Many of you know that I serve as the immediate past president of the National Speakers Association. One of my final duties is to chair the Nominations Committee – selecting the future leaders of the association. This weekend, we interviewed ten people for five positions (with three incumbents in the running). I firmly believe each of the candidates would serve our association well – but our challenge was to narrow the field down to five.
One of the things we looked at was their “gift”. Each of us has a strength – a depth and breadth of expertise, experience, or ability that would contribute to the board. For example, my “gift” is around process. I think process steps and can articulate a clear path between the current state (point A) and the desired state (point B). this has been particularly helpful during our strategic planning process and process improvement efforts. You need that clarity of process on a board, much like you need financial acumen, marketing skills and technological savvy.
As we were interviewing the candidates, we were looking for their gift – and how that gift would align with the mission and vision of the organization.
So what’s your gift? How does your gift contribute to accomplishing your team’s goals?
