In this episode of Associations NOW Presents, guest host Joanna Pineda speaks with governance experts Glenn Tecker, Mark Engle, DM FASAE, and Jon Hockman, CPF, FASAE about the essential partnership between the board and chief staff officers (CSOs). Together, they break down how these roles differ, why their relationship is inherently interdependent, and how expectations shift across different types of associations. The conversation explores the competencies leaders need today, the role of trust and communication, and how associations can navigate rapid change—from the disruptions of COVID-19 to the growing impact of AI. The guests also offer practical strategies for fostering strong board–executive dynamics and close with reflections on what they hope to achieve personally and professionally in 2026.

Check out the video podcast here:

https://youtu.be/i5E0LcD_rhI

Associations NOW Presents is produced by Association Briefings.

Transcript

Joanna Pineda: [00:00:00] Welcome to this month's episode of Associations NOW Presents, an original podcast series from the American Society of Association Executives. I'm Joanna Pineda, CEO, and Chief Troublemaker at Matrix Group International, a digital agency to associations. I'm also host of the podcast Associations Thrive.

Today we are excited to welcome Glenn Tecker, founder of Tecker International, Mark Engle, principal at Association Management Center, and Jon Hockman, chief practice officer at McKinley Advisors. Our topic today is the imperative of a healthy relationship between the chief volunteer officer and the chief staff officer.

Gentlemen, welcome to the show. To make sure that we are all on the same page, I'm gonna ask you all this question. Who are the chief volunteer officers and the chief staff officers? Glenn, maybe you [00:01:00] can define that for us. 

Glenn Tecker: The chief staff officer is the paid individual who is responsible for overall leadership and direction of the organization.

The chief elected officer often goes by a variety of different names. A board chair, sometimes they're called president, sometimes they are called chief mucky muck. It really depends upon the history and the culture of the organization. Similarly, the titles of chief staff executive can change depending upon the history of the organization as well.

Sometimes they're called executive director, sometimes chief executive Officer, sometimes president, oftentimes President, and CEO. So depending upon the history of the organization and the model of nomenclature, it's using the terms and the credentials can be different. 

Joanna Pineda: Okay, so how would you describe the relationship between [00:02:00] the chief staff officer and the chief volunteer officer?

What should be the relationship? 

Glenn Tecker: It's based upon the expectations that member leadership has for the relationship with their chief staff executive. There are subtle but real differences. The expectations that the volunteer leaders of trade associations have for their chief staff executive versus the expectations that the volunteer leaders of professional societies have for their chief staff executives.

Again versus, or different than the expectations that the volunteer leaders of cause related or philanthropic organizations have for their CEO. So there really is no one who earns that. You can put all of the answers to the question you've asked into 

Joanna Pineda: John. Maybe you can explain how are the expectations different between say, a professional society or a [00:03:00] trade association.

Jon Hockman, CPF, FASAE: The depiction that I would bring forward here. The pair between the chief staff and chief volunteer is the epicenter of leadership in the organization. Not exclusively, but it's the epicenter. And I think of it as a Venn diagram where those two roles have distinct responsibilities, but there's also places where they overlap.

And we oftentimes talk about the metaphor of a bicycle. And the front wheel is where you set direction. And the back wheel is where the chain connects and powers the board chair, the volunteers at that front wheel. With the board setting course for the organization, the CEO, the staff committees, all the other ways that members are organized sit at that back wheel and power things forward.

And so those are just very different roles, but they're obviously symbiotic to make it work. 

Joanna Pineda: Mark, if I'm running say a charity, a nonprofit, maybe a disease related organization versus A CEO, who's running a trade association, are the expectations different of my role and of the relationship. [00:04:00] 

Mark Engle, DM FASAE: I think the expectations are different, but they're based in competencies, and the competencies in those two areas are very different.

The trade association execs are often a public face, so I was CEO of several trade associations. Actually, when we went to the Hill, we were leading the charges. The chief staff executive, I was, my title was president. We had a board chair, and they were the backup because they did not want to be on display for their companies necessarily.

As for the industry. Whereas for a professional society, it's almost the reverse element of it where the CEO is the one who's putting in place the right ambassadors to represent the organization. So the competencies are aligned very differently on that basis. And again, with philanthropic organizations or public organizations that are out there raising money or trying to combat disease, for instance, they're trying to open doors, they're trying to support financially.

The organization and moving it forward. So the competencies are [00:05:00] very different from what you're looking for a CEO in those VAs. 

Joanna Pineda: Wow. Our topic today is the imperative of a healthy relationship, so why the word imperative? 

Glenn Tecker: There's probably nothing more germane to the continuing success of a CEO than the relationship they have with their board of directors.

That relationship in large measure is a model of the relationship that the chief staff executive and chief volunteer officer or chief elected officer has. It becomes the model of how the two will work together. What we have found over time is the successful relationships tend to be defined by a subtle but real understanding.

That is that on the complex and often controversial issues that boards and [00:06:00] senior staff will face together, it's critical to understand which body of knowledge needs to be the primary driver of the selection of the solution strategy. If the body of knowledge is that's held by members who are sitting on the board, then staff needs to defer to the view of the members on the board.

If the body of knowledge that's essential is the body of knowledge held by the staff in association management, then board members need to defer to the opinions and expertise of the staff. Asking the question, which expertise is needed for us to make a confident decision is probably the best start that you can had to sustaining that relationship over time.

Mark and John will both agree. I am sure. That the relationship between a board and the CEO is as much [00:07:00] a personality that differs from combination to combination as it is in fact based upon a set of dispensable competencies that both the staff leader and the elected leader need to exhibit in their work together.

Jon Hockman, CPF, FASAE: Yeah. If I could just build on Glen's point. Completely agree. As he predicted, and. If the culture of the organization is such that supports that sort of recognition that the body of knowledge sits at the board, that's where we go. If the body of knowledge sits at the staff, that's where we go. The core culture supports that.

Great. Often it doesn't, and that's where things break down or get mucky, is navigating the way through that. It could be really a wild ride. 

Joanna Pineda: Can we go a little bit deeper with this? 

Jon Hockman, CPF, FASAE: Of course. 

Joanna Pineda: I was on Facebook recently in one of the discussion groups where a lot of association execs hang out and somebody said, I'm in hell right now because my board chair is [00:08:00] micromanaging everything.

That sounds like a situation where maybe the chief staff exec is thinking, this is my domain. The staff have knowledge here, but the board chair is causing trouble, if you will. How do you set the expectation about whose domain should be respected in what situations? Like the choice of an annual convention venue versus a position that you're gonna take on a government policy, for example.

Mark Engle, DM FASAE: We try to move it through a policy base, if you will, so things like routine items, and I know conventions are important and people have a lot of emotion tied up into where that goes. If you can put that into a policy format, it reduces the effect development making a decision on that basis. And that really then becomes more staff driven if the board sets the parameters for it.

So providing that clarity is helping define the line between board role and staff role. And that's where it comes down to the competencies. The staff has the competencies to [00:09:00] determine the profitability and the aims of that. Conference, if you will. If it's framed at the board level, then they don't have to get in that decision making loop every time and make what becomes an emotional decision.

Joanna Pineda: Is that something that you teach your clients, for example, to ask the question, who's got the knowledge to be able to answer this question or provide guidance? Glen? 

Glenn Tecker: Yeah. There are also some systems and processes which are essential to sustaining appropriate role definition. One of them is something that we refer to as a strategic board agenda.

A key to all of this is understanding that boards will talk about what's on their agenda. So ensuring that the agenda focuses on items at the level of strategy and policy rather than at the level of management on operations becomes essential. Having said that, there are still some board chairs and some board members who carry a [00:10:00] mental model with them from other places where they believe the appropriate role is to get into issues of management, staffing, and operations.

In order to deal with that as Mark suggested policy that describes the expected roles of governance is an important addition to the organization's conversation. Establishing board norms as a compact between members of the board where they make statements about how they intend to work with each other as a group.

And how they intend to work with staff. Having a process for planning strategically that functions like an ongoing GPS rather than a traditional roadmap, having a methodology for addressing complex issues. That involves the development of information basis, so the conversation can be intelligent and confident.

All those are examples of systems and processes you [00:11:00] can put in place that will, in fact, as John has suggested, have a significant impact on the culture of leadership within the organization. Associations are weird. There's only two ways that you can affect culture. You either change people or you change people.

And if you're going to change people, then the way to do that is to give them a different experience in terms of how they function than they've had before. If you can alter the work process that's being employed, you can alter their behavior. And if you alter the behavior of enough people, you are altering the culture.

These are the kinds of things that we find the most successful CEOs, the chief staff executive is continually paying attention to, so that she or he is managing the functionality of their partner as along with their partner, as well as managing the organization [00:12:00] itself. 

Mark Engle, DM FASAE: Let's unpack that cultural element a little bit deeper because I think the one critical word in this space is trust.

And it takes competence and caring to develop that level of trust, especially between the chief staff executive and the chief volunteer. And if those two have that bridge of trust, and again, based on competence and caring about each other and about the organization, then you can develop a very positive culture.

Also, and as Glen said, we do have a lot of turnover in our board. You can blow a culture overnight. You can blow a culture in one conversation, but it takes a long time to build that productive culture. So save it at all costs. 

Glenn Tecker: There are very few instances where a chief staff executive has ever won a battle over the distribution of power.

Developing the competence required to finesse whatever leadership personality you inherit becomes an essential competency of the [00:13:00] CEO. Essentially, they are operating like chameleons, 

Jon Hockman, CPF, FASAE: So I think underneath all this is strong communication. I mean, to the core question around role definition and getting on track with that all the way through the culture pieces is that both the chief staff officer and the chief volunteer officer are actively working on communicating.

That's not just speaking, that's listening and truly hearing what the other is saying. All three of us run programs for ASAE around this, and at the heart of those, as wonderful as the content is, and kudos to my colleagues on that. Is the chance for them to be in dialogue with one another. A consequence of that hopefully, is a deepening of trust that Mark talked about.

So I just think that you can't over, well, you probably could, but you can't over emphasize the importance of communicating with each other each to understand one another. [00:14:00] 

Mark Engle, DM FASAE: Yeah, I was a CEO for 30 years, various trade professional societies and so on. I always made it a point to go visit. The incoming board chair, where they work, what they do, who they work with, how they work, how they wanna communicate, and those are critical elements in developing that trusting relationship.

So they develop into friendships too. Hopefully, not always, but hopefully they do. 

Glenn Tecker: Different individuals have a different work and communications preferences. So in the relationship, given the fact that the chief staff executive is in fact the professional. Our belief is if there is adjustment to be made, it probably is the function of the chief staff executive to make the necessary adjustments.

With good conversation, both can make adjustments so that their natural thinking and working style preferences are compatible and consistent rather than in conflict or inconsistent. And as John has said, communication [00:15:00] that is continuous, that is open, that is honest, will be able to sustain trust over time, assuming that you have a partner who is mentally healthy.

And that's not always the case. That's right. I think true. 

Joanna Pineda: Lemme ask you a question. So I've been on a couple of boards and you've talked about things like having the board charter, having open communications, defining the roles. I'm not sure that I ever saw those, unfortunately on the couple boards I was on.

Where do people learn this and how do you, I don't know, how do you impart this when the board does turn over a lot? Like where is this being taught? 

Mark Engle, DM FASAE: Should be in starting with orientation and development, and so many boards do orientation for just their new board members. No. Every year the board changes 'cause you have new people coming on.

The principles probably don't change and maybe some of the strategies don't change, but how we work together changes. When people change, [00:16:00] you're gonna have a new influx of, even if it's just one person in a 12 person board for instance, that's change. And the issues coming before you are changing. So spending time on how we do our work is as important as what is the work to be done.

Glenn Tecker: There are a variety of approaches that are used to create a common information base among volunteer leaders about expectations and roles. For example, Pennsylvania now has a law that requires board members of school districts to have a certain amount of training before they're able to take their position on the board.

And I share that with the podcast because increasingly we are seeing boards committing to ongoing quote, professional development. For their board members. So it's not just a single event at a single meeting, but it's continuous. As Mark and Joanna both suggested orientation is critical, and if you can [00:17:00] get the board member engaged in a way that allows them to see how an effective board functions before they take that seat, that's critical.

Every new board member comes to that position with a set of mental models, expectations they have about how things should work, and oftentimes those expectations come from roles in other organizations that are not sufficiently consistent with how associations operate. It's important for them to understand the difference and to have conversation with successful volunteer leaders, particularly the board chair.

Who will use previous board chairs who have been successful as a kind of mentor in the process. But our belief, and I think Mark and John would've shared this, is that those intuitive understandings need to occur before they're asked to take the role, 

Jon Hockman, CPF, FASAE: Not during it. Yeah. And just to build on [00:18:00] everything that Mark and Glenn have said, and to the extent that the organization can get a culture within the board of learning and development.

So that the board is, whether through self-assessment or other assessment tools, where is there a need for learning or skill development at the board level so that once, hopefully that orientation type foundation is in place, there are other opportunities to learn and grow and be a stronger leadership body because of it.

Joanna Pineda: Mark, you said that when you were a chief staff executive, made a point of visiting your board members. What are other things? Chief staff execs and chief volunteer officers, what should they be doing to promote this healthy relationship? Anything new and creative that you've seen recently? 

Mark Engle, DM FASAE: Not necessarily new, but creative, I think is to visit one of our programs that Glenn and John and I represent.

'cause it does bring them together to focus intently on the organization and intently on their relationship. And it gives 'em a common understanding of [00:19:00] roles, responsibilities, when to lead, when to support. And the whole element of that positive, productive partnership, that's a lot of peace. 

Glenn Tecker: Yeah. It's just one of those areas where there really is no best practice.

That is something that works the best all the time everywhere, but there are effective practices and practices that suck and you can tell the difference. And one of the important initiatives here is that there be a common understanding of how they're going to work together. The creation of that common understanding is probably more important than what the understanding itself is.

So it's through that conversation, that lasting trust, the ability to depend upon each other, to make promises and keep those promises. A colleague of mine years ago defined trust in this relationship as the residue of promises kept. 

Mark Engle, DM FASAE: Hmm. There's a [00:20:00] couple of trust relationships too. One is, does the board trust the board within those dynamics?

Then does the board trust the staff, especially the CEO. But the third one I've experienced particularly recently was, does the staff trust the staff? And that's an interesting dynamic and you talk about a board healthy culture and association, healthy culture. And a staff healthy culture. If we don't have those three elements, board to board, board to staff and staff with staff, a culture of trust, there's gonna be a breakdown.

There's gonna be a dysfunction in achieving any kind of strategy for the organization. 

Glenn Tecker: One of the competency areas that we find the most frequent and softest area is the ability of the group to address those kinds of conflicting behaviors when they occur. Most boards will have something like a code of ethics or a code of behavior.

It's [00:21:00] attempts to shape behavior by the threat of a penalty. If you misbehave. The best boards we find have something that we refer to as board norms. That is agreements on how they are going to work together and how they will interact with their staff. And they also have, as part of those board norms, judgements they have made about how they will at the moment intervene when a violation of those norms take place.

So having in place an understanding about how you will deal with. Emerging conflicts or potential violations of the judgments that have made about how that culture should work. It's an essential tool that still, unfortunately, too many boards don't have. 

Jon Hockman, CPF, FASAE: Yeah, we talk about the three-legged stool of respect, candor, and trust, and all those relationships that Mark outlined it, board to board, board to staff and staff to staff.

There's gotta be presence of respect, candor, and trust. [00:22:00] And it's not that hard to find respect, although it's not always present. But there's so many examples where candor is lacking and we're not having real conversation. We're not having complete conversation often because the trust isn't there. But that's not the only reason.

But you can't get to good norms or good communication if you don't have the appropriate presence of respect, candor, and trust within the dynamic. 

Joanna Pineda: You've talked about what an effective relationship looks like between the chief staff exec and the chief volunteer officer. Give us examples of when it broke down and then how do you fix it?

Glenn Tecker: There was an almost universal breakdown that occurred during the pandemic during when COVID forced everyone to go to entirely virtual communications. We observed a number. Things occurring as a result of the inability to spend face-to-face time together. [00:23:00] One thing that occurred was the bright minds that only contributed when they saw necessity to do.

They were the anecdote to the bullying voices tended to become more passive in the conversations, so folks who were the loudest to talk the most often tended to carry the day rather than good thinking. The second thing that we emerged is that groups selected management level issues to deal with because they were easier to address in a virtual environment without having the ability for the continuing face-to-face conversation.

The third thing that we saw that was absolutely disastrous was the kind of social interaction that occurs among board members and staff in between the sessions of the board, and in a night in between could not happen. So the ability to develop an understanding of their colleagues, which is really the [00:24:00] essential ingredient to trust growing where I can like you, even if I disagree with you, didn't have an opportunity to grow.

I'm willing to drink online if I have to, but I'd much prefer to be at a bar with my colleagues. 

Mark Engle, DM FASAE: And the good news is they're getting back together face-to-face. Again, I think we're finding the average board is three to four times face-to-face again, which it was prior to COVID. Yeah. So that's encouraging news.

Glenn Tecker: So it is encouraging. A concern that we have, although we're seeing it decrease over time, is that the cultural. Expectations of some groups have remained what they were when they joined the board during the pandemic. So working with those groups to get them to return to what we all consider to be best practice is sometimes a challenge, particularly when the members of the board have no board experience prior to having [00:25:00] joined the board in COVI.

Joanna Pineda: John and Mike, give us an example of how you fix stuff when it breaks down. 

Jon Hockman, CPF, FASAE: The reality is sometimes you can't fix it, and accepting that is better than trying to hang on forever, but that's not the only outcome. It goes back to communication is sitting down and seeking to understand this is a skill that is unfortunately all too absent in our society right now, and I fear getting worse.

Not better. But trying to understand different perspectives, different approaches, and see if you can't find a thread that can begin to build a bridge, a reconnection. Absent that, it's hard to make progress. It's hard to write a toxic or an unhealthy situation. And I know all of us work with folks all the time who it's broken and they're just not sure where to start on the rebuilding it.

But it's gotta start with conversation. You gotta sit down and talk. 

Mark Engle, DM FASAE: Let me build on that. 'cause I did have a personal [00:26:00] experience in this. I was this probably 20 years ago. I was CEO of an association. We had a board chair, two year terms, but you could be reelected. The first two years with this gentleman were awesome.

We were like in sync, right? It was really smooth, productive. Something happened his first year of the next term between our relationship and somewhere I failed in his eyes. I could not discern it. Luckily, I had a good relationship with the vice chair who was next in line, and we had a conversation and he was able to have a conversation with the board chair.

He came back and said, mark, sometimes relationships just unwind and you can't really explain them. And so I was able to dig in, was it an integrity issue? And he assured me it wasn't. So I'm like, alright, I might not know the answer. At least I'll be okay with the fact that it's not an integrity issue. And then actually the vice chair became the chair sooner than.

What his normal term would've been, and we had two terrific years together. Sometimes those [00:27:00] relationships just get fractured. You don't know why, as John said, you try to communicate, but sometimes it's plan B, bring in some reinforcements that are on a volunteer to volunteer basis to help, help bridge that relationship or the gap, if you will.

Joanna Pineda: You talked about the pandemic. We're now post pandemic, and now we're increasingly in an AI powered world. Have those things changed? 

Mark Engle, DM FASAE: The relationship between the CSE and the CVO Arc, I think they have the opportunity to, I don't know that we've experienced it entirely yet, so it's interesting. I was at a board meeting recently and they were making a decision that impacted one board member, and so you could see there was a motion tied to that.

So my point was, if AI had a seat at the board table, how would AI vote? They likely removed the emotion from the decision so you could make a cognitive decision, [00:28:00] which is what the CEO was desperate for, and yet. They made the emotional decision. So I think AI can play an interesting role when you consider that voice at the table.

It's really interesting 

Glenn Tecker: and there's a way to get the voice there that is, if the board and the senior staff have a habit of. Complex decisions being informed by background information, usually compiled by staff, but sometimes by staff with volunteers or staff with volunteers with outside contractors.

That background paper is the place where the insights that AI can lead you to can be presented to the group in decision making. I have had boards now we're working with where the board members will utilize AI during the conversations to look for additional information or to answer a question about something they wish they knew more about but did not, but.

Well, the other thing we are [00:29:00] finding with AI is not so much with AI as it is with the effect that the emergence and evolution of AI is having on the group's view of change. Recently, somebody authored a statement that said change itself has changed. I'm not sure about that. What I am sure about is that association leaders cannot manage change.

Not like for-profit hierarchical organizations can, they can manage through change. The reason being, they don't have the same kind of line authority with a group of volunteers that you would have in a for-profit or a public agency, for example. So understanding the necessity of developing competencies in managing through change, which is the essence of agility at the personal level, has become, in our judgment, a new necessary competency for the [00:30:00] successful CEO.

Jon Hockman, CPF, FASAE: I wanna underscore, first of all, I think we're very early days on the impact of AI on the relationship, really governance overall, but certainly the relationship between the staff and volunteer leaders. But I just came from a Breakfast of Trade association leaders where an example got brought up of a group where their staff CIO, with the board's blessing and created a persona AI persona.

To participate in the strategic planning process, and that person was a seat at the table as the board did their strategic planning work, own experiment. Lots of lessons learned, but I suspect that's not the end of that story by any stretch as that continues to get integrated, so much more to come. 

Joanna Pineda: Wow.

Gentlemen, I could talk to you for hours about this because I'm a newbie at this. I know you're busy, so I'm gonna close out with a question for you and you can answer with something professional or personal. What are you looking forward to [00:31:00] in 2026? Glenn, I'll start with you. 

Glenn Tecker: I'm looking for surviving an assault on the truth that is occurring at a national level, 

Mark Engle, DM FASAE: mark.

I'm looking forward to catching up on my reading list. To be honest with you, there's so many good publications out there today around especially collective decision making at the boards level and the role that courage has to play and should become a competency. So that'll be my research agenda for 2026.

Courage in the Boardroom. 

Joanna Pineda: Wow. John, close this out. 

Jon Hockman, CPF, FASAE: I think 2026 is gonna be a, your extreme tumult on almost every front. And so we talked a little bit earlier about a change management. I'm. Looking forward to leaning in on what I would call change readiness. 'cause you can't manage it, but how do you get ready to deal with all the turbulence that is coming?

I think that's a skill of the future and lots of juicy work to be done there. [00:32:00] 

Joanna Pineda: Gentlemen, this has been insightful and wonderful. Thank you for being on the show today. Thanks to everyone for listening to this episode of Associations NOW Presents. Join us each month as we explore key topics relevant to association professionals.

Discuss the challenges and opportunities in the field today, and highlight the significant impact associations have on the economy, the US and the world. For the full conversation, visit associations now.com. And for more information about governance, visit asaecenter.org. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

And if you have a hot topic or pressing challenge that the association community would benefit from, we'd love to hear from you. Please contact ace's Michael Ross at [email protected] to propose a thought leadership sponsorship opportunity on a future [00:33:00] episode.