Association leadership is a two-sided coin: the CEO on one side, the volunteer board chair on the other. By extension, of course, the leadership team includes other senior staff and the full board of directors, who together ensure that the organization serves its members and stays on course toward achieving its mission.

This month, we bring you a special package with something for both sides of that coin. This issue of Associations Now explores executive leadership—in particular, the CEO’s complex job of managing and guiding a board of directors while simultaneously reporting to them. This requires an impressive level of organizational and interpersonal savvy: A CEO needs to shift easily among roles as coach, motivator, communicator, smoother-over of conflicts, and—once decisions are made—general implementer-in-chief. This issue has insights from both veteran and newer executives on all of that and more.

Accompanying the issue is the 2019 Associations Now Board Brief: A Quick Guide to Volunteer Leadership, written directly to association board members to help orient them in their governance responsibilities. We know the professionals who serve on your board are insanely busy—leaders in the profession or industry your association serves—and the work they do for you is in addition to their day job and on their own time. The Board Brief is exactly that: a brief overview, in a series of quick reads, of the role they play and the work they’re called on to undertake during their period of board service.

Consider passing along your copy of the Board Brief to your board chair. And if you’d like to distribute it to your entire board, additional copies are available, in print or electronic form, in the ASAE Bookstore (asaecenter.org/bookstore). We hope it’s a useful tool as you work together to lead your organization in 2019. Here’s to a year of governing well.

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