Dear PA Confidential:

The board chair sometimes asks questions about the president’s schedule or performance, and it feels like prying. I think she just wants the scoop from an insider. How can I stay loyal to the president during these conversations?

In most cases, it’s inappropriate for the president to share her calendar with anyone but direct reports who have a need to know such granular detail. This protects the confidentiality not just of the president, but those with whom he meets. So let’s take that off the table.

While the board is charged with the determining the mission of the institution and shaping the strategies to advance it, trustees invest in the president the responsibility for effectively discharging the mission. If the board chair has concerns about the president’s performance, those need to be addressed in the boardroom or, more likely, through a meeting of the board’s executive committee. In any event, they should not be channeled through you.

Time for some candid conversations. I’d start by informing the board chair you’re not comfortable sharing your immediate supervisor’s calendar in this way. You might want to indicate that if there are concerns about time management or broader performance issues, you would be happy to facilitate or participate in a visit by a consultant or reviewer appointed by the board, and would do so at the president’s direction. Keep the focus on structures. Don’t let the conversation be about a nosy person seeking scoop; it’s about the board chair acting (and being treated) like a partner in effective shared governance.

Next, talk with your president. But remember: this is not about loyalty to her! You work in the Office of the President, which has been at your institution longer than both of you and will still be there long after we’ve all retired (hopefully!). Your duty of loyalty is to ensuring the office is fulfilling its strategic role in advancing the institution – a role unlike any other on your campus.

If the board chair’s questions are scurrilous or simply noisome, then they distract from your mission fulfilment and hence detract from the office’s performance: your president needs to know. If they are well-founded, you owe it to your institution’s mission – of which the President’s Office is chief custodian – to inform the president that there are concerns regarding performance of the office and that you are ready to work with the president in exploring these issues and remediating problems as necessary.

If the board chair is ever operating in a manner that a reasonable observer would consider unethical or potentially damaging to the institution, tell the president immediately. If the president is doing so, blow the whistle loud with the human resources officer and any trusted member of the board. If anything blows up along the way, you want to make sure that you, at least, have behaved in an irreproachable manner.