On New Year’s Eve, I had a dream. That is, I had a dream that I remembered when I awoke.
In my dream, I was seated around a table with a group of men and women. I understood that I was in attendance at a meeting of the board of directors of some organization (that was never identified in my dream). I had the impression that I was a new addition to the board. As what I remember of the dream began, the chair of the board was aggressively taking the CEO to task for some shortcoming. This went on for long enough that I became uncomfortable. I was reluctant to speak out—feeling that as a new board member I didn’t have the right to speak—but eventually I interjected. “It is completely appropriate for the board of directors to engage in evaluation of the performance of the CEO,” I said. “In fact, this is one of the central responsibilities of any board. However, this is not the time or the place for us to conduct a performance evaluation—particularly if the CEO has not been informed in advance that we would be conducting one today.”
At this point, the chair of the board turned her anger on the board, and began to deride our competence and challenge our character using abusive language and foul insinuations. I sat in silence for a few minutes, as the other board members were doing—still conscious of my place as a novice on this board—until finally, I was unable to restrain myself any longer. With some anger of my own I said, “This behaviour is completely unacceptable and needs to stop.” And then I woke up.
Judy was scheduled to work a day shift at the Southwest Centre for Forensic Mental Health in St. Thomas on New Year’s Day, a 35 minute drive from our home in London. I had no need for our car that day, but for the sake of spending a little more time with her on the first day of the year I rode with her to St. Thomas. On the way, I asked her to share her hopes and dreams for the year. “To travel again,” was the first thing she said. “To be able to visit Ben and Naomi (our daughter and son-in-law) in Philadelphia, and to go back to the Appalachian Trail”—the latter having been the scene of so much personal growth and spiritual restoration for us in recent years. “What else?” I said. “To become more effective in my role as a mental health nurse,” she answered, and then elaborated.
“And what about you?” Judy said. “To travel, for sure,” I said. But before I could say more, we arrived at our destination. It wasn’t until I picked her up at the end of her shift that I was able to tell her about my dream from the night before, a dream that had left me with a clear impression that I had been given an assignment. As it as, I drove back to London with only my thoughts and a Tim Horton’s coffee to keep me company, but I was able to witness the sun rise on the first day of a new year and and flood the horizon with vibrant colour.
I am not one who pays careful attention to his dreams. Seldom do I recall the details of a dream, nor do I typically make any effort to do so. But there have been a few occasions—and my dream on New Year’s Eve was one—when I have awakened from the dream with a sense that it contained a message for me. In those cases, I take to heart the admonition of the Talmud, “A dream that is not interpreted is like a letter that is unread” (Berachot, 55a). Jewish traditions of dream interpretation suggest that if the dream images are clear and vivid and leave the dreamer moved or agitated, the dream is usually trustworthy. Writing on dreams in the Talmud, Susan Vorhand says the Talmudic approach was “If [a dream] leaves little impression, it may be disregarded, but if it asks to be remembered, it wants to be remembered, and one should attend to it.”
“If a dream leaves little impression, it may be disregarded, but if it asks to be remembered, it wants to be remembered, and one should attend to it.”
This was a dream that asked to be remembered. I was emotionally involved—feeling insecure, as a new member, regarding my authorization to speak, and feeling personally affronted by the attack on my character. The behaviour of the chair was a violation of the value I place on decorum in the boardroom, where civil, respectful and courteous discourse contribute to the productive airing of concerns and prudent decision-making. And, in some ways, the dream was an expression of what was taking place in my own psyche.
My vision today of the critical contribution a high-performing relationship between the CEO and board chair makes to organizational success is informed by positive and negative experiences in the past. While, as I’ve written, my relationship with the chair of the board at International Justice Mission Canada was exemplary, it has not always been so. In one of my first experiences of executive leadership my relationship with the chair of the board deteriorated over time to the point that, in one memorable board meeting, she began to pointedly call me out for my failure to lead the organization in fundraising activities in the way that she believed was necessary. I responded by suggesting that, if my leadership performance was being called into question, I should be provided with a formal performance evaluation—which, after three years in the role, I had not been given. The performance review was conducted and the report was largely favourable; nevertheless, I chose to resign —given how damaged my relationship with the chair had become. 15 years later, the memory of that painful experience surfaced in a dream.
The first 18 months of my consulting practice (post retirement from full-time executive leadership) can be described as an experience of responding in good faith to opportunities that have come my way, and cautiously exploring ideas that might lead to something truly rewarding. Over the past few months, I’ve had the privilege of assisting a few non-profit boards that are seeking to increase their governance capacity. At the same time, I continue to hear second-hand stories of boards that have gravely failed to fulfill their essential duty of acting as stewards of the resources entrusted to them by the community of stakeholders. Moving forward in 2021, my New Year’s Eve dream helps me narrow my focus professionally. As Greg McKeown says in his book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (the best book I read in 2020), “We aren’t looking for a plethora of good things to do. We are looking for the one where we can make our absolutely highest point of contribution.”
We aren’t looking for a plethora of good things to do. We are looking for the one where can make our absolutely highest point of contribution.”
Greg McKeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
My one good thing is to invest through my consulting practice in cultivating healthy, engaged non-profit boards “that refuse to treat governance as a necessary evil” (The Redemptive Nonprofit). These boards will hire CEOs that will lead with a deep assurance that their board is committed to their flourishing and the institution’s alike. Together they will accomplish great good in our world—feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, binding up societal wounds, addressing systemic injustice—all while efficiently and prudently managing the resources entrusted to them by their stakeholders. I knew in an instant when I awoke from the dream on New Year’s Day that this was the assignment I have been given, but now it’s up to me to move confidently in that direction. In the words of Henry Thoreau, “I learned this… that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
What dream has seized you? Our broken, pandemic-disoriented world needs more dreamers of all ages, ethnicities, genders and status who will advance confidently toward their “one good thing” in spite of the named and unnamed obstacles before them.
Text © 2021 Edwin Wilson. Photos from iStock.com. Used by permission.
