Not every movement has a board but many do. And when I work with those organisations, I see almost the same thing every time. Meetings run smoothly. Agendas get covered. Decisions get made. But something feels off and everyone senses it, but nobody says it out loud. Three patterns keep coming back.
Pattern 1: The director brings the polished version
She’s had a tough week. A volunteer who dropped out, a decision that didn’t land well, and a financial question she doesn’t have an answer to yet.
She pauses when writing up the agenda, and puts the tidy version down anyway. Not because she’s hiding anything. But because she doesn’t have the energy for a conversation that goes nowhere. Last time she brought something real, she walked away feeling like the board didn’t quite know what to do with it. So this time she carries it alone.
Across the table, a board member senses something isn’t quite right. The updates are always positive. The director always seems to have everything under control. But that can’t be the full picture, can it?
She doesn’t ask as she doesn’t want to come across as someone who doesn’t trust. So she nods along. And that’s how the distance grows without anyone meaning for it to.
Pattern 2: The board is there but not really
The director does bring the real questions. But the responses are surface-level. The conversation moves quickly to the next agenda item. After a few times, she gets the message. She doesn’t stop being honest, she stops expecting anything.
The meetings still happen. But she experiences them more as an obligation than a source of support. She’d rather just handle things herself.
Pattern 3: The board steers without understanding the context
This might be the most frustrating one. The board is engaged. They ask questions, have opinions, want to contribute. But the director notices something is off. They’re responding to things that look logical from the outside but the context and nuance is missing. Its missing the day-to-day reality of the organisation.
She explains. Tries to sketch the picture. But somewhere she already knows she’ll leave the meeting with more work than she came in with. The board means well. They really do. But without the full context, they steer in ways that backfire. And so the board becomes not a source of energy, but a drag on it.
What helps
All three patterns have the same root cause. The relationship was never consciously designed.
A few things I see work.
Make explicit who decides what.
The board has real authority, and that’s not the problem. The problem is that nobody ever agreed on where that authority starts and ends. So they weigh in on everything. And the director never quite knows what she’s walking into.
A simple overview helps. What does the board decide, what does the director decide, what do they decide together. Not as a bureaucratic exercise, just a shared understanding that makes every meeting cleaner.
Separate the two roles of a board.
A board has two roles: desicionmaking and advisory. Mixing them up creates confusion. Be clear at each meeting about which one you’re asking for. “Today I need your thinking, not a decision” is a completely different meeting from “I’m bringing this for your approval.” Both are valid. But they require a different kind of presence.
Invest in the relationship outside of meetings.
Most board-director relationships exist only in formal settings. That makes things cold. An informal conversation once a quarter, no agenda, just talking, changes the dynamic more than you’d expect. You start to understand each other differently. And that changes how you show up in the room together.
Give the board the context they need.
Not just decisions and updates the story behind them. What’s going on in the organisation? What’s keeping you up at night? What are you uncertain about? A board that understands the context steers differently than one that only sees the summary.
Share what’s going well too.
Boards almost only hear about problems. So they start looking for problems. Share wins explicitly it changes the tone of the whole conversation.
And then there’s the messy reality
Even when you do have that overview, practice is always messier than any document. You’ll keep running into situations where it’s not clear. Was this something to bring to the board? Could the director have handled it alone? Was advice enough, or did it need a real decision?
That’s not a failure of the system. That’s just how it works.
The most functional board-director relationships are not the ones where everything is perfectly mapped out. They’re the ones where both sides stay curious. Where someone can say: “I’m not sure if this was mine to decide, can we talk about that?” Without it turning into a conflict. Learning together and staying open. Reflecting on what worked and what didn’t, and adjusting as you go.
For directors and board members alike
This pattern shows up on both sides. The director who stops being fully honest. The board member who senses something but doesn’t name it. The board that steers without the full picture.
If you recognise this, whether you’re a director or a board member, the first step is simple. Name it. Not as a complaint, but as a question.
“I’ve noticed we tend to share the polished version with each other lately. Does that ring true? And how do we make more space for the real stuff?”
One honest conversation changes more than ten meetings.
Emmy
Founder, Social Movement Lab emmy@socialmovementlab.org
