This year celebrates my 15th year of being a chair of trustees for a charity. Over that time, I have been a chair of 6 different organisations and trustee of a few more. During these different positions, I have heard a lot of different perspectives on the role of a chair, as well as the broader role of trustees. Much of the received wisdom doesn’t chime with my experience so I thought I’d set out my experience of what a chair actually does.

1. Strategy - big picture, direction, and values

Perhaps the most common role ascribed to a chair and the wider board is that of strategy. While this is undoubtedly true, it is greatly exaggerated in my experience. This is partly because taken to its logical conclusion – trustees do strategy, staff do operations – trustees would only be needed for 6 months every 3 or even five years. Secondly, while trustees, and particularly the chair, are intimately involved in strategy, in all but the smallest organisations, staff do most of the legwork on strategy: presenting a plan that is to a greater or lesser extent approved by trustees. So, chairs are key to strategy, but it’s far, far from being the dominant part of their role.

2. Backstop - when the unexpected happens

I have come to realise that one of the most important roles of a chair may never even be needed, but being a backstop when things go wrong is nonetheless required. At one charity, when the organisation was running out of money, I had to make and carry through the decision to make the CEO redundant or we would be bankrupt (the organisation has worked successfully without a CEO ever since). At another, the CEO went off on long-term sick leave and I had to work out how we dealt with that. In both of these situations, it took huge amounts of time to bring trustees and staff along, both where they didn't agree or wanted more discussion about which direction. The chair’s role in these types of situation is to shepherd people towards a decision, or in some cases just making things happen when deadlines are too tight. A chair’s key role is to pick up the pieces when, for whatever reason, things go wrong.

3. Pre-digester & Sounding board - for ideas and developments

One of the most interesting roles as a chair is to hear about the ideas and developments that staff are thinking about and to give feedback, support and wise counsel at an early stage. I have been on boards where staff have adopted a British Bulldog approach to get trustee approval – rush ideas at the board, accompanied by exhortations of how urgent and critical a decision is, and hope that some proposals get through. It works much better if a chair is on board with the big decisions before they even get to the board. My litmus test is that I don’t ever want to have to speak out against a paper that comes before the board.

4. Scrutineer in chief – help the board hold staff to account

Part of the nitty-gritty of board work is to hold staff to account – are they doing what they said they would do? - What is going right? What is going wrong? What plans are being made for things that might go wrong – based in part on the risk register? Many boards have a wealth of wisdom, and it is part of the chair’s job to try and harness that wisdom to improve the plans and activities of the organisation. Even the most qualified of boards may be unable to predict what might go wrong or put plans back on track. It’s worth remembering that the Kids Company trustee board included the Finance Director of a major PLC when it went bankrupt. So, spotting problems early and acting on them early is a key part of the scrutiny process.

5. Gracious host - and thanker in chief

When I was chair of my children’s PTA, one of my most important jobs was to thank everybody who made things happen, whether it was the summer fete or looking after the finances or the teachers who helped with the fundraising events. In the other chair roles, the role of thanker-in-chief is often as important, although maybe not as obvious: thanking departing trustees and senior staff and even donors. Thanking people for their time, their money, their commitment, their loyalty, and their energy is a small yet critical part of what makes charities thrive.

6. Manager of the CEO – just like any other role

CEO needs managing just like any other job.  I have always thought that a chair’s job is to agree on objectives, provide feedback (from the board and staff) and review progress for a CEO. How much time and energy this takes will depend on the organisation, the CEO and the chair, however, it is important that it happens. CEOs are not above the normal laws of people management.

7. Manager of the board – utilising roles and skills

One of the most difficult parts of being a chair I have always found is to keep all trustees fully engaged and their skills used to the full. There are typically 3 types of trustee: those who actively contribute come what may, those who can be fully utilised with good support and guidance, and those who it’s a struggle to engage. The challenge, in particular, is for what I call trustee no 8 – somebody who isn’t an honorary officer or a committee chair or doesn’t have specific skills such as legal. A portfolio approach, giving trustees a particular role or part of the organisation to take interest in, is really important to this end.

8. Nudger/nagger - for trustees and staff

Through meeting notes, text messages, emails, phone calls, personal conversations, the chair needs to make sure that staff and trustees do what they said they would do. This applies whether it was to visit a service, write up a proposal, produce some data, or come to a meeting. However, the real art of giving people a nudge or a nag is doing it without being really annoying or pious!

9. Meeting maestro – on time and inclusive

There is nothing worse than going to a trustee meeting where the agenda isn’t followed, or a few individuals dominate the conversation, or in which all decisions are fudged. Chairs' have a key role in making sure that meetings are the right length, include all those who want to speak, and more the organisation’s work forward.

10. Ear to the ground – to find out what everybody thinks

One of the biggest mistakes I ever made as a chair, was to only listen to a new CEO. When after a few months one of the few staff I did have contact with, asked if I was going to give staff the chance to probation feedback to which I thought ‘good idea’. The feedback I got on the CEO was scathing. The staff were not happy - at all. I had failed to have communication channels with staff across the organisation. As a result, I had failed to have any sense of what staff were feeling, while the CEO just told me how well everything was going. Bad mistake. Some governance experts in the US say that the chair and the board should funnel all communications just through the CEO. I cannot think of anything more foolish, or more likely to be a recipe for a board being out of touch.

11. Brutus – despatching colleagues

On occasions, a chair’s job is to usher people out of the organisation, whether gently or brutally. Making the CEO redundant I mentioned above was one of the hardest things to do. They had bought their whole family south, who weren’t settling in well. I had headaches for the week before I told them. Equally despatching a colleague can be as simple as encouraging somebody to apply for a job, or ensuring that term limits for trustees are kept, or restructuring committees to lose a poor committee chair.

12. Cat-herder – moving boards forward on important decisions

One of the roles of the chair is to try and move the board forward on big or important or difficult decisions, particularly where there isn’t consensus. These might be about the appointment of a new CEO, or a new strategy or a rebrand or a host of other things. Boards don’t always find decision-making that easy, particularly in a culture when one or two board members disagreeing can be treated like a veto. The chair is there to firmly guide the board towards a decision.

Being a chair is much more about soft power and authority than a clear-cut set of decisions that the chair has the authority to make. In my experience, the role of the chair is about persuasion and diplomacy, with an occasional burst of more executive-style decision making when the need arises. Let nobody tell you it is a straightforward job, nor one which is solely about strategy.

In 2016, we partnered with Third Sector and the Charity Future programme to carry out a National Trustee Survey. Click on the 'Downloads' button below to see the data from that work -  exploring a range of trustee topics, including demographics, guidance, possible improvements and deadline with crises.