A great director I served with: Robert F. Patton, his head was always in the game.

BOB PATTON was a great director. He practiced law for 30 years in Pittsburgh and was chairman of Union National Corp. (banking company) for six years. He was a director of Armstrong World Industries from 1976 to this year.

I served with Bob on the Armstrong board for 12 years, five of them when I was chairman and president. He was a critiquing supporter, an active listener, a reflective thinker, and a "board balancer."

Bob supported senior management. That is, he trusted top management's purpose, dedication, integrity, and judgment (unlike some directors who assume that they are there to prove that management couldn't possibly think straight without them). He believed in the potential for achieving great results and in taking risks to get them.

Yet, his support was not uncritical. His head was always in the game, and he often questioned the game plan. He would tell the CEO, "You need to think that through again," or ask, "Have you considered the unexpected -- unforeseen success as well as unforeseen difficulties?"

Bob is an active listener. He uses questions to develop a discussion, to test the quality of what others have to say. He is a reflective thinker. It was not unusual for him to call the next day with "I have some additional thoughts about that issue."

As a board balancer, he would bring the group down off a rose-colored high with a warning that there could be a devil in the details. On the other side, he helped break the ice when a situation or a problem was chilling us.

When the 1990-1991 depression in residential and commercial construction was wrecking our operating results, Bob decided that the board was too tense. He was the last to arrive at a board dinner and appeared with a "Planet of the Apes" full-head mask -- moving around the room asking, "Are you having fun yet?" It worked!

From Bob, I learned to "Tell us what's on your mind." He insisted on not just reports of events and actions and not just recommendations for approval. Bob wanted to know, "What are you Worried about?" "What of importance might be coming up or coming at us?" and "what dilemmas are you stuck on?"

Bill Adams retired in 1995 as chairman and president of Armstrong World Industries Inc., capping a career with the building products company that began in 1956. He is an adviser to several businesses, a director of Bell Atlantic Corp. and Irex Corp., and a director of the National Association of Corporate Directors, for which he served in 1995 as a member of its Blue Ribbon Commission that issued a report on director compensation.