Highly effective governance teams share a common understanding of their governing commitments, processes, goals and strategies. That common understanding can only be achieved through effective communication, and the often-undervalued skill of listening.

Listening is essential for trustees to fulfill the representative role that comes with elected office. Community input is critical and to truly understand community perspectives, and board members must engage in authentic listening. Trustees also play an instrumental role in ensuring that their actions and those of the district are compliant with the law, which requires consulting with legal counsel. And a board’s fiduciary role denotes an obligation to act in the local educational agency’s best financial interests by listening carefully to the professional staff regarding the relationship between funding, operational costs and strategic priorities and goals.

Authentic listening takes intentional effort and practice. There are a wide range of factors that can interfere with one’s ability to listen. The following are five common challenges:

1. Environment: A noisy boardroom or a crowded community event can make it hard to hear or focus.
2. Distraction: As human beings, it’s often a struggle to be fully present in the moment due to thinking about other pressing matters.
3. Emotion: When either the speaker or the listener is upset or highly charged, it can dramatically influence what they say and how it is
4. Complexity: Governing is hard work and deals with complex issues in the areas of finances, facilities, human resources, collective bargaining and strategies for raising student achievement, to name just a few.
5. Bias: Whether conscious or unconscious, preconceived judgments and attitudes often make it difficult to understand another point of view.

There are many strategies in effective communication research for overcoming these obstacles. The following are directly relevant to the work of the board:

• Be prepared: Prepare for difficult conversations by looking at the content in advance and reflect on topics for which you have a preconceived attitude, and to what extent you might need to put those on hold. This is directly relevant to the representative role.
• Remove environmental obstacles: A board member could use a “point of privilege” motion, which allows trustees to request accommodation. Example: “Board President, I can’t hear. Can we please close the widows to reduce the outside noise?”
• Reserve judgment: Resist the temptation to prepare your rebuttal while someone is speaking. Instead, take notes on what’s being said so you can be sure you understand.
• Remain calm: You might have an emotional reaction to what is being said, but don’t let strong initial emotions hijack wisdom.
• Demonstrate understanding: It is often helpful for board members to react by starting with: “I’d like to try summarizing what you just said to make sure I get it.” Try to enumerate the important points and then let them confirm.

This last point is so important it’s worth reiterating. If board members become frustrated because someone keeps repeating the same comments, it may be because they don’t have confidence that they are understood. This can be exacerbated when a board member response is framed as a rebuttal: “I get what you’re saying, but …”

Just saying that one understands doesn’t prove it true. Let the speaker decide whether they’ve been heard. To do that, board members can always end their summary of someone else’s ideas with a simple question: “Do you believe that I understand?”