Making board self‑assessment part of your governance DNA

Jill Holtz: Welcome to the Leading with Purpose podcast, where we share practical advice to help mission-driven organizations strengthen governance and lead with confidence. I'm your host, Jill Holtz from Diligent. Today we're tackling board self-assessment, a powerful tool many boards say they use but often struggle to fully embrace. How do you make self-evaluation candid, constructive, and most importantly actionable?

If done well, board self-assessment can be a powerful driver of continuous improvement, helping boards reflect on their performance, strengthen trust and relationships, and ultimately deliver more impact for the communities they serve. But it's not always easy to get right. To explore what works in practice, I'm joined by two governance experts with experience across non-profit and public sector boards.

Barbara Paxton, Director at BoardStrong, works closely with non-profit boards to improve effectiveness and engagement.

And Steve Schroeder, a former school board member and governance leader, now advises school districts on strategic planning and board development. Together they share their experience of why self-assessment matters, where boards often fall short, and how to turn feedback into meaningful action. Be sure to stick around to the end where they each share one practical step your board can take to get started and build a stronger, more effective governance culture.

Hi everyone. Today I'm talking about the topic of board self-assessment. Most boards say they do self-assessment, but the reality is many dread it or shelve the results. So today I want to make it really practical how to run a board self-evaluation that's candid, constructive, and leads to real governance improvement. So I'm really excited today to be joined by two governance experts. First, we have Barbara Paxton, Director at Board Strong. Barbara has many years of experience working with nonprofit boards and helping them achieve success. She is an expert in personalized board matching services and has served on boards herself. So welcome Barbara to the podcast.

Barbara Paxton: Thank you so much for having me.

Jill Holtz: And I'm also very pleased to have Steve Schroeder join us today. Steve is a former school board member and governance officer at Sun Prairie School District in Wisconsin. He served for 14 years and now consults with school districts on governance strategic planning and leadership development for school board members. You're very welcome, Steve.

Steve Schroeder: Thank you, Jill. Good to be here. Good to be here with you too, Barbara.

Why Does Self-Assessment Matter for Mission-Driven Organizations?

Jill Holtz: So, let's start with why self-assessment matters for mission driven boards and also why it's hard. Barbara, if I could kick off with you, why do nonprofit boards need to carry out self-assessment?

Barbara Paxton: As board members, we need to be committed to excellence in every area of our nonprofit, and that includes our governance. And it's not always easy for people to be, you know, to really assess to be forthcoming with what their concerns are or what they believe they could be doing better. So doing a formal assessment and asking your board members how they feel things are going, basically, gives you a good opportunity to assess where you are and where you might be able to improve.

Jill Holtz: And Steve, why does it matter for school boards and other public sector boards?

Steve Schroeder: I think Jill, it matters because boards should be modeling the behavior that they expect the rest of the organization to emulate. And if let's take a school board, if a school board expects the system to engage in continuous improvement, then the board should be doing that themselves. It's the old sometimes do as I say, not as I do. And I think that that boards need to exhibit that behavior that they want others to exemplify. And I think it really does come down to modeling the way and boards need need to be doing that. They need to be setting the example for their organization.

Jill Holtz: And as a follow up to you both, what's the risk of skipping self evaluation? Steve, let me ask you that first.

Steve Schroeder: Well, there are many risks, certainly. One of the biggest is the board not functioning at the level of their potential. And if the board isn't functioning the way that they should be, that has the potential to inhibit the rest of the entire system in in ways that the board isn't even aware of. Back maybe 20 years ago or so, there was that book by Jim Collins, "Good to Great".

No matter no matter how good an organization is, they're always looking to get better. And I often say that this isn't the first iPhone that Steve Jobs developed, right? Every year they come out with a new one, even if it seems like there's nothing to improve upon. And sometimes I think board members can feel like things are functioning. Test scores are good, staff satisfaction is good, the board's getting along. And that certainly may be true. But what could be even better than what is. And I think that that's that has to be on the forefront of boards' minds.

Jill Holtz: Barbara, what do you have to add to that, given that most nonprofit boards are volunteer board directors serving?

Barbara Paxton: If you don't ask board members how they are feeling about their board service, they probably won't tell you. They will come up to board meetings and they'll maybe read the minutes and maybe just listen to your reports. But you know, for nonprofit board members, it's so important that they feel like their work matters and that they're connected to the mission of the organization. And if you don't ask them, are we doing that for you? Do you feel that way? then they're not having a fulfilling experience and you're not using their skills and experiences to benefit your organization to the extent that you could. So yes, definitely asking them, how are we doing and how do you feel you're doing is really critical information to get.

Jill Holtz: I think especially no matter whether it's nonprofit or school board, public sector board, it's all about mission impact. And as Steve, as you said, quite rightly, making that even better than maybe you thinking things are great, but actually how can we get it even better in Barbara? If you don't allow nonprofit board members the chance to say how they're feeling, they could just leave. You know, they have nothing to stay for then.

Steve Schroeder: There's also the risk of elected board members of not running again for election. And in Wisconsin, school board members are elected for three years. If you look back 10 years ago, the average board member served for about seven years. That's now a school board member, I should say. About seven years a decade ago. We're down to between three to four and a half years now. And so there is also a risk for elected board members when the board is not functioning at the level that that it could be, to simply either walk away or if they want to fill out their term, they do that without deciding to run for re-election.

What Should a Good Board Self-Assessment Achieve?

Jill Holtz: That's a really good point, Steve. Let's talk next about what a good self-assessment should achieve. So, Steve, when a school board does this well, what inputs are useful for the board and then what outcomes can they expect?

Steve Schroeder: I think in terms of inputs for a board member to look at themselves in the mirror, in in terms of where is their potential for continuous improvement for themselves serving as a board. It's been my experience that sometimes when you don't ask a board member to first start with themselves, they're good at pointing to other board members in terms of what they should be doing differently, without necessarily being able to take that hard look in the mirror and asking themselves what they should be doing. So I think it's both. What should it you as an individual board member be doing differently, better, whatever the case is. And then let's look at the board as a complete entity and ask ourselves what can we collectively be doing better? I also think it's paramount to be asking, in my case as a board member, the superintendent. The senior leadership that we work with, asking the community, of course, whom elected us, what feedback can we get from them to improve? Now, not surprisingly, most community members aren't following their local boards all that closely, but there are some that do. And let's try to gather as much data as we possibly can. And then let's take that data and look, let's look at where we can improve some of that output.

Jill and Barbara, maybe are our meetings at a time that is maybe inhibiting people from participating? I'm talking about the public. Are we communicating with the public to the extent that we should be? Televised meetings. Are we sending out minutes? Does the public know what issues that the board is grappling with? Those are just some of the outputs.

But I think it really, again, comes down to board members collecting the data from themselves and from as many people as they can and then spending the time to actually look at the data and most importantly try to do something with the data.

Jill Holtz: Barbara, what should a volunteer board be able to do better after a self-assessment and how does that help impact mission?

Barbara Paxton: And as Steve's been talking, I've been reflecting on how there are different inputs that you want from your nonprofit board because you bring in volunteers who maybe have never served on a board, who are serving with people who maybe have served on multiple boards. So we always start with do you feel like you know what you're doing? Do you understand the bylaws? Do you understand the roles and responsibilities? Have we given you enough information that you feel comfortable doing your job?

And also, are we explaining things in a way that you understand? Do you approve a budget? Do you understand the budget? Are you getting enough information from us that you feel like you are operating effectively as a board member? And then we ask all of those questions about improvement and what you know, how is your board experience, et cetera? And then back to what I said before, do you feel like you're making a difference? Right.

And we sometimes ask them questions about, you know, fundraising and do you feel comfortable fundraising and other things that people don't necessarily feel comfortable talking about in an open forum that we want to get information in general from that's good for the governance committee or the nominated committee or the senior staff. But it really is a combination of not only how can you do better, but how can we support you better.

What Areas Should Be Included in Board Self-Assessment?

Jill Holtz: I love that. I love that. So just to build on that, what are the top areas that you think the board in a nonprofit scenario should evaluate? What's been your experience?

Barbara Paxton: Do you feel like you're doing your duties of care, loyalty, obedience? Are you getting enough information to do that? Are you connected to the mission? And then are we asking things from you that you don't feel comfortable doing? And are you enjoying your experience here? Do you feel like you're having an impact?

Jill Holtz: Yeah, I love that. Steve, when it comes to public facing boards, what are the most important categories for those boards to include in their self-assessment in your opinion?

Steve Schroeder: I go back to Patrick Lencioni's book, The Five Functions of a Team. And it used to be called the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, and they rebranded it for what are the five areas that that teams need to focus on? And there's a pyramid model to this. And at the base of the pyramid is trust. Do the board members trust each other? Do the board members trust the CEO or the superintendent or whomever is the head of the staff, head of the organization. Is there psychological safety within, and I know that that's a buzzword these days, but I think it's so important that board members feel safe to ask the questions that they need to ask. And are they feeling comfortable engaging in conflict? Which goes, which is another piece of Lencioni's five functions of a team. If you don't have trust, you're not going to usually engage in in productive conflict. And there should be, we I served on a board with seven board members. We shouldn't think the same. The whole point is to have different perspectives. Agreement is to me is not the final goal. So those are s those are I think some components, Jill. And then I think more broadly, even the board, how are they functioning as an entity themselves? That's one. Number two, how are they functioning with the CEO? And then how do they function with the community? And asking those three questions, I think are really important.

Jill Holtz: I think that point just to further because Barbara mentioned a minute ago about feeling comfortable to do things, and then you mentioned psychological safety, those are very aligned, aren't they? That you feel comfortable to have that impact that your mission needs as well.

What Format Should Board Self-Assessments Use?

Jill Holtz: Can I move now to the format of board self-assessments? So, in your experience, if I start with you, Steve, for school boards, what format tends to work best in practice for doing that self-assessment? And also I'm interested in how do you keep that constructive when there are so many political and community pressures and you mentioned conflict a minute ago.

Steve Schroeder: We used to Jill do a brief self-assessment after every meeting. So we would end our meetings with just a couple of basic questions. I think the most important was did we spend enough time in this meeting talking about children? Again, being a school board. school boards are notoriously very good at talking about anything and everything except kids. And at the end of the day, there are some researchers who say that boards should spend at least at a minimum 50% of their time talking about kids. So having a quick debrief at the end of the meeting, it's been my experience that that was better in theory than practice. Usually at the end of the meeting, people just want to get out of there. but that that then we went to an assessment that was sent just a very quick Google survey.

That we ask people to fill out like that evening if they can, or certainly the next morning. And then we would review that data at the next meeting. So let's look at how we did at the last meeting. So that's more at the micro level. Then we would during the summer, we would send out a self-assessment survey really around our policies. How well are we following our policies? So the board would answer that about themselves and we would ask the senior administrators to do the same thing. And then during a summer retreat, we would comb through that data and figure out, you know, we need to we need to work on this piece or we're doing pretty good here. What whatever the data told us, I think the key is you have to collect the data and then you actually have to look at the data.

And then ultimately you make changes based on the data and if you're not willing to ultimately make some changes and have the humility to realize that we want to change what whatever that looks like, then you might as well not even go through the motions. It's the last thing I'll say is sometimes boards will go through and you know it looks good that we're doing a self-improvement or continuous improvement process and so on and at the end of the day they're not really that interested in in in doing that.

And I think that's a real disservice to the organization whom they're responsible to govern.

Jill Holtz: Barbara, can I ask you, when do you think it's important to do an anonymous survey versus say an interview or even a hybrid approach? What's your perspective?

Barbara Paxton: You know, I don't only have a board that we do an assessment, but that's what I do for a living. In fact, I just did a board retreat on Saturday this weekend and we did an assessment ahead of time. I think both. I think having an anonymous survey is useful, gives people an opportunity to be honest, and sometimes surfaces things that people don't realize about. I think you know, there's some downside to it really.

I think, you know, when I think about the organization that I surveyed this weekend, I could have done it non-anonymously. I think they would have been just as open and on and honest, but you never know. You never know. And then I think the question of following up and asking people individually what's going on is something that you can do if you see differences, if you see conflict or things that get you under the surface of what's really going on, but also if you think that you're that an organization is sort of engaged in groupthink and you're wondering like where is that coming from, doing follow ups and digging into that a little bit can be really useful.

Jill Holtz: So it sounds like a kind of a mixed approach from both of you is very useful and regular, or then also doing that deep dive that you both talked about.

Barbara Paxton: I think the main thing and Steve mentioned it is, you know, the organization has to com be committed to using the results of the assessment towards improving what they're doing. Right. If they don't want to hear if they're just doing it as a, you know, pro forma, I guess we have to do this, and then the board chair and the CEO keep doing what they're doing, it you know, you really have to it's a waste of time. You really have to say we're going to do this and we're going to engage in a process of self improvement for the good of the organization in front.

How Should a Mission-Driven Organization Show That Board Self-Assessment Feedback Will Be Used?

Jill Holtz: Well I was actually gonna ask Barbara, what should the organization do to show that giving the feedback will be acted on and that it is important? Because there's no point in doing a survey if you're never gonna find out what happened, is there?

Barbara Paxton: Right. Exactly. And sometimes people are, you know, they start to engage in this process and then they're like, no, I guess we have to change things. That's not what I was expecting. I wanted to hear that I was doing everything right. And so they do have to be open and honest about that and willing to accept change. But the other thing is as long as you're surveying the entire board and in some cases your stakeholders, etc. Right. It's there and for everybody to see.

So if your results are you know, there are things that we could do to improve or do differently, you can't really hide from that. You have to acknowledge that it exists and do something about it. Our board members, they're not elected, they're volunteers. If things aren't going well and then things don't improve, they'll leave. And you will have spent all that time training and nominating and attracting all of that talent to your board for nothing.

Jill Holtz: And losing people for that reason is sad, isn't it? Especially when you need them for your mission. Steve, what do you do when public board members worry about that a self-evaluation will create conflict, especially around communication or micromanaging versus oversight, those kind of issues?

Steve Schroeder: I think what creates the conflict is not having the conversation around those pieces. I I live in the upper Midwest. There's there is such a thing as Midwest niceness, or so they say. I actually call it ha passive aggressiveness. So people aren't willing to say what they really want to say at a at the board table, so they have the conversation in the parking lot after the meeting. And that's just not helpful. It's just not. I think not having those conversations, people get frustrated and that just builds up. Right. It's sort of that that proverbial volcano that at some point it's going to explode. So let's build the trust so we can engage in respectful conversation with each other. Now nobody loves to well I I've never met anybody who loves feedback or loves an evaluation.

That said, there is a way to deliver it and to be respectful and to remember that as board members, this isn't about us. This is about serving. Ultimately, it's about serving the children. And so we have to move past the issues we have with each other. I've often said that I didn't join a board to like make friends. Right? Like it's not a country club for me where I go and like that's not that's not why I do it. Now, if I create some friends in the process, which I which I did do, that's a bonus. But my job is to govern the organization on behalf of the various care holders. Again, to me, students are in the center of that within a school district. But we also have a duty to the taxpayers, we have a duty to the staff, and we have a duty to the broader community.

So in summary, Jill, I think it's a matter of you have to engage in those conversations and not waiting for six months to add something to a survey. It's there's an HR component to this. Like HR 101 says that when you give an employee an evaluation, there should be no surprises during that evaluation. Right? You don't save up things to attack somebody during an evaluation. If there is an outlet and a forum for people to have these conversations during the course of a year, that's ideal.

How to Make Board Self-Assessment a Habit

Jill Holtz: So I'm interested next in asking you about how do you make it a habit and not just like a one-off event. in your experience, Steve, just continuing to talk about the school year, for example, is there a good time, is there best time to do this work? I know you mentioned after each meeting, but say like a bigger in-depth evaluation, what's been your experience about a good time to do that?

Steve Schroeder: Probably late spring for a school district, meaning April, May. That's probably the best time if you're going to send out a survey to do that. And many school districts are sending out their parent and caregiver surveys. They're sending surveys to students. They're sending their staff feedback surveys in that March, April, early May time period. Then there's time to digest the data during the course of the summer. And with my school district, we always had a summer and all day summer retreat. We also had a ret all day retreat in January. But the summer retreat was a great time to sort of look backwards and let's look at what went well and maybe what didn't go as well as we would have liked during this past academic year on lots of levels, but starting with the board.

Jill Holtz: And Barbara, you know, nonprofit boards aren't quite as tied to a seasonal year as school districts are, for example, or government councils. But how often do you think nonprofit boards should run a full self assessment? Should there be light touch check ins in between? What's your advice on that?

Barbara Paxton: I think every other year, if not every year, it's not only about assessing, it's about reacting and planning, right? We want our board members to govern our organizations, to help us with stuff, but we also want them to be cheerleaders for the organization and fundraisers for the organization. So if you're thinking about as we're getting towards the end of the year, how are people doing and then how are we going to engage them to get out there for us next year, right? How are we, you know, how can we support them better?

But also how can we make sure that they're happy and enthusiastic and they're gonna, you know, tell all their friends, hey, support this work, support this organization, call your council person, support this legislation, whatever, checking in with them regularly. And I think, you know, sort of towards it if you're having a retreat, before the retreat, and I do encourage people to have retreats, but also before the end of the year, thinking about how are we setting ourselves up to do better next year or well next year and make sure everybody's on board and satisfied, and again, out there as cheerleading ambassadors for the organization, for the team.

Jill Holtz: So I was actually gonna ask you next about follow through and how boards turn those findings into actions then. So it's about taking those findings and saying not only how do we get better as a board kind of on our interactions, but actually how do we build that into our plans? Talk to me about that.

Barbara Paxton: If you think about it, assessment is not only about, it is about improvement and taking the temperature, but it's also about engagement, right? In nonprofit boards, a challenge is always how do we engage our board members? How do we make our board meetings a priority when they have families and jobs and all that? And the only way you can engage board members is to make sure that you value their input and you can again connect them to the work, connect them to the mission. So by saying, okay, how are you going to help us? We're going to take all of this and we're going to improve and how are you going to help us be part of that? It's an engagement tool really. And that also keeps them on board and supporting your organization.

How Does Board Self-Evaluation Tie in with Strategic Goals?

Jill Holtz: I love that, how to re-energize people as well. 'Cause it can get very mundane, can't it, on a day to day. Steve, what are the most practical next steps you've seen school boards take after self-evaluation and how should that tie into the goal setting planning that Barbara and I have just been talking about?

Steve Schroeder: Boards are very good at pointing the finger to the organization in terms of areas where they want to see improvement. They're not nearly as good at pointing the finger back at themselves and starting with themselves. It's my belief that when boards are setting goals, it's not only goals for the organization, it's goals for themselves. And when I was the chair, it was I had goals for me as a board member, goals for the board.

And then goals for the CEO developed jointly with, in our case, him, and then goals for the organization. So I think it's multi-layered, but I think at the end of the day, it comes down to action. No organization can be stagnant. And if we expect our teachers and our administrators to not just do goal setting, but to bring about changes in strategy. To improve student results, then boards have to do more than just talk about what they're going to do. They need to create some change. What's the implementation plan that a board has to create the change that they want to be? And then how are they tracking that? How are we looking back a year from now on how well we're doing this year?

I think there is an element of how do we implement, not just set the goals, but then hold ourselves accountable to ensure that we're being the best board that we can possibly be and in a school district's case, being the best board that our students deserve.

How to Use Technology for Board Self-Assessment

Jill Holtz: Love that. So at Diligent, we sell software and we're passionate about how that helps mission driven boards be better at governance. So Steve, from your experience, how can board management software support the self assessment process? What whether that's being transparent to public, organizing materials, or helping boards follow through with actions, as you said.

Steve Schroeder: We used to use BoardDocs through through Diligent. And then a couple of years ago we made the transition to Diligent Community. And I just I think it's genius that you call it Community from the standpoint of ultimately boards, school boards, publicly elected boards, are accountable to their community. They're the ones who elect them or do not elect them. So to be able to have a one stop place where a community member can go in and find out when the next meeting is. They can look up past meeting minutes. They can look at future agendas. They can look at the policies in which the board and the organization have in place. With my school district, we have recordings of the meetings. So people can actually go and watch the segment of the meeting that they're interested in. They can go to Community and find contact information for the board members. There's nothing more frustrating for me than just searching and searching and searching for an email for a board member. Like I should be able to fairly easily find contact information for my elected officials. And I just think that Diligent has done a really nice job with enhancements that they've made from BoardDocs to Community. Because ultimately that is the entity that's holding a board accountable. It's the community.

Jill Holtz: Yeah. And then Barbara, could I drill into a particular area on BoardEffect that's the area of surveys, because we've heard from many of our customers how useful the surveys feature is. So we talked about that earlier. You know, is that something useful that the board can use to collect those self-assessment responses in a way that actually drives change and insight?

Barbara Paxton: Yeah, absolutely. Well, we've been talking about you know, the big assessment, the annual assessment. But really, if we're talking about how did the last board meeting go? Sending out a really quick survey. Hey, do you feel like we wasted your time? Do we feel like you gave we gave you the information that you needed? Do you feel like the information that we gave you was complete enough? I mean, we with all the boards we work with, you know, I'll emphasize your job is to make decisions, right, it's around strategy and budgets and blah, blah, blah. But you are the decision makers. So you have to have enough information to make decisions. Did we give you that information just after any meeting? And wouldn't you get people into the habit of doing that after every meeting? It's not like you're getting your annual review. It's just like, okay, but could we have done better? Or was that meeting tedious or was it helpful? Or what parts weren't useful? I think that's been really useful.

I mean, in addition, and I do have to say, in addition to the survey thing, when we used to send out when organizations send out their documents before a meeting in an email and then have to spend the next week fielding questions about did you send it? I don't know. I can't find it in my inbox. Was it a spam? you know, having it all there is transformative.

Jill Holtz: In one central place, so central documentation available to the community in Diligent Community but then in BoardEffect. And I think for both sides it's that and we haven't actually mentioned that, but if you do this regularly enough you can also see, you can track results over time, can't you, to continuously improve.

Barbara Paxton: Exactly. absolutely. Yeah. Exactly.

Communicating Self-Assessment to Your Stakeholders

Jill Holtz: Just one wanted to pick up one other thing, Steve. You talked about transparency through Diligent Community. For school boards, when it comes to self-evaluation, how do you balance transparency with confidentiality and what's the best way to communicate self-assessment to the community?

Steve Schroeder: For most publicly elected boards, you give up the confidentiality. With the exception of when you go into executive meetings, if you're talking about a personnel issue, certainly talking about a student, a specific student. It could be an expulsion, let's say, or well, whatever it is. I mean, that that is confidential. Beyond that if a board does a self-assessment, that becomes part of the public record. And the community has a right to see, even if it's anonymous and they don't know what board member said what, the community has a right to see the results of that survey.

You learn that pretty quickly when every email that you send, including text messages, when I was on my board for 14 years, every text message that I sent from my personal phone or my personal email, not even my district email, if it related to district business, that would was open records requestable by any member of the public. They had a right to see anything in writing that that I was sending. And so I think the and this is unique, I realize, to publicly elected public organizations where there's not a lot of confidentiality. And in in many ways that there shouldn't be. We are spending taxpayer money and the taxpayers, I believe, have a right to sort of pull the curtain back, if you will, to have a sense of how the organization is running.

Jill Holtz: And ultimately if you're transparent about the fact we do this regular assessment, here's what we do, here's what our policy is on that, that only helps build trust that this is a well governed organization, which is really what stakeholders want to hear. Barbara, when it comes to nonprofits, how transparent should nonprofits be about board self-assessment results? What's appropriate to share with donors and stakeholders?

Barbara Paxton: That's a really good question. I think you want the assessment, people to be really honest in that assessment. And so keeping it confidential within the board and the staff is important. I think that letting your donors know that you do this and talking to them about the and they ask questions about the set the skills and experiences and you know, who are the people on your board? How do you get you know, that's really important in terms of transparency. But I d I really I think you'll Steve, more power to you. Not often board members thought that the results of their assessments were made available to the public. Probably they wouldn't be on the board in the first place, many of them.

Jill Holtz: Part of the journey, isn't it?

Barbara Paxton: Right. So that's why not that's why it's hard to get people to run for elected office, I think.

Advice for Boards on Self-Assessment

Jill Holtz: Probably. Yeah. So I'm really conscious of time and you're both very, very busy. So I have one final question I'm going to ask you both to answer in turn. So Barbara, can I start with you? If a board listening today were to do just one thing to improve its self-assessment process, what's your piece of advice for them?

Barbara Paxton: I would say do it. Get started. Few boards do that, right? Having a really formal process and doing it regularly. I mean, back to what we were talking about is when you are evaluating your employees, right? It gets hugely it has a huge weight if you don't just do it regularly, give regular feedback, et cetera. If you're just in the habit of regularly you know, doing a board assessment every year, taking the temperature, seeing how people are doing then it's just easy and it's not a big deal.

Jill Holtz: Excellent advice. And Steve, can I ask you, if a board listening today were to do just one thing to improve its self-assessment process, what's your piece of advice?

Steve Schroeder: Yeah, I would certainly agree with Barbara. Start wherever you are, just start. And eventually it becomes a part of the DNA of the board. It becomes a part of the culture and it's just what we do. And then two years from now, people think that you always that you've always done it, even though you haven't. I do think boards have to spend time looking at themselves and not just pointing the finger at the organization. For me it would be what Barbara said and start somewhere. Set goals for the board. Yes, you should have goals for the organization. There's no question about that. But it has to start with the board itself. And what are the goals that the board has. And then it builds from there. Boards are all about relationships. The most successful boards in my experience are the boards that have the deepest relationships where they can give feedback to each other. They can criticize each other without being disrespectful because it's you know somebody's heart. It's coming from a place of wanting to help someone, not just wanting to tear them down.

Jill Holtz: I love that. Thank you both of you for taking the time to come on the podcast today and for sharing your experience advice. I've learned so much. I think self-assessments really do have a lot to offer in terms of improving governance for mission-driven organizations. And your insights and tips have been really excellent today. We do have a couple of free guides available for further information and support. We've one for school board of self-assessments and also one for nonprofits.

And I'll put a link to those in the show notes. So thank you very much, Barbara and Steve.

Barbara Paxton: Thank you. This has been very enjoyable, and I've learned stuff from you, Steve. Thank you.

Steve Schroeder: Yeah, me too, Barbara. Thank you. Thanks, Jill.

Jill Holtz: Thank you for listening to this episode of Leading with Purpose. As you heard today, board self-assessment isn't just a box ticking exercise. It's a critical tool for improving governance, strengthening board trust and dynamics, and ensuring your organization can achieve its mission. Done well, it helps boards move beyond assumptions and take a clear, honest look at how they can perform even better. The key takeaway? Start somewhere and commit to acting on what you learn.

Gathering that honest feedback, reviewing the results as a team, and setting clear goals for improvement, these small steps can quickly build momentum and make self-assessment part of your board's ongoing culture, part of the DNA, as Steve said. If you'd like to dive deeper, we've included links in the show notes to free guides for both non-profit and school board of self-assessment to help you get started.

And could I ask a huge favour? If you found this episode helpful, please take a moment to rate and review the podcast.

It does help other mission-driven leaders discover the podcast and practical advice like this. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time on Leading with Purpose.