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Colleagues,

As a former college president, I understood how vital my relationship with the board of trustees was to the institution’s success. Although my board was deeply supportive, talented, and committed to the college’s long-term future, its members lacked direct expertise in higher education management. My responsibility was to proactively provide the information and context they needed to make timely, well-informed decisions.

Today, the board-president relationship is even more critical as boards assume greater responsibility in an increasingly complex environment. Where boards and presidents once worked within a relatively stable context, the landscape is now very different. This is a central premise of WittKieffer’s new report on higher education trustees, Boards of Trustees in Higher Education: Governing Through Continuous Disruption.

The report states: "Today, governance in higher education is shaped far less by predictability and far more by sustained volatility. . . Boards are no longer confronting one discrete challenge at a time; instead, they are managing clusters of interconnected, mutually reinforcing pressures, often without clear resolution in sight. The formal role of the board has not fundamentally changed. What has changed is the operating reality: the scale, pace, and complexity of decisions, as well as the level of public scrutiny under which they are made."

The implication is that boards are not necessarily ready and built for today's realities. While charged with greater responsibility (and presented with greater risks), they tend to operate with yesterday's structures and processes.

Our report maps out how boards can evolve to meet the moment. It is essential reading for trustees who want to reframe their understanding of their role and mandate. It is also enlightening for presidents seeking a deeper appreciation of today's trustee challenges and how best to support their board.

The excerpt below focuses on the relationship between the board and the president. Enjoy!

Sincerely,

Cathy Dove, EdD

Leader, Leadership Advisory for Higher Education

Boards govern; presidents lead. In practice, the quality of governance depends less on maintaining that distinction than on how well the board–president relationship bridges it: whether it functions as genuine partnership or defaults to formal protocol. In a modern governance environment, that relationship operates less as a hierarchical reporting structure and more as a system of coordination grounded in a set of interlocking practices that shape how governance works in practice. When it works, decision‑making remains coherent, even amid sustained pressure. When it breaks down, governance quickly becomes fragmented, reactive, and difficult to sustain.

Boards govern; presidents lead. The quality of governance depends less on maintaining that distinction than on how well the board–president relationship bridges it.

Across interviews, this relationship emerged as one of the strongest predictors of governance effectiveness. Leading boards recognize this dynamic and conduct periodic presidential assessments that explicitly evaluate the quality of the board–president relationship alongside performance outcomes, treating relationship health as a governance priority rather than an implicit assumption.

We examine those practices through three lenses:

First, information flow: not simply what boards are told, but when they are brought into emerging issues.

Second, relationship architecture: the role of the board chair–president dynamic in maintaining alignment and stability.

Third, decision‑making dynamics: how boards and presidents work through complex choices, and the extent to which partnership enables or constrains accountability.

Information Flow

The most immediate and visible fault line in the board–president relationship is timing. Trustees consistently emphasize that the issue is not whether boards are informed, but when that information arrives. "No surprises" has become a baseline expectation. Not because disruption can be avoided, but because it can rarely be managed effectively once decisions are already framed or issues have become public.

The distinction between notification and engagement is critical. Boards may receive comprehensive updates yet still find themselves unable to shape outcomes if those updates arrive late in the process. By that point, momentum has already built around a particular direction, and governance becomes an exercise in validation rather than judgment. The result is a subtle but consequential shift: boards remain formally involved, but their influence on direction is constrained.

Relationship Architecture

The relationship between the board chair and the president carries disproportionate influence. In practice, this relationship becomes the primary mechanism through which information is filtered, priorities are aligned, and emerging risks are interpreted.

Where that relationship is strong, alignment extends outward to the full board. Issues are framed earlier, expectations are clearer, and decision-making retains continuity even as conditions shift. Where it is weak, misalignment tends to surface quickly: often first in tone, then in process, and eventually in outcomes. Governance slows down or becomes more contested, and the broader board–leadership relationship becomes harder to stabilize. Trustees also emphasize the board chair's role in enabling difficult conversations: without a skilled and willing chair, critical issues are more likely to be deferred or avoided altogether.

In periods of disruption, this relationship is not simply important; it is structural. It determines whether governance can absorb pressure — or amplifies it.

Decision‑Making Dynamic

The most effective governance environments are defined less by formal roles than by how boards and presidents work together to reach decisions. Trustees are generally clear that they should not operate at a management level, even as some express a pull toward greater involvement in operational matters. At the same time, they recognize that distance alone does not produce effective oversight.

The demand is for engagement that happens earlier — and for decisions that are framed more explicitly. That includes clear articulation of trade-offs, acknowledgment of uncertainty, and visibility into how options are being evaluated. Without that, boards are left to assess outcomes rather than choices.

Importantly, trustees do not view this as a binary choice between partnership and accountability. In contrast, partnership is seen as a condition for accountability. When boards understand context, assumptions, and alternatives, they are better positioned to challenge and refine decisions. When that context is missing, oversight becomes narrower and more reactive.

The difference emerges more clearly under pressure. Where alignment is strong, boards act as thinking partners, helping leadership test assumptions and navigate ambiguity. Difficult decisions become more manageable because they are shared. Where alignment weakens, governance becomes more brittle: roles blur, communication narrows, and confidence erodes on both sides.

As leadership turnover increases and institutional pressures intensify, the board–president relationship is becoming less a matter of style and more a core governance capability. Its effectiveness shapes not only how decisions are made, but whether institutions can navigate disruption with confidence and coherence.