(On)board days
How do you strengthen collaboration within a board that already functions well today? Nele is one of the twenty board members of Cera, a strong and warm cooperative. Although the board already functions strongly today, she still saw room to grow further.
“We actually already have a very high-performing board. But the theme in which we still want to grow, especially with such a large board, is group dynamics. Board dynamics. And that is exactly what this two-day program is about.”
Together with the chair of the board, Nele took part in the (On)board days, a two-day program by Outward Bound and GUBERNA.
Good governance is not something you learn only in a meeting room
The (On)board days combine two complementary approaches.GUBERNA brings in its expertise in governance and good governance. A substantive keynote was the starting point of the program and gave participants a theoretical framework for looking at the dynamics within their own board.Outward Bound then translated those insights into experiential assignments in nature. Away from the familiar meeting table, participants were challenged to collaborate, make choices, communicate and reflect on their own behaviour and that of the group.Because group dynamics is not only something you can talk about. It is something you can experience, investigate and strengthen.
From insights to board practice
The strength of the two days lies not only in what participants discover during the program, but above all in what they take back to their own board afterwards.
“My expectation was to do things experientially, outside in nature. To experience first-hand what board dynamics is about, how you can strengthen it and what the pitfalls are. That expectation has been met 200%.”
Nele returns with new ideas, inspiration and above all confidence to actually apply the insights.
“I am going home very inspired, with lots of ideas and a lot of confidence that you can really get started with this in the board.”
And perhaps that is the most important message: stronger board dynamics does not necessarily start with big changes. Sometimes it starts with small steps, more awareness and the willingness to keep learning together.
Good governance goes beyond the meeting table. It starts with the people sitting around it together.
A strong board is not only about expertise, strategy and well-founded decisions. At least as important is what happens between the board members. How do they work together? How do they deal with different perspectives? And how does group dynamics influence the quality of their decisions? Exactly those questions were at the heart of the (On)board days.
How people learn here
The core of Elevate is a residential module at Château Varoy — three to four days outside the office environment. Not as team building, but as a learning context.
We design situations in which people need each other, choices have real consequences and behaviour becomes directly visible — to themselves and to each other. Facilitators always start from the objectives of the organisation and of the leaders themselves. The themes, tensions and questions they bring are exactly the material we work with.
Facilitators name patterns. They do not prescribe them.
Nature offers what a meeting room cannot: focus, time pressure and distance from familiar roles. That makes discussable what would otherwise remain invisible.
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