about finding that they already are confident. You wouldn’t be where you are as a leader if you weren’t able to maintain and hold the space.
Now, we’re just going to refine what you’re already doing and we’re going to put it into the meeting room, and so when I work with my chairs, one of the models I’ll give is stay, because when you think about human behavior, when we’re [00:31:00] nervous, we tend to fight and flight and sometimes freeze. That’s the biological reaction to feeling intimidated. So, I sat down and I thought about, what’s the exact opposite of that? If I’m not acting out of my biology, I want to operate outta my humanity. What is humanity?
Humanity is when you stay, and so all of my board chairs will get up there. If they’re feeling nervous, they’ll say, stay. And stay stands for stop thinking it’s about you. Stay. Because when we’re in our insecurities, we’re thinking about ourselves. And when you’re a really effective board chair, you take nothing personal. Stay, stop thinking it’s about you.
You are there to honor the process of a healthy dynamic, and so you’ve got to get out of your own way and you have to really stay and be present for the individuals in the meeting room. So, that’s just one tip. One part of my chair meeting with confidence includes my confident public speaking audio training for those who are auditory [00:32:00] learners and I also have an e-guide, which is an e-book that you can also review if you are a visual learner.
Raza: Susan, you also have these example scripts for various situations that can be very helpful. I think that’s a wonderful tool.
Susan: The biggest question I get from my board chairs is, “Susan, what do I say when people like to be kind of told. Give me a script.” And I think once you get the script and you see it, then all of a sudden you can feel a little bit more confident, and so I deal with interventions in an interesting way.
So, as a board chair, one of your key roles is you have to get good at making interventions. They never feel good. They always feel awkward, but their total necessity. You are speaking up on behalf of everybody in the meeting, and so when you’re making an intervention, I kind of have it broken down in my mind in two parts. You’re either making a direct intervention or an indirect intervention. So, am I being direct by going, “Hey, Joe,” and then having to give that direct intervention, or am I kind of speaking to the group, “I just want to [00:33:00] just point out something I’m noticing.” Because you can get a different effect.
Now, the interesting part of that is everyone who’s listening to it probably had a reaction like, “Ooh, I would never go direct,” and I would say whichever one you feel like is scarier is the one that you need to lean into because you’re probably overusing the other one. So, one isn’t better than the other. We just tend to overuse our comfort zone.
Joe: Yeah.
Susan: So, we do talk a lot more about interventions and I’ve got a lot more information about that, but this really helps to build the confidence of the board chairs. And of course, probably the biggest piece is that I script out all of the meeting chair’s agendas. So, you send me your agenda, I will script out your entire meeting, not just with what to say related to Robert’s, but it’s also about how to deal with the people side of meetings, because as a good chair, you have to be able to handle the people and the process. So, I help you with the words of Robert’s Rules of Order [00:34:00] and how to handle the business, but how do you start the meeting so that you create a powerful context, lots of information.
Joe: Susan, it’s been great speaking with you today. Thanks so much for joining us and thank you all for listening to On Boards with our special guest, Susan Leahy.
Raza: Please visit our website at OnBoardsPodcast.com. That’s OnBoardsPodcast.com. We’d love to hear your comments, suggestions and feedback. If you’re not already a subscriber, please be sure to subscribe at Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And remember to leave us a five-star review.
Joe: And please tune in for the next episode of On Boards.