You’re now bought in to the necessity of a Personal Board and you’ve started to think critically about who’s on it already. Think about your co-founders, parents, siblings, life partners, previous bosses, mentors, advisors, coaches, other CEOs/founders, and friends. Add them all to a column on a google sheet, and then consider the following qualities/dimensions for each of the relationships. Track your responses in a new column for each item using a scale of 1 to 10.
- Alignment - Do they have competing goals/interests that might sometimes be at odds with your own personal goals and outcomes? Do you feel they are effectively able to set those aside in conversations?
- Trust - How much do you trust the person?
- Personal Context - How well do they understand you?
- Candor - Are you comfortable talking with them about your business and professional self, particularly when you’re unsure what the right answers are?
- Availability - How confident are you they’ll answer the phone when you call?
- Subject Matter Expertise - How well do they understand your business/industry vertical?
- Professional Context - How well do they understand your job as a CEO today and what your job will be 2-5 years from now?
Ideally, you should have at least 3 to 5 names that you feel strongly about and make the cut after you’ve gone through this exercise and the more varied the relationship types, the better.
For example, if your three co-founders make up your entire personal board, then you won’t receive enough diversity of thought when you collect their input (Not to mention that your co-founders are definitely misaligned with you at times.)
References
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