How to Secure the Right Board of Directors Position

By Jeff Gundersen, Founder & CEO

I’m frequently asked by CEOs and other C-level clients, “How do I identify and secure a Board of Directors position?”

Serving on Boards—especially the right ones—can be a credibility builder. It is also a gateway to personal development and building new, lasting relationships that feed into the fulfillment of your life purpose and are aligned with your passions. We tell our clients who are interested in pursuing a meaningful Board role, “Start with your personal brand.” Take stock of your vision, purpose, values, passions, strengths, and goals, then identify organizations that are a match with these essential parts of who you are. This will ensure a better possibility of being satisfied by your service.

For example, I recently joined the DMEF (Direct Marketing Educational Foundation) BOD, and this is very strongly related to one of my life’s purposes, the education and advancement of younger people. The DMEF’s mission is to attract, educate, and place top college students in direct/interactive marketing careers. As the first college graduate in my family, I have always been a big advocate of education in my own family. From this earlier purpose, I enjoyed serving on the Board of Future Possibilities (’94-’05), a non-profit coaching organization with “empowering children” as their mission.

Non-Profit Board Roles

Especially in non-profit organizations, BOD roles are service roles. Therefore, the CEOs and Presidents for whom you work are expecting you to “give, get, or get off.” In other words, you will be much more satisfied if you can see the fruits of your efforts going to a “cause” that inspires you.

For Profit Board Roles

For-profit Boards are something different altogether. On a for-profit Board, your specific industry knowledge, operating experience, geographic (i.e., Asia Pacific), or functional (i.e., digital, social, mobile, e-commerce) expertise may be specific requirements the Board or CEO is seeking to support the CEO in running and growing the business more profitably and successfully. In these instances, you need to understand exactly what unique value proposition you can bring to a for-profit board, whether it is governance, corporate development, or marketing/business development. We recently completed a BOD search for a private-owned integrated marketing services company where digital/new media was becoming a bigger future focus and priority. We identified a proven digital/new media CEO with 10+ years of experience and broad connections in the Ad Tech sector, and this was exactly the type of outside Board member our client needed to complement the existing Board composed of more traditional direct marketing CEOs.

Since Board of Director positions, both non-profit and for-profit, involve the commitment to travel to 4-6 annual Board meetings, and provide outside counsel in between Board meetings to the CEO, choose wisely in selecting the Board position(s) you serve on. This way you will not feel imposed upon when you look at your calendar and see the upcoming Board meeting or call with the CEO next week.