Ouch! But Hit Me Again
from May/June 2007
“You can’t handle the truth,” Jack Nicholson’s character famously roared at the Navy attorney played by Tom Cruise in the 1992 film A Few Good Men. Nicholson’s character was wrong, and it would be wrong, too, to assume that fellow directors can’t handle the truth about their performance if subjected to individual evaluations. Consultants who facilitate such reviews, and those who’ve been through them, say that almost all board members find the process enlightening, if not necessarily pleasant.“If I’m doing something wrong, I want to know about it,” says one director. “I’ve got a big enough ego that I think I’m a better board member than most of the other people I serve with, and if they’ve got something to say, I want to listen. I think most people are that way, particularly if their comments are being handed to you as part of a confidential evaluation process, as opposed to some sort of public flogging.”
Some directors even seek further comments on their performance after getting an evaluation. Stephen Bader, a director of Rainier Pacific Financial Group, a bank holding company in Tacoma, Washington, recalls two cases in which colleagues spoke up at full board meetings, asking whoever it was who’d criticized them to get in touch and help them do better. They also invited their anonymous critics to lunch, and promised to pay. Both were taken up on their offers.
That sort of openness to constructive criticism, Bader says, has resulted in directors’ being able to communicate better with one another and “is helping us to become a better board.” He should know. He’s been criticized himself and has sought to do something about it. Among other things, he’s trying to be less grating at board meetings.
