By Monika Kalra Varma, CEO, BoardSource and Jamie Allison, Executive Director, Walter & Elise Haas Fund
We are living in a time of profound change and complexity. Maintaining community safety nets, advancing justice, expanding opportunity, and centering and honoring the dignity of all is more urgent than it has been in recent history. Facing these realities, the world seems to be looking for heroes to save the day. Although cape-clad superheroes are not descending from the sky, if we look around us and within ourselves we can find our superheroes and unleash our collective superpowers to meet the moment.
Nonprofit and philanthropic leaders have always been called to meet extraordinary challenges. Today’s leaders are serving growing needs with fewer or unpredictable resources, guiding teams and communities facing immense trauma, and developing innovative solutions to impossible challenges. They are acting with both courage and imagination, often under intense pressure and public scrutiny. The call to lead with purpose, courage, resilience, and creativity has never been louder and executive leaders are responding.
Meeting this moment requires radical partnership. Every superhero needs allies—and in the world of governance, that ally is the board. As leaders of nonprofits, we have benefited from strong board relationships that deepen and enhance our leadership. [Jamie is a member of BoardSource’s board.] With this blog, we explore how to create the conditions for chief executives’ superpowers to flourish in service of the organization’s purpose.
1. Break Bread Together
Boards and organizations are made up of people, not positions. The first step in any strong partnership is connection. Understanding each others’ strengths, challenges, and gifts, learning about each other’s families and communities, and connecting on what brings each person into the work lays the foundation for everything that follows. “Breaking bread together” on a regular basis, in the form of actual meals, personal check-ins, and heart-centered connections among those dedicated to an organization’s mission, builds and enhances trust.
2. Activate Purpose Together
When a board and executive are aligned around purpose, they can lead with clear direction and confidence, even when the path ahead is uncertain. In times like these, when so many decisions feel impossible, we can find ourselves operating from a place of fear. It can show up as caution, conflict, or the urge to retreat. Reconnecting to purpose allows everyone to take a collective breath, remember what truly matters, and find the courage to move forward together.
When a board feels stuck or is navigating conflict, the most constructive step is to pause and return to purpose. From this place of alignment, the board becomes a true thought partner—working in partnership with the executive to navigate difficult choices with clarity.
3. Recognize and Respect Human Capacity
Superpowers are not all-encompassing. Every leader has strengths and limits. Some are visionaries but not detail-oriented operators; others are strategic thinkers but not natural communicators. Great boards understand and accept this. They support chief executives to build their own teams and structures that complement their abilities by encouraging them to hire, for example, the “details person” who turns vision into execution. This understanding is one of the most powerful acts of governance.
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