Q: What new components have you added to your volunteer leaders' orientation that help your new leaders better understand their roles?

We initiated our first real board orientation to start the first meeting of the year by inviting our auditors to discuss the fiduciary responsibilities of being on a nonprofit board and inviting our counsel to cover the legal aspects. The past president reviews the relationships of the board members to committees and their oversight and reporting functions. I discuss the role of the senior staff and the significance of us partnering with board members and committee chairs to carry out our mission.

We focus the leadership on their responsibilities as well as their roles within our complex structure. After our first orientation, we had a number of board members ask some pointed questions indicating that they had just realized the seriousness of what they had been elected to by their peers. We intend to continue this orientation and to add or change components based on board turnover.

Mark G. Doherty, CAE Executive Director, Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, Linthicum, Maryland 

We have added an online learning and technology session to our board member training so that board members can see firsthand how to access not only the organization's information and services, but those of our state associations and national and global databases and organizations as well.

Anne L. Bryant, CAE Executive Director, National School Boards Association, Alexandria, Virginia 

We have always placed a high value on training in meeting management, such as parliamentary procedure and group facilitation skills. This year, we also started to provide training in strategic thinking. In one exercise that was particularly effective, chairs and vice-chairs connected their committee charges-- working back step by step--to our organizational objectives, key strategic areas, vision, and mission. We realized that we had been taking for granted the fact that our committees understood how their work supports our strategic direction. Committee leaders and members tell us that this exercise has made participation more meaningful.

Gary Krysler Executive Vice President, Women's Council of Realtors, Chicago

For the past several years, our annual Bar Leadership Conference has held breakout sessions for committee chairs and secretaries, section chairs, chair-elects, and treasurers. We recently added sessions for local bar presidents and leaders of specialty bar organizations. These are practical sessions with a special handbook that covers rules, forms, and leadership ideas. We also use the conference to discuss statewide issues facing the bar or the legal profession. This assists us in educating the groups that these people lead.

Staff liaisons also attend each meeting of our committees and sections. We hold quarterly training for the staff liaisons so that the exchange of information that occurs at the annual leadership conference continues throughout the year. While our board members do not attend every meeting, each committee and section also has a designated contact on our board of governors.

Karen L. Garst Executive Director, Oregon State Bar, Lake Oswego