Does your homeschool group suffer from a dominate leader? She may have founders syndrome.
What can you do when your leader is overly-controlling?
How-matters.org offers this advice for boards:
- Understand and take full responsibility for the role of board member. Insist on focused board training to review the roles and responsibilities of a governing board. Undertake a yearly self-evaluation of the board to ensure it is operating effectively.
- Once a year, conduct a key exercise: pretend the founder suddenly left the organization. Who will/can quickly step in? Are you sure? What activities are the staff really doing to carry out programs? In the case of non-profits, what grants does the organization have to perform against and report on when? What is the cash flow situation? What stakeholders must be contacted? Where are the files/records?
I really like the idea of pretending your key leader suddenly left. It’s a great idea!
The blog post from How-matters.org offers other terrific suggestions for boards facing a founder who won’t let go.
Author Stephen G. Donshik in an article “The Creator or the Destroyer: Dealing with Founder’s Syndrome” says it can take a long time, many months, to get a founder to loosen the reins.
It might require many discussions between the parties; it may take months before the founder acknowledges the need for a change in leadership.
What should you do if the founder won’t let go of leadership? Mr Donshik advises,
At some point if the founder is not receptive to planning for a succession of leadership in the organization, the board of directors may have to make a difficult decision to remove the founder from her leadership position when her continuing in the role is destructive to the agency.
I hope your organization will deal with founders syndrome and come out stronger and continue to serve more homeschool families.
Carol Topp, CPA
