Not Bored on Boards

I had a huge “aha moment” last year at a Leadership Austin training. I was creating goals for my community involvement and it hit me. Being a better board and community member makes me a better employee.

It seemed so obvious, how could I have not been aware of it up to that point? So many of my goals for being better at making an impact through volunteering matched up with the goals I have for being a better employee. And they weren’t goals like “get six new clients” or “write a blog post every two weeks,” they were goals that make me a better overall person, like “be a better listener,” or “try new tasks to diversify your skills.”

I think sometimes it’s easy to silo our own experiences and forget that developing ourselves in specific ways can make an impact us as a whole. With me, the connections between board and employee development are painfully obvious. I am a better consultant to nonprofit boards because I serve on a national-level nonprofit board. I can better help my clients think through and reframe their challenges because I do that as a board member myself.

But other nuggets of learning are less obvious, and probably more universal. Collecting information to make governance decisions helps build muscle memory for making organizational decisions at Greenlights. Managing working relationships with my board members helps me develop more empathy and appreciation for my coworkers. Thinking about the big picture for a national organization helps me better piece together how what I do at Greenlights matters to the mission and vision set by the board.

Basically, being a good board member matters to me personally and professionally. I will have to hold myself back at the Board Summit not to sign up for more board membership (I am at capacity, anything more and my calendar will pop!) because I am so pumped about being on boards! OK, that may have been a slight exaggeration, but I will practice saying “No, Kimberly, NO!” anyway…