Leadership Formation

Sickbert Gets Generative with Pilgrim Place Board

The board of directors at Pilgrim Place in Claremont, Calif., faced a problem not unusual for those involved in volunteer governance: they got caught up in thinking about business instead of the business of thinking.

The everyday tasks of ensuring that their retirement community runs properly took precedence in monthly meetings, where board members spent most of their time hearing reports from staff and handling planning and budgeting issues.

In an attempt to resolve the problem, Pilgrim Place invited CHHSM CEO Bryan Sickbert to facilitate a retreat last June using CHHSM's special governance training program, "Vocation of the Trustee." Sickbert presents the program to various groups several times a year, and he spoke about it most recently Oct. 20 at a meeting of Wisconsin CHHSM members.

The Pilgrim Place board discovered that the creative spark which many members sought when they accepted their seat on the board - referred to in "Vocation of the Trustee" as the "generative" element - was almost entirely overlooked.

"Our board is pretty typical of many who have been focused on the strategic and fiduciary responsibilities but had not entered the greater world of generative thinking," says Bill Cunitz, Pilgrim Place's president and CEO.

Drawing upon the work of Harvard professor Richard Chait and his colleagues, "Vocation of the Trustee" breaks down board service into three primary and equally important elements - strategic, fiduciary and generative.

"Generative work really asks the 'why' questions. What often happens is that boards spend the most time on the strategic and fiduciary elements and give short shrift to the generative work, if they even approach it all," Sickbert says. Because of the way many board meetings are structured, too much time is often spent on hearing reports from executive staff, he explains.

"We try to get people to identify their passion and what they really believe are the gifts they bring to the board," he says. "If those things are linked, you try to restructure the way the boards meet so those lengthy, boring reporting sessions just kind of go away and more time is spent on doing the generative work."

Sickbert developed the "Vocation of the Trustee" program in collaboration with colleagues in the ecumenical Center for Faith-Based Leadership. Board development is an important part of CHHSM's consulting services along with culture formation, team-building, marketing and communications.

To learn more about "Vocation of the Trustee" and other CHHSM consulting services, contact Daniel Pryfogle, CHHSM's director of consulting services, at 919-460-7069 or send e-mail to pryfogled@chhsm.org.