Preparing for Your First Board Meeting

Overview:

Our program will give you the tools, tips and work plans that you need to prepare for your first board meeting.  Most background education we receive on boards misses the mark on these vital skills. Business school or MBA programs focus on the top-down legalities of corporate governance, not how to handle yourself behind boardroom doors. Or, you pick up boardroom savvy by exposure to all the boards you’ve seen at work during your career.  But these informal role models may only show you how boards shouldn’t function if you really want to be effective.

When rising business leaders join a board of directors (especially if it’s their first board), they often know little about the work involved; their duties and responsibilities as a fiduciary; how to learn as much as they should about the company, its structure and people: how to absorb all the information they receive before a meeting; and how to conduct themselves around the board table. In Preparing for Your First Board Meeting, we give you a step by step process for preparing to join a board, being ready for that first meeting, excelling in your debut, and avoiding the problems and dangers that go with board service.   

Why you should Attend:

Congratulations - you’ve been named to a board of directors!  But now comes the real (and often scary) work to get ready. How do you prepare to walk through those boardroom doors for the first time and assure you won’t feel like the odd man out, that you know the preparation material, and and that you’ll be read to hit the bricks running? 

No doubt getting ready for a board meeting can seem overwhelming. Particularly in prepping for first meeting, it’s easy to be intimidated. Most directors are gob smacked when they first encounter a board book (or their first online bushel of board portal data). There are often dozens, maybe even hundreds of pages, appendices, charts, spreadsheet, PowerPoints, and so on. Those folks in the boardroom have impressive backgrounds, and you need to establish your voice, while not making awkward errors. Yet the coping tools tips, and prep plans offered in our program will help you get up to speed and be ready by the time of your boardroom debut.  

Areas Covered in the Session:

• What is your specific job description as a board member? What duties must you fulfill.How to study up on the structure of the company, its governance, your responsibilities and spot potential dangers
• What board committees will you be serving, how do they function and how can you be ready for these important roles?
• Take a close look at the board and committee calendars. What can they tell you about how the board really functions, its priorities, and its effectiveness? Problems to watch for in making the board and committee meeting calendars work with your own schedule
• Decoding board and committee meeting agendas. They can give you valuable intel on how the board works, its organization, how your time will be alloted, and where the board power centers are
• How to gain a real-world estimate of the time commitment a board will demand of you (and tips for improving it)
• Ways to build board meeting preparation time into your schedule
• How to be ready for online board meetings (and tech dangers to watch for)
• Board meeting packages seem overwhelming.  Here’s how to make sense of it all, plan your preparation, and be informed
• How much do you really know about the company, its management, and the people around the board table with you?  Here’s a quick “analysis” outline
• How to find (and make good use of) a boardroom mentor
• What triggers boardroom conflict, and what should you watch out for?
• Here is a quick, simple process for gaining a “reality check” on what really happened in the meeting

Who Will Benefit:

• Corporate Board Members
• Rising Corporate Executives
• Private and Family Firm Board Members
• Corporate Secretaries
• Corporate Counsel
• Venture Capital and Private Equity Partners