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Megan Manahan Bliss had to help the board make big decisions quickly when she became board chair at $889 million asset Vermont Federal Credit Union in South Burlington, Vt. Her transition to chair occurred in 2019, just before the pandemic began.
Coordination between the board and senior management was critical to adjust operations, and required a new dynamic as remote meetings replaced face-to-face conversations.
Bliss was fortunate to have a strong mentor in Joe Finnigan, the previous board chair who continued to serve on the board. Having joined the board in 2015, Bliss also knew and appreciated the CEO and management team.
“We’re lucky: The senior management team and the board work well together, so [the pandemic] never felt like a crisis,” Bliss says. “The biggest piece of the puzzle was figuring out how to provide services remotely to members while conducting our board business remotely, too.”
She notes that other shifts in dynamics occurred early in her board service when a former board member became chief financial officer, and more recently as board chair when another former director left to lead human resources.
As chair, it’s important to sit back and not drive the conversation—until it is time to drive to closure.
Thomas Healy
“That was probably the more interesting change, going from working with someone as a fellow board member to now working with them as a member of senior management,” Bliss says. “The background of having a relationship with those people already has been invaluable and made the board/management team relationship even stronger.”
Anticipating the greater time demands of being board chair, Bliss, an attorney, stepped away from other volunteer commitments. It was still a jolt when her time commitment to the board increased even after remote communications eliminated the 30-minute drive to attend meetings.
She also had to adjust her communication style in response to remote meetings. When questions went unasked or she feared that board members might be unclear on a topic, her challenge was to be aware of those instances and encourage questions and further discussion.
Shifting to a remote environment eliminated many expectations about how to run the board, which Bliss sees as a benefit. It’s her belief that new board chairs should reject the expectation that they should already know everything required of the role when their term begins.
“It takes about a year before you feel like you’ve got your bearings and know what happens in every cycle of decision-making,” Bliss says. “It’s a learning process, and that’s OK.”