How to Assemble and Leverage Your Personal Board of Directors
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Description
Having a personal board of directors can significantly transform how you navigate your personal and professional journey.
In this episode of the Branding Room Only podcast, you’ll learn how assembling a well-chosen team of trusted advisors can significantly enhance your growth through invaluable support, guidance, and feedback, ultimately helping you build and sustain a compelling personal brand. I’ll also give you an acronym you can use to help you put together your personal board of directors.
Chapters
1:00 - Make-up of a personal board of directors and what to look for when choosing members
3:25 - The importance of clear communication in setting boundaries and expectations with board members
5:47 - The key to receiving valuable feedback from your board and why emotional support is huge
9:57 - How you can use your board of directors for amplification, brainstorming, and networking
15:42 - Two more things to consider as you’re choosing and working with your board members
18:16 - A practical framework for creating and nurturing your personal board of directors
Mentioned In How to Assemble and Leverage Your Personal Board of Directors
2024 Intention and Goal Setting
Council of Urban Professionals
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Sponsor for this episode
This episode is brought to you by PGE Consulting Group LLC.
PGE Consulting Group LLC is dedicated to providing a practical hybrid of professional development training and diversity solutions. From speaking to consulting to programming and more, all services and resources are carefully tailored for each partner. Paula Edgar’s distinct expertise helps engage attendees and create lasting change for her clients.
To learn more about Paula and her services, go to www.paulaedgar.com or contact her at info@paulaedgar.com, and follow Paula Edgar and the PGE Consulting Group LLC on LinkedIn.
Transcript
Welcome to The Branding Room Only Podcast where we share career stories,
strategies, and lessons learned on how industry leaders and influencers have built their
personal brands. Now, let's get started with the show.
Hi, everyone, and welcome back to Branding Room Only. It's Paula Edgar, your host.
Today we're going to dive into a concept that I believe can transform how you navigate
your personal and professional journey, which is creating your personal board of
directors.
Many of you probably have heard of this term, but having a personal board of directors
is a powerful way to both build and sustain a strong personal brand. Similar to the way
companies have boards to guide them, you are essentially assembling a group of your
trusted advisors and stakeholders to support, challenge, and guide you.
I want to explore what this looks like and why it is so essential. The first part is
understanding what exactly is a board of directors. You should be thinking about this as
your own team of advisors. People who care about your success and are willing to
invest their time and their energy into helping you achieve your goals.
Your board is usually made up of mentors, peers, industry experts, supporters,
sometimes family members, sometimes folks who you don't actually know what you are
emulating and thinking what would they do, and all of those folks who are providing
guidance, feedback, and connections as well as other things.
The key in selecting these individuals who will be on your board of directors is to think
about their diverse perspectives, their experiences, and their expertise, how it connects
with your life and your goals and help to enrich your decision-making and expand your
horizons, which essentially are the keys to having a strong goal.
When you think about what I call the recruitment phase, is thinking about
what are some key qualities in board members that you are looking for, it's
important to look for those people who embody the key qualities that you
need: integrity, commitment, ability to communicate, empathy, drive, who have
exhibited success in their areas or who have learned from them and are working in
tandem.
Another place for the board of advisers is really having peers who are along the journey
with you as well. I really like to think of it in terms of diversity, folks who have been
there and done that, folks who are trying to get there and do that, and people who are
in the space and doing it alongside you and able to give you that feedback.
You think about those traits, you want to just make sure that they're genuinely invested
in your success and then they can provide the support you need. All of them don't have
to be on board and fully engaged all the time but you need to be able to know what you
can tap into them for. It's important to also balance professional and personal advice in
terms of thinking about the key qualities.
You want to have people on your board of directors who can offer insights into both
your career and your personal life. That way, any decisions and thinking about your
trajectory will lead to a more holistic way and well-rounded way of approaching your
branding and continuing to iterate.
The other part about this is you want to set clear expectations and boundaries. It's
important to set those boundaries to make sure that you both have an understanding of
what you need from each other and having a productive relationship.
You should be communicating your needs and goals openly and you should be
establishing guidelines for how you will want to interact and collaborate. Clear
communication is really the key to everything. It fosters a healthy dynamic and health
prevents misunderstandings. This is huge.
For example, I have someone who's on my board of directors who is fantastic, but the
only time I can access them is early in the morning. I found that it's important that
when we are having conversations or if I have a challenge or an idea, that I bring as
much as possible to what I thought about it so that we can have a very productive
meeting because they are really strategic when they are given an assignment. I have
other folks and my board of directors who I just go to to help me to brainstorm.
Really think about what are the skills that the folks on your board of directors you want
them to have and then start the recruitment process from there, setting those
expectations and boundaries.
This is different than how I sometimes look at mentoring and sponsorship. There's some
overlap here, but for this, I think you want to say to them, “I would really love for you to
be a member of my board of directors.” You want to say, “I feel like, because of the
relationship that we build or are building, I think your feedback and your engagement
will be helpful for my success and I hope that it can be reciprocal.”
Speaking of reciprocal, reciprocity is the key to maintaining healthy, productive
relationships with the members of your personal board of directors. You should be
offering value in return for the guidance and support that they have given you with
guidance and support for their own goals and contributing to their success.
You know that whatever they're saying is about rising tides, it raises all ships, it's like if
you're all in this together, everybody gets better. The mutual benefits strengthen the
individual bonds and the group bonds and make those relationships more rewarding for
everyone involved. Thinking about that.
But going back to communication, one strong thing that we talk about is the role of
your board of advisors when it comes feedback. One of the primary benefits of having a
personal board of directors is the opportunity to receive valuable feedback. Feedback is
crucial because it helps you to see blindspots, we find these strategies, and ultimately
improve your personal brand.
And if you have really good people who are on your personal board of directors, they
can offer you honest, constructive criticism, and insights that you may not get from
other people or elsewhere. The key is you want to make sure that you’re creating an
environment and a culture in your relationship where open communication is
encouraged and that feedback is a two-way street. Because sometimes their role is to
give you really challenging feedback.
If, for example, you are resistant or not encouraging them giving it, it can hamper the
relationship. Just be thoughtful about that. But you definitely want people to tell you
what they think. Because I am a solo entrepreneur with my business in terms of
speaking and consulting, I work in a lot of silos with my clients. I don't have a full team
that I do things with.
For me, my personal board of directors is really, really important to gathering feedback
about how I'm doing on a consistent basis. I think it was about a year ago, I actually
sent out a personal 360-type thing to a bunch of my friends, colleagues, clients, and the
people on my personal board of directors. It was anonymous to enable them to give
really good and robust feedback.
I was so happy that I did that because it helped me to make sure that the messaging
that I wanted to be out there was consistent with what they were receiving and
experiencing.
Also, it helped me to understand some places in which I can get better. None of us is
perfect. All of us need to get better and although we may not like to hear some of the
feedback, it’s important for us to receive it. That is a huge part of having a personal
board of directors.
Another piece is for emotional support and resilience. As you build your personal board
of directors, you want to recognize that having emotional support is huge. These can be
individuals who can be your cheerleaders and your supporters during challenging times
as well as good times—which we'll talk about next—but that helps you to build
resilience and have a shoulder to cry on or shoulders to cry on and folks who you know
will hear you and have an ear for you when we need that.
Especially recently and post-pandemic, that's so necessary to help you build that
resilience and maintaining confidence in your journey because with their
encouragement, you can face setbacks that you may experience and turn those into
opportunities for growth.
But similar to the way in which you need folks for emotional support and resilience
when there are challenges, you also want your personal board of directors to be there
when you are sharing joy.
Joy, for those of you who don't know, is one of my words of the year from my
goal-setting session, which you should take a look at because goal-setting can happen
all year round.
But when you think about this, joy is such an important part of our lives. If we don't tap
into what brings us joy and brings us happiness, we're not really living. So celebrating
successes with your board of directors is not only rewarding, it is exciting to do, but it
also is essential for maintaining your motivation and building those strong relationships.
Often folks will talk about people connecting with them and then not sharing back how
something went. You want to make sure you close the loops and that you are telling
people about successes and joys that you've had. When you share your achievements,
you essentially are creating a positive narrative, that what is that, that reflects your
personal brand's values and vision and enables them to have a stronger view of what it
is and to help you as you go forward.
Your board can be there to help you amplify your narrative, whatever that is, which will
then, hopefully, ensure your success, and ensure that you are recognized and
appreciated both inside your personal board of directors circle and outside of it.
Another way that I love to use my personal board of directors, which you should know,
one of the stakeholders that I didn't mention was also folks who you may want to
engage and pay.
My coaches are also part of my personal board of directors as well because they know
me, they understand what my business, personal, and professional visions are, and
enable me to stay the course. They are the key people who I look to when I want to
have feedback or have ideas, etc. So I thought about that as I wanted to talk to you
about workshopping ideas because this is the place where I use my personal board of
directors and specifically the coaches on it.
Workshopping ideas is an important benefit of having a personal board of directors.
Brainstorming with your board allows you to tap into a wealth of knowledge and
creativity and also to sort of see what you might be missing.
This diversity of input and perspectives can help you create innovation, solutions, and
perspectives that you may not have considered in whatever idea or thoughts you have.
Similar to feedback that's received, you want to create a safe space where all ideas are
welcome, there are no stupid ideas, and you want to hear the full breadth of their
feedback or ideas that they have so that you're building trust, and again, that
innovation.
It's a chance for you to put out things that are like your wild, audacious goals or
something that you think might be out of this world but they then tell you that yeah, it's
doable if X, Y, and Z. When you are able to test out those concepts and get feedback
before you implement, you can make sure that ideas you have align with your personal
brand and you can also make sure that there's nothing that you're missing.
For example, one of the members of my personal board of directors, I call her the
general counsel of my personal board of directors. I was going to appear on a podcast,
a podcast that had a racy topic—I won't go into what it is—but essentially, I went to her
and said, “What do you think about this?” She was like, “Absolutely not. That is not
aligned with your brand. It's not something you should do.”
While I think I already knew the answer, it was helpful to have somebody to go to say,
“What do you think about this?” and to hear and have someone really invested in my
success to give me that feedback. Really important.
The other thing is I love having a personal board of directors to amplify my message. I
use this for my social media. I use this for just in general about who I am, what I do,
what I'm looking to do.
You should be using your board of directors to help you amplify your message. By
leveraging the networks that they have and the different social media or other
platforms that they have, your board members can help you to expand your reach and
your visibility and ultimately your success.
Essentially, what you're doing is you build credibility and trust through your personal
board of directors. Their brand and their alignment with you and their amplifying your
message or talk or referring you or promoting you comes with a seal of approval
because they're doing it and that can help you to build and grow more.
When your board members endorse your work and share your message, it adds weight
to your brand and it helps you to reach a wider, more diverse audience and hopefully
help you to reach your goals faster.
Speaking of that, connecting opportunities. A board of directors is instrumental in
connecting you to new opportunities, whether it's through networks and introductions,
your board can open doors that you may not have been able to access on your own and
they can leverage their own boards and their own networks to help you to leverage
your own.
You may know that I am a part of a network called the Council of Urban Professionals.
It’s an organization and I was one of their fellows. I always say with this network, which
many of my personal board of directors are a part of, that I am two people away from
something that I need. That's a powerful thing, to have to be able to leverage these
networks and their networks to your benefit and also, again, having it be reciprocal.
It's important to think about them to open doors that you may not have been able to
access on your own and to align any opportunities that you may be asking for or that
they hear about and know about with your personal brand goals.
They also can help you to evaluate potential opportunities that come your way and
ensure, as I said before, with the person I was talking about before, to make sure that
they're in line with your vision, your values, and what your brand is.
Another piece of this is using LinkedIn. Number one to making sure you're connected to
the members of your personal board of directors on those platforms so that you can
help to promote what they're sharing and also to be thoughtful and strategic about who
they're connected to and how it can be supportive to you and you can be supportive to
each other, especially LinkedIn, it helps to facilitate maintaining relationships like
people can do a dual connection via LinkedIn and a LinkedIn message.
They can refer you to expertise, you can look for advice, you can showcase your
thought leadership, and they can amplify your message, like share, and commenting on
it so make sure your brand has a bigger audience.
There are two more things that I want you to think about before I share with you one of
my new acronyms. It's important to have a diverse board. Your personal board of
directors should not be people who are all just like you. You want to include people who
are from cultural backgrounds that are different, and who've had different life
experiences.
As I mentioned before, folks who are more senior than you, folks who are more junior
than you, people who are in your industry, out of your industry, people who you engage
by hiring them. There's a lot of different ways to shape it. But I'm encouraging you to
actually start writing out, who's currently on your personal board of directors.
I went to a program once where we also not just laid out who was on the board of
directors, but also what is the primary thing that you look to them for. Because one, it
can be that you're not necessarily evaluating the members of your board properly.
You want to look at actual diversity. Are you having a split in terms of gender and age,
race, and parenting status, all of those things are helpful. But you also want to think
about how they add value and how you connect with them. Your board should evolve as
your needs and goals change. Like other board, you want to think about their terms,
assessing how effective they are, and thinking about whether you need to bring in new
people and need to perhaps make others into advisory status.
Your board should be growing with you. There may be some people who will always be
on your board. For example, my husband, and my father are always going to be
members of my board of directors because they are stakeholders by contract and by
blood.
But there are other folks who kind of come in and out or maybe are stronger and
sometimes and not in the others, but you should be thinking about it. I know you're
probably thinking, “Well, how many people should be on your board of directors?” I
really think that that's up to you, but I like to aim for 10 or 11.
I have more on mine, but not everybody's going to be primary all the time, which is why
you should be thinking about the board as who has maybe moved to advisory, who is
not going to be in every day or multiple times in a month or a year, but who you know
tap into no matter what.
No matter what, you should be thinking, “Okay, who is in my squad? Who are my
peeps? How can I continue to leverage them? How can they continue to leverage me?”
keeping them updated, etc, keeping up with their updates, asking how you can be
supportive to them in addition to making ask about how they can help you. That
reciprocity is huge.
In wrapping up, I want to give you an acronym—I like acronyms to help adults learn
better—I call the acronym PAULA'S BOARD. Just think of it as my advice for putting
together your personal board of directors.
For the P, it's Providing diverse perspectives. You want to choose board members who
offer a range of insights and advice and who literally are diverse. The first A is Aligned
with your goals.
You want to assure in short that your board understands and supports the goals and
aspirations that you have. The U is to Utilize feedback effectively. Act on the
constructive feedback that you received so that you continue to get better.
The L is Leverage their networks. One of the reasons why they are stakeholders is to
make sure that your success is also their success. That means that whether it's asking
or accepting their offer, you are leveraging the networks that they have.
The second A is to Amplify your message. You want to work with your board to spread
your message. What is your brand message? Are they introducing you to folks? Do they
know your elevator pitch? Are they sharing your website or your LinkedIn? Are you able
to quickly share with them posts that you've made that you want engagement for?
There are lots of different ways for them to amplify. Similarly, this aligns with the S, it’s
Support and celebrate. You want to engage with people who are going to genuinely
support your success.
I saw something recently, it was Oprah Winfrey in conversation in a fireside chat with
Gayle King, who's her best friend. Basically, the part of the conversation that really
resonated with a lot of people was Oprah's saying that you cannot have a friend or
really a stakeholder—in this case, for you all—a member of your personal board of
directors who exhibits any jealousy.
You want someone who is supportive of you and you want to be supportive of them,
which brings to the B in BOARD, which is to Build trust and transparency. You want to
foster honest communication. You want to be vulnerable as much as you can and let
people know where you are and what's going on with your brand so that they can
connect with you deeper.
The O is Optimized decision-making. You want to use the board to help you make
strategic decisions about your personal and professional journey and ultimately your
personal brand.
The A is for Adapt and evolve. You want to be open to adapting strategies, thoughts,
platforms, et cetera, based on insights that you get from your personal board of
directors.
This is huge. We don't grow if we're standing still or we're stuck. You want to have a
growth mindset and that means being adaptive to and hearing feedback that can help
you to learn, grow, move, and shift.
The R in the board is Recognize and reward contributions. You want to appreciate your
board's efforts, I always say there are never enough thank yous in the world. Every
single time somebody does something, whether they know it or not, I am in gratitude
for it because it collectively helps us to feel and be better when we are acknowledged,
even if we're not doing it for that acknowledgment.
Finally, the D in PAULA'S BOARD acronym is Drive personal and professional growth.
Focus on your continuous learning and professional development with your board
support. Ask for suggestions on books, podcasts, articles they have read, places you
should be, people like that is how you're growing and you're using them to advance
your mission like a business board.
If you think about this, creating and nurturing your personal board of directors is a
process that requires time, effort, and consistency but the rewards that you get from
doing it are invaluable.
Like everything else I encourage you to do, start identifying the individuals who are on
your board now or who you want to be on your board and start to build those
relationships today.
I would love to hear your feedback on this episode and tell me if you have a personal
board of directors. Feel free to shoot me an email at info@paulaedgar.com or connect
with me on LinkedIn and send me a message.
But I want to hear how you're actually taking this advice. I think very deeply about this.
This is one of the keys to my success is having a personal board of directors. As always,
thank you for joining me on this episode of Branding Room Only.
I hope that you found these insights on building a personal board of directors valuable
and you are inspired and ready to take action. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and share
this podcast with others who might benefit from it, AKA everyone. Until next time, stand
by your brand. Bye, y’all.
