Page 14 - CCCA Magazine Fall 2019

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McCaskill says that GCs must establish credibility and trust too big to solve,” McCaskill says. This is where listening, com-
with not only the CEO but also the board chair. That can be munications and awareness skills dominate. You need to con-
tricky to manage because at some point you might fnd yourself stantly monitor what executives and directors are saying and
privy to information from the chair that the CEO doesn’t—and watch for lack of alignment, she notes.
can’t—know about. “You’ve got to navigate through that mine- It is unlikely that GCs will ever eliminate tension between
feld in a way that preserves your credibility and ends up being board and management. Nor would you necessarily want to,
in the best interest of the company,” she explains. notes Puri. “A bit of healthy tension is a good thing. Good deci-
sions get made when you don’t all think alike around the table.”
5. Practise Soothsayer Skills Nonetheless, it’s not always a bed of roses, notes McCaskill. If
a serious issue arises between a board and a CEO, it might not
GCs need to have an innate sense of im- be salvageable. In that case, she says, you will “have to make a big
pending doom and be part mentalist judgment call, and it might just be to get out of the way.” ❚
and soothsayer. “You have to be percep-
tive. You have to have your eyes and ears
open, and see issues before they become Jim Middlemiss is a writer based in London, Ontario.

Know thyself

There are range of self-assessment tests in-house counsel ground is in library and information science, and she has sat on
can undertake to learn everything from their emotional intel- a number of boards and speaks regularly about governance. Her
ligence to communication style and personality strengths and top CliftonStrengths include input, intellection and deliberative,
weaknesses. and they dovetail under the theme of relationship building.
CliftonStrengths, from the polling frm Gallup, Inc. is one Input means she has a craving to gather and collect informa-
assessment tool gaining traction. It is based on the idea that tion, and a desire to know more. That demand for information
if you know your top fve strengths, you can focus on those and as a board or tribunal member, she notes, can often be miscon-
maximize productivity. It examines 34 strengths broken down strued by management as dissatisfaction or mistrust at the level
across four themes of executing, infuencing, relationship build- of disclosure. She dispels such worries by explaining that it’s
ing and strategic thinking. her nature to seek information when making decisions. “When
Users answer a series of questions and are assigned strengths, you develop that self-awareness, you are able to act with more
which include things like developer, learner, relator, activator, integrity,” she says. “You know who you are.”
achiever, etc. A report ranks their strengths and provides the Carrière and Oakes Charron are
characteristics of each one. There are tools and resources to bringing CliftonStrengths into
help users build on their strengths.
the governance space. They
Antoine Carrière, an Ottawa-based CliftonStrengths certifed recently spoke at a Gov-
coach, says more than 21 million users have undergone the as- ernance Professionals of
sessment. “It allows you to really understand what you are natu- Canada conference, and
rally gifted to do.” will host one-day work-
Bonnie Oakes Charron is an Ottawa-based governance special- shops in 10 Canadian cit-
ist who uses the CliftonStrengths model to help her as a director ies this fall to “allow peo-
of Ottawa’s Odyssey Theatre and a member Ottawa’s Commit- ple to do that deep dive
tee of Adjustments, a quasi-judicial administrative tribunal. A [into their strengths] with a
former procedural clerk at the House of Commons, her back- governance focus.”

14 CCCA MAgAzine | fALL 2019 AUToMne