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Power with Trust: How a Chair Leads a Board of Equals
Paperback
Series: Trust, Book 11
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Sep 16 2026
Pages: 150
Weight: 0.46
Height: 0.32 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
A board governs an organization with power. A chair governs a board with trust.
A board can hire and fire the chief executive, approve or refuse the plan, demand any document, and act by morning. But one director cannot make another prepare, speak, or vote a certain way, and the chair cannot either. The chair's job is to make both of those work at once. It is one of the finest jobs a person can be given, and almost nothing has been written about it from the chair's seat.
George W. Bickerstaff, III has sat on more than forty boards, public, private, and mission-driven, and chaired one for eight years, until the board chose his successor through a process it owned. Power With Trust is the book he wishes someone had handed him on the day he took the chair. It is written for two readers: the person who chairs a board today and wants to do it better, and the person who will chair one, whether they know it yet or not.
Twenty-five chapters, each teaching one thing from one situation the author was in. The three ways a chair can move a board of equals, and the vote he lost twice by bringing an argument to a room that needed a process. The four things a chair borrows and can be made to give back. Page one of every pre-read. The audit committee's two questions. The committee that can say no. The founder in every chair. Choosing the next chief executive through a funnel the board owns. A mission board with a lock on the front door. When the board must act, when the board divides, and how to leave. And the test only the board can score, two chairs after you.
At the back, the Working Pages: the executive sheet, the quick audit, the first hundred days as chair, an agenda that decides, the self-assessment, the skills matrix, the resignation checklist, and a letter to the next chair but one.
Plain language. No invented scenes. The aspiration is not to be remembered. It is to leave a board that no longer needs you.
Book 11 of The Trust Series. Each book stands alone.
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