Interface Coaching & Development
11 board scenarios every nonprofit leader faces and nobody prepares you for. Written for EDs, ops managers, and everyone caught in the middle.
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Who this is for
The ED navigating a board that won't stay in its lane. The ops manager who can see the dysfunction clearly but has no standing to address it. The program director watching boundaries get crossed in meetings and not knowing what to do next.
Board dysfunction is rarely caused by bad people. It is caused by role confusion, missing conversations, and the absence of explicit agreements about how things should work. This guide names eleven of the most common patterns, explains why each one happens, and gives you a practical path forward.
Thirty years of working with organizations and their leaders has produced one consistent observation: the most expensive governance failures are the ones nobody named until it was too late.
Inside the guide
These are not hypothetical. They are patterns that repeat across organizations of every size, in every sector.
Scenario 01
The board member who shows up while the ED is away
Good intentions, real consequences
Scenario 02
The board member who communicated a decision before the ED could
Transparency without context is its own kind of harm
Scenario 03
The staff member who speaks up and gets called a problem
What looks like disruption is usually investment
Scenario 04
The staff member who didn't know the rules of the room
Protocol gaps set good people up to fail
Scenario 05
The ED and chair who never got on the same page
Everything downstream depends on this one conversation
Scenario 06
The board member whose values contradict the mission
Recruiting for capacity without checking for alignment is a governance failure
Scenario 07
The board member who has everything to offer and says nothing
Silence is not neutral in a governance room
Scenario 08
The board that can't stay out of how things get done
Governing and operating are not the same job
Scenario 09
The ops manager who sees everything and can't say anything
The people closest to dysfunction are often the last ones with a path to address it
Scenario 10
The decision that was already made before anyone sat down
Pre-meeting coalition building turns governance into theater
Scenario 11
The ED who was asked to write the strategy
Delegating governance work downward is a shortcut with real costs
"The most expensive governance failures are the ones that nobody named until it was too late."Christian Moller-Andersen, Interface Coaching & Development
Patterns that repeat across nonprofit organizations of every size, sector, and stage of growth.
Each scenario explains why it happens, because understanding the cause changes how you respond to it.
A clear path forward for each situation, written for the real constraints leaders work within.
Grounded in organizational behavior, governance, and leadership science from peer-reviewed sources.
Useful whether you are the ED, the ops manager, a board member, or someone in between.
Yours to keep, print, share with a colleague, or pull out when you need it most.
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A practical guide to the board dysfunction nobody prepared you for — and what to do about it.
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