208. Have we empowered our directors to do a great job? (Question #6)

This season, every episode of OMG focuses on a question that directors really need to answer. OMG is written, produced, narrated and scored by Matt Fullbrook.   TRANSCRIPT: Question #6: Have we empowered our directors to do a great job? It’s one thing to define what doing a great job means, like we did in the last episode. It’s a whole nother thing to figure out what it takes to empower every individual in the room to feel like they can do a good job without too many obstacles. Obstacles come in countless shapes and sizes, so let’s use an example to illustrate. Let’s say we’ve decided that one of the things that makes a director great is their willingness and ability to change their mind when presented with new and relevant information. Some obstacles here are nearly invisible, like confirmation bias, which is a quirk of human cognition that causes us to overvalue information that tells us we’re right…even if that information isn’t reliable or accurate. So, you can see how confirmation bias might make it hard for someone to change their minds based on new information. Other obstacles might be social, like the fear of looking or feeling like a hypocrite or seeming indecisive or doubtful. You can also imagine the time constraints of a board meeting might make people less likely to even want to consider new information in the first place, let alone to take the time to question their beliefs. In other words, empowering directors to be great might require us to be intentional about information, time allocation, social dynamics, personality management, and more. But we won’t know exactly what to be intentional about, or how, if we don’t take the time to learn about each other’s preferences and expectations. Hence this week’s question. Another way to put it is: what would it take for *you* - and each of the other people in the room – to feel comfortable, and even excited to do the things that make a director great?