Personal Board of Directors

Do you have a personal Board of Directors? You have a lot of advisors for your company, but what about for you, a personal Board of Directors and how did you go about selecting them? Why is that important to you?

So, it's funny, Anne Erni who was the global head of diversity under Lehman and Subha Barry who now runs Working Mother Media were two of my mentors many, many years ago, and they both talked about the idea of a personal Board of Directors, and that's where I heard the term the first time, probably 15 years ago, I have always had an informal group. When I created Out Leadership's board, that really is what they are. They're advising the organization but they really are my sort of personal Board of Directors. I'm lucky enough to have that be one and the same, but I have seen so many leaders and actually talked to so many leaders, I mentored so many people, actually, about creating their own personal Board of Directors, because I think it is such a huge opportunity, and it's a simple concept but it's a concept not many people have thought about or heard of, and I have seen such great outcomes come from just the opportunity to create that group of people that care about you, your career, your success, and ultimately, by doing that, and this is something people don't always think about, is that they get something out of it as well, not just helping you but being in the same room with all these other people who support you and they may not know, so I really strongly believe in them. I have been lucky enough, as I said, to have so many leaders really engage and support our work.

And how did you go about selecting them? What were some of the key traits you would look for?

Well, I think the first and foremost is I want them to believe in me and the mission. I like to think of myself as a pretty decent salesperson and I don't want to have to sell them, so starting at the very beginning, I want people to buy into what I'm trying to accomplish. I also want them to come from different backgrounds, and I want them to really approach what I'm doing with a lens that they can bring that's different from mine, right? So having people that are just like me advising me is not really all that useful, so different generations, different backgrounds, different geographic backgrounds, obviously different race, ethnicity, gender, all play into that and really, the ability to give me the time, so Jim Fitterling, the global CEO of Dow is on our board. Jim is an Out CEO, we're of a different generation, so there's that difference, but he also grew up in the Midwest and he had the sort of Midwestern values, and he approaches things with a very clear direct approach, which I value.