Oversight vs. Harassment

What is the difference between oversight and harassment?  This is a question that many executives wrestle with as their boards of directors “step up” and “do their jobs.”

Boards have nothing on Rip Van Winkle; most simply don’t slumber that long.  Nevertheless, too many do slumber for some periods of time and then suddenly wake up!  The wake-up can be due to a variety of reasons but are generally variations on one of two themes:  someone on the board gets a bee in her/his bonnet about the executive director and turns a usually unfounded nothing into an enormous mountain;  or someone on the board wakes up to a true problem and rallies the rest of the board.  The problem is that while the former should never be allowed to happen, the latter must happen.  It just should happen as a matter of course, as opposed to a reaction to a crisis.

Which brings us back to oversight versus harassment.  Oversight, ironically, means both the failure to notice something (which boards too often do) and the responsibility to watch over and direct someone(s)/thing(s) (which boards too infrequently do).   Harassment, on the other hand, has no irony involved; it is simply “ the act of systematic and/or continued unwanted and annoying actions of one party or a group, including threats and demands.”  As far as I know, there is no law against oversight; there is, however, a law against harassment in the workplace.  And when it can be established that the harasser(s) created a “hostile work environment,” the legal consequences can be serious.

It behooves boards to understand the difference between these two behaviors.  Simply put:  oversight is good; harassment is very bad.  Oversight should look something like this: it begins by understanding the boundaries between your job as a  member of a board and the executive director’s job.  In overseeing the well being of the organization and the mission, the board hires the executive director.  I am really going to go out on a limb here and assume that no board has ever intentionally sought to hire an  incompetent person to serve as executive director.  But, just in case the person hired isn’t all that s/he presented him/herself to be, a best business practice is to fulfill another piece of the oversight responsibility and do real 90 day performance review.

If that hurdle is passed, then a good, overseeing board may conduct an 180-day review, and then absolutely will conduct a 365-day review at the end of the first year, and every year thereafter.  Along the way, and throughout the course of each year, a good, board president fulfilling her/his oversight function, will give feedback, so that come the end of the year, there are no shocks.

It is at these annual performance reviews, and needed conversations throughout the year, where the board/board president lets the executive director know how well s/he is doing:  are there questions about her/his competency in the areas of managing the mission, program execution, supervision of staff, finance, development, etc.  On top of this, the system of checks and balances that should occur naturally through regular board and committee meetings, at which the board’s strategic considerations of the data and other information presented in the executive director’s reports and the give and take of those discussions between board members and executive director, provides an additional oversight perspective.   All of this is oversight, at the end of which the board and executive director have moved the mission forward by working together, as colleagues sharing a mutual goal of serving the mission.   Oversight is a positive experience for all involved.

Harassment, on the other hand, is never pleasant and creates a hostile environment where the one harassed doesn’t feel welcomed or appreciated but rather, diminished, unwanted and, somehow, dirty and evil.  While only anecdotally documented, harassment can also drive the victim to the brink of depression, destruction, craziness, deflation, etc.   The process that results in such a negative outcome is, itself, a negative experience.  It may start out with a little niggling here and there and grows to that board member(s) who won’t let go of the damn bone!  The bone may be real or imagined, but it doesn’t matter; the end result is the same.

Generally, the harassment begins with a question that suggests that the executive director is dishonest, incompetent, deceptive, all of the above and more.  Initially, the inquiries may happen just at board or committee meetings; then they increase in frequency to weekly and, in the worst cases that I hear all too frequently, daily.  They switch from face-to-face to phone calls or, more likely, emails with cc’s to everyone and her mother, thereby allowing the discrediting that the harasser wishes to achieve to happen easily and that documentation trail to be established.

Very rarely in an harassment situation is the “problem” with the victimvalid; rather, the true problem resides with the harasser, who just keeps lifting stone after stone after stone, all the while finding nothing but making life miserable for all involved.  Unchecked (yes, I’m talking to you, board president or vice president, and any other board member with integrity), harassment leads to organizational trouble.  It rarely stays unknown by staff; it seeps out, or the harasser lets it be known.  After that, an organization can go in different directions, none of which is mutually exclusive:  morale can tank, factions can develop (with the board or with the executive director), an excellent executive director hangs it up, good board members frustrated by the failure to curb a false and disruptive element among them leave, funders start to catch wind, oversight, if it was being done, gets taken over by harassment, and the list can go on and on.

Sadly, we see too much harassment by boards because of their failure to understand their oversight role.  Feeling the need to do something and to demonstrate their value, all the while cognizant that the board’s job includes something about the executive director, they chose harassment, leaving oversight overlooked.