Optimize Your Executive/Board Team!
Museum Leadership Workshops, 2016
The New England Museum Association invites you to a new professional development opportunity designed exclusively for museum executive directors and trustees. Build your museum’s effectiveness at High Impact, Low Drama: Optimizing Your Board/CEO Team, an essential, customized workshop for assessing governance best practices and maintaining a culture of teamwork at your museum.
Here’s what you can expect from attending:
- Empower your museum to create an effective team between the board and executive director
- Strengthen your knowledge base of best/worst practices regarding board/CEO relationships
- Grow and learn from peer institutions by comparing situations and sharing solutions that address your particular issues
- Worksheets you can take home and use to engage your entire board in team building
Optimizing Your Board/CEO Team is open to all NEMA Institutional Members. To participate, your museum needs to send its executive director and 1 – 5 board members so we can ensure a fruitful discussion. (All volunteer museums may attend, but need to send their board chair and 1 – 5 additional board members.) You pay one low price of $65 per museum – a great deal for an afternoon of customized learning.
Space is limited, so reserve your place today! The deadline to register is one week prior to the workshop.
For more information contact Dan Yaeger, dan.yaeger@nemanet.org or 781-641-0013.
Event Schedule
(Each workshop is 1 – 5 p.m.)
June 7
Connecticut Historical Society
Hartford, CT
June 8
Brown University
Providence, RI
June 9
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum
Boston, MA
June 21
Vermont Historical Society
Barre, VT
June 22
Castle in the Clouds
Moultonborough, NH
June 23
Bowdoin College
Brunswick, ME
Workshop Agenda
1 – 1:30 pm Introductions
The first segment of the workshop will consist of introducing participants to the workshop concept and to each other. NEMA Executive Director Dan Yaeger will describe the agenda for the afternoon and provide context for the discussion. Dan will present the examples of optimal and dysfunctional board/CEO teams. He will also present board member and executive director stereotypes, describing how each contributes to the culture of a museum.
1:30 – 2:15 Issue Identification
Participants will identify issues they have with regard to building and maintaining a culture of teamwork between their boards and executive directors. Issues will be divided into those having primarily a CEO-driven or board-driven cause or solution. These will form the basis for ensuing small-group discussion.
2:15 – 3:15 Breakout Sessions
Participants will break into two smaller groups, one for executive directors and one for board members. The groups will consider the issues from the prior segment and answer the following:
How should a board and executive director ideally relate?
What defines a well-functioning board?
How can I best create a sense of teamwork in my museum?
3:15 – 4:15 Best/Worst Practices
Dan will lead a discussion about generally-accepted best and worst practices for board/CEO teams. Best practices: clarity of roles & communications, strategic planning focus, essential policies, use of consent agendas, empathetic relationships, mutual support, metrics/assessment. Worst practices: micromanagement, personal agendas, power struggles, unclear authority/reporting structure, when board members are also volunteers and can’t change hats. Dan will present the 12 habits of highly effective museum board/CEO teams.
4:15 – 5 pm Discussion
Participants will enjoy a final segment of reflection and discussion based on the day’s discoveries. Dan will encourage participants to use a worksheet to develop a culture of teamwork in their institutions.