Domain 5 | Leadership

Question 1

Active Listening

Answer 1

Requires being in the present moment, engaged with the speaker rather than thinking about your response. This includes noticing when body language does not match the words spoken or the passion expressed is not aligned with the issue being discussed, and inquiring about the incongruence. That may require paraphrasing in your own words what you heard, assuring understanding, and acknowledging that you heard the speaker correctly.

Question 2

Maximizing Volunteer Capacity

Answer 2

Volunteers are looking for minimum time involvement, maximum influence, and major benefit. To maximize volunteer capacity, the association needs to assess how volunteers are used and train them for the decision-making process. Members usually become volunteers because they want to make a difference, and they don’t necessarily know how to do that. The association needs to provide skills and conceptual development in governance and leadership, team building, and a cultural orientation to maximize volunteers’ potential. A critical focus for building capacity is succession planning: intentionally and thoughtfully recruiting volunteers who will provide the skills, resources, and connections vital to the organization now and into
the future.

Question 3

Collaboration

Answer 3

A relationship where multiple parties work together on a project or other initiative to achieve mutually desirable ends.

Question 4

Confidentiality

Answer 4

One of the key duties related to the fiduciary responsibility of a governing body. Maintaining confidentiality on sensitive issues fulfills the legal duty of loyalty to the organization.

Question 5

Constructive Confrontation

Answer 5

Organizational cultures that avoid conflict and confrontation cannot function as an aligned team. Teams that engage in confrontation
• Have lively, interesting meetings.
• Extract and use the ideas of all team members.
• Solve real problems quickly.
• Minimize politics.
• Put critical topics on the table for discussion. Constructive confrontations bring the team together. Conflict, confrontations, and closeness occupy the same continuum. Creating an honest environment and taking responsibility for your own actions makes managing conflict and confrontation easier.

Question 6

Cost-Benefit Analysis

Answer 6

The technical process of judging the value of a given activity, program, or service against the cost.

Question 7

Crisis Management Planning Process

Answer 7

A three-phase process:

1. Pre-crisis: plan for crisis, establish policy, and establish a crisis information function (communications).
2. Crisis: define the crisis, access existing crisis plan, and respond professionally.
3. Post-crisis: review the association’s crisis performance, and plan for the next crisis.

Question 8

Collaboration to Solve Problems and Challenges (Culture)

Answer 8

A successful negotiation is a win-win and should never be confused with equal wins. The term win-win means mutual gain; very seldom can each party win equally. Following a principled approach to negotiations, however, ensures that all parties come out of the negotiations ahead.

Question 9

Diversity

Answer 9

A broad array of differences, broader than race, ethnicity, and gender. Diversity also includes age, physical abilities, skill sets, socioeconomic status, family status, lifestyle preferences, language, and religious beliefs and spiritual values. It is more than demographic differences. Optimally, it is about inclusiveness of differences at all levels of the organization.

Question 10

Termination of CSE

Answer 10

Job security is never a sure thing in associations. Major contributing factors leading to termination for a CSE include the CSE’s functioning knowledgeably but behaving ineffectively or focusing more on his or her own role than on doing a good job for the members. Job security protections can be negotiated in the CSE’s employment contract, such as defining who will be involved in appraisals, what body or which positions will have the authority to terminate employment, and notice and severance issues.

Question 11

Ethics Check

Answer 11

Questions to ask when faced with an ethical question to which the answer may not immediately be apparent:
• Is it legal?
• Is it balanced?
• What organizational and/ or personal values are being violated?

Question 12

CSE Ethics

Answer 12

The association CSE is responsible for establishing the ethical framework and expectations for staff behavior. In addition, the CSE is responsible for communicating and promoting the ethical standards established by the association. The leadership and commitment of the CSE must be consistent, fair, and widely communicated.

Question 13

Informed Intuition

Answer 13

Accessed by considering the implications of four interrelated knowledge perspectives:

1. Sensitivity to member needs, expectations, and preferences
2. Foresight into the likely evolution of the members’ environment
3. Insight into the capacity and strategic position of the organization
4. Consideration of the ethical dimensions of choices

Question 14

Leadership Competencies

Answer 14

Seven possible skills involve

1. Engaging in servant leadership
2. Creating and communicating vision
3. Promoting and initiating change
4. Building partnerships
5. Valuing diversity
6. Managing information and technology
7. Achieving balance

Question 15

Leadership vs Management

Answer 15

_Management: directing and controlling, decision making, creative thinking, listening, problem solving, implementing, and deploying technology.
_Leadership: supporting, empowering, inspiring creativity, ensuring understanding, resolving conflict, and humanizing.

Question 16

Leadership Through Data

Answer 16

In a knowledge-based culture, not-for-profit organizations will find that the decisions they make will be only as valuable as the quality of the information on which those decisions are based. Databases must be built to guide decisions about programs, policies, strategies, and delivery systems. Members and staff will engage in continuous and integrated consideration of member needs, wants, and preferences; the capacity and strategic position of their own and other organizations; external marketplace dynamics and realities; and the fairness and appropriateness of choices.

Question 17

Leadership Mentoring

Answer 17

A best practice in developing leadership capacity is to institute a leadership-mentoring program for emerging leaders and also institute orientations for new board members. On an assigned one-on-one basis, teach upcoming leaders the behaviors of leadership and how to follow through on promises. Current leaders and past presidents can get involved in nurturing and training, cultivating leadership skills, and passing on knowledge and context for understanding the issues.

Question 18

Managing Change

Answer 18

It is never totally possible to manage change. You can manage through the transitional phases of change by aligning the working parts of the organization in a way that lets you establish conditions, increase fluidity, become beneficially opportunistic, and encourage participation from others.

Question 19

Organizational Culture

Answer 19

A particular set of policies, practices, values, and expectations that define and guide a workplace or organization.

Question 20

Partnership vs Joint Venture

Answer 20

Both are legal relationships in which two independent parties join together in pursuit of a common goal.

_Partnering: creates synergy, expanded resources, and markets, and is done when there is a win-win possible for all partners.
_Joint venture: an entrepreneurial pursuit in which both parties share risk in the investment and uncertainties.

Contractual language must be in place to define the relationship and responsibilities for either configuration. Usually, a separate corporate entity is created in the joint venture to protect all parties from liability that might be incurred by one of the venture partners.

Question 21

Role of CSE in External Alliances

Answer 21

The CSE must never lose sight of what is best for the organization. That may mean entering into collaborative efforts with competitors, merging and eliminating one’s own position for the good of the organization, looking for opportunities on behalf of the members’ interests, and applying the standards for conflict of interest.

Question 22

Trust Building

Answer 22

Three elements are required to build trust:
• Achieving results
• Acting with integrity
• Demonstrating concern