Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi, it's Steve Vindig at Sport Law. Leave me a message, I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Hey, Steve, it's Dina. You aren't going to believe what just came across my desk. We need to chat. Give me a call.
Welcome to the last episode of Sportopia for 2025 and a warm welcome to our listeners as we enter into 2026. We're so excited to share our knowledge and have conversations about healthy human sport.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: Today we are going to talk about the importance of governance training. We've been working hard to update governance essentials and we're thrilled to share that this comprehensive interactive elearning course is now available through our website, SportLaw CA.
This three hour self paced learning course provides your volunteer directors with the knowledge that they need to govern with confidence. But as usual, Dina, before we get into the meat of today's. I want to say pie.
I don't know why, but what's coming across your desk?
[00:01:27] Speaker B: Did you have too much pie on the weekend, Steve?
[00:01:30] Speaker A: It's always great to. I'm a big fan of pie, I won't lie.
[00:01:34] Speaker B: Really? What's your, what's your favorite?
[00:01:35] Speaker A: Oh, of course. Apple is number one.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: Apple pie. You know, I've known you for, I don't know, forever and I didn't know that apple pie was your favorite.
[00:01:43] Speaker A: We actually do birthday pies at our house rather than cake because it ranks higher than the cake.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: Well, now that I know this, do you like, like apple crisp and apple crumble?
[00:01:52] Speaker A: Oh, this is another internal family fight between Chris Crawley crumble and pie. Oh. Now, there's different opinions amongst the household, but for me it still is pie.
[00:02:02] Speaker B: Really? Okay, well, duly noted, my friend. I will remember that next time we have dinner.
So what's coming across my desk?
Coaching, coaching, coaching. I am doing a ton of coaching with leaders, with sport coaches and with people who've been put in the penalty box, Steve.
So what I'm happy about is leaders are coming to me for guidance and just a listening ear because as you know, many of the leaders right now it's hard to be a leader in sport and they're really struggling with some heavy decisions and they don't want to go to their board yet with it. So they need a thinking partner. So I'm doing that kind of work with sport leaders, with coaches.
Some of the coaches are now coming to us for additional support when it comes to how do I sure that my athletes understand my communication style and what are some of the ways in which we can get closer to athletes and have athletes work better together. And so Nova Profile is our go to tool, as you know.
But the coaches are now wanting additional support to understand the dynamics and to really understand themselves and their needs and how they can grow their presence muscles. So I'm doing some work with the coaches that way. And then of course, some of our team members, I'm thinking of Loren in particular, we get hired to do courageous conversations.
So these are people who've been put in the penalty box. They've had an oops moment, you know, a human moment. And the leaders or the board, instead of having lawyers, you know, deal with the situation, they're trying to find an alternative solution.
So we're now their back pocket alternative solution. And I'd like to say that we're, we're close to batting a thousand because people, once they have someone who's listening to them, they feel that they're not being attacked. They're trying to be understood and then they have time to digest their way of looking at something and they can expand their capacity to be a bit more skillful and compassionate with themselves and others.
More of those kind of conversations are coming across my desk, and I'm really grateful because it's the kind of work I feel like I've been building to do more intentionally these days. So for listeners who are curious about that, please reach out. What about you, Steve? What's on your desk? You said you were going to surprise me with it.
[00:04:27] Speaker A: Well, because I don't want to talk about anything. I'm so excited, Dina, that as we are recording this, this last, this last podcast for 2025, we're very close to the holiday break, and I'm just excited to get through the week, finish up whatever has to be done for 2025 and shut off.
Okay, A week or two. And, and it's the first time that my family and I will be home for the holidays. We usually take a, a Christmas or Hanukkah vacation during this time this year. We are not. And I'm just excited to finish up, refresh for 2026, you know, have these little one off days of being around the city of skating, tobogganing, movie marathons, you know, try maybe bake a pie, right? Like I have a good recipe.
So I don't want to talk about anything. I want to get through this week, finish my 2026 obligation, 2025 obligations, and, and look forward to 2026 with a, with a fresh set of eyes.
[00:05:34] Speaker B: I'm really happy for you. Because you usually, you know, you're three feet off the ground busy hammering out all of these things. So the fact that you can ease into, you know, our collective holiday season really makes me happy, so. Well, that's great. Oh, very good, Steve. So Essentials, you know, this is something that's near and dear to our hearts. We've been very excited about the refresh. So as we know, it's, it's been grueling work if you're a director these days, it's been so hard. So tell us more about, you know, what you're thinking about, Steve, with respect to Governance Essentials.
[00:06:13] Speaker A: You know, again, this was one of those things, Dina, that you came to me years ago.
[00:06:18] Speaker B: Oh, here we go.
[00:06:19] Speaker A: Right, exactly. Governance Essential has, you know, now been in existence for almost four years.
And I'll say five years ago you came to me and said, hey, what about this idea?
And of course I was 50, 50 on it. But you know, of course going through the process, creating it with you and in partnership with the CCS and when it was originally created was, was refreshing. It was an opportunity I saw. And you saw where directors could learn about what it means to be a director. What am I getting into? And as you know, we routinely do a lot of in person board trainings, which we'll continue to do. And when I do it, I always of course ask, tell me about yourself, your name and your occupation and why do you want to be here.
And people will always give different, different reasons. My kid plays, I played.
My favorite answer is, well, I'd like to give back to the association. I'm conflict free. My kids are out of the system.
So I think it's really important that we be able to one, understand our responsibilities as a volunteer, the legal responsibilities of being a director, and then also understanding some of the nuances of being a director, the potential conflicts of being a director or the conflict between operations and governance and understanding the roles that people want. Sometimes I always say, I say this jokingly but with some truth. I've always said being a director is boring. Unless you like strategic planning, budgets, policy development, oversight.
If you want to Talk about the U13 rep tournament next weekend and who's playing who and what time of the games, we would of course view that as operational and that's really not necessarily for a board conversation. Now of course, recognizing boards and organizations can be very small where you have multiple hats of operations and governance. But for larger, mid sized to larger organizations, you should be able to draw a distinction between operations and governance. So I like the fact that we can hopefully educate people as to their responsibilities as a director, their legal obligations or liabilities that exist, and then starting to be able to speak the same language because there is no such thing as governance police. If you, if you, Dina, if you and I are on a board and you want to talk about the rep tournament or where we're going to put signs for marketing or what are web domains going to be, I usually tend to start banging my head a little bit on the table because that would be our operational staff's responsibility or operational committee's responsibility and not necessarily a board responsibility. And the way we set our agendas, the way we allow conversation to occur, is going to dictate how we govern.
And I like that. If we're educated on what we should be talking about or what we shouldn't be talking about, we end up policing each other.
[00:09:32] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a really good overview, Steve. And I remember right alongside that conversation we had five years ago, one of the big things that you and I care about is sustainability. And also we were busy traveling across the country.
This is pre Covid right when we were originally starting to think about this. And what we realized is there were just too much demand and only the two of us the shop at the time that was doing this more specialized governance work.
So in reality we were thinking, not that we wanted to work ourselves out of a job, but we recognize that the kind of quality conversations that we really wanted to have with directors, whether it was clubs, PTs or national level organizations, we weren't able to have because they didn't have a shared understanding, kind of like baseline knowledge of what their fundamental roles were. And so it became, sometimes there were heated discussions that people were, they thought they were philosophically opposed, but they actually weren't. They just didn't have the shared definitions.
So for me, governance essentials, when I look back over my 35 plus years in the sector, in the early days of governance, you know, remember a board of 15, 20, 25 was common, right. When we think back to the early days where all these volunteers were coming in and we needed bigger boards because then there were a lot more committees and we had less staff. But as sport has become more professionalized and we have professional staff with professional experience and often multiple degrees, what we need from the volunteers is a different kind of contribution.
And that's been hard, right, for some of the directors who've been kind of, I don't know, grappling with, well, my role and what my comfort zone is because Most of the directors, their comfort zone is color of jerseys and. Or, you know, give me a. Give me some. A project that I can sink my teeth into.
[00:11:40] Speaker A: Well, as you said, Dino, for. For the last, you know, couple decades, and working with boards and learning. Learning about them and meeting people and. And what their motivations are. I've heard multiple things over and over again. And. And back, as you alluded to, the boards were 15 to 25, was, we use the word representation.
And. And that's a word I want to strike out of governance, because we don't represent one entity. We don't represent officials. We don't represent the players, we don't represent parents. We represent all of them at the same time. And. And sometimes that mentality, depending on a board member's philosophy, can be difficult to govern because I'm here representing my region, my province, my territory, my sector. And if you try to represent everybody in sport, it's just not possible. It's just not possible. And I could list all the different subcategories, but it's endless. So I want to ban the word representation.
And then again, throughout the years, when I meet people, you know, why do you want to be a board member? Well, I want the U12 team to be successful.
And I always kind of challenge. People say, well, you're at the wrong table. You should be at the operational table, either as the rec coordinator or a rep committee or whatever.
And there's this one guy I remember, it was just a couple years ago. We were again talking about what the board should be doing and what the staff should be doing and then whatever volunteer committee should be doing. And this one person on the call said, well, why would I volunteer my time if I don't get a vote?
And one of the other board members spoke up and said, I hate being on the board.
I don't. I don't want to talk about budgets and strap plans and events. I want to coach. I want to teach kids.
And I always thought that was like a very simple conversation, but an absolute breakthrough in the philosophy going, yes, let me find the place where you can thrive and do the things that you don't want to do. And, Dina, you and I talk about this all the time.
To write a comms report will take you 15 minutes. For me to do it. It'll take four hours.
Putting people into positions of strength, it's easy.
It's easier.
[00:14:06] Speaker B: Well, it's true. It's what Jim Collins says, you know, the bus. So if the bus is the mission of the organization, we Want to get people on the bus who are going to help us really fulfill the mission of the organization.
The vision is, where is the bus heading to? And the values are, how do we want to behave in this bus? But then the seats of the bus is, well, do we have paid staff? Well, here is the section of the bus that's for staff. And then we have volunteers, right? Here's the section for all the volunteers who can. Worker bees who can actually do the work. But then the section of the. Of the bus who's for the volunteers?
Board of directors. It's usually like, a few seats, and they're very specialized seats. So do you. What kind of skill set do you bring? Are you a lawyer? Are you an accountant? Are you a professional communicator? Right. Are you a risk manager? Like, tell us what your background, profession is, and more importantly, why do you actually want to serve the organization in this seat? Right? And you don't need an army of them, you just need a few of them so they can stay focused on that separation between the members who are here to serve and then the objects of the organization. Where are we going? Does that make sense?
[00:15:20] Speaker A: Oh, totally, Dina. There's two things that come to mind. One is an old way of thinking about governance is, well, you have to be a member.
Your kid has to be involved. You have to be involved to be on the board.
And that's not true. We want, as you alluded to, we want people with skill sets. And I remember being in agm, it was. It was quite a while ago where this one individual stood up and he introduced himself, and he was a lawyer, and he had the backing of his firm to support the organization, and he was going to provide pro bono legal services. And I'm like, wow, this guy's great. And he seems really articulate and very knowledgeable. And the election happens, and he doesn't get in.
And I looked at the executive director, I said, you know, how did Mr. Smith not get in? And they're like, well, he's not a sport guy. He's not a basketball guy. He's not a volleyball guy. He's not a swim guy. I'm like, but wait, you have 11 people who are volleyball guys or basketball guys. What about this guy who can help you with all the other stuff? And I do think and hope governance essentials can open people's minds to say, you don't have to have knowledge in baseball to be on a baseball board. And I kind of toot, you know, our people all the time. I'm not saying we want to be board members for our, our client base, but, you know, I don't know a lot about cricket, but I think I would be a good board member in supporting them with their governance and their, and their law and contracts and all the other legal components that come with that. So one is I want to see people hopefully open up their pool of volunteers or potential board members a little bit higher.
And then a couple other little tools that I love, Dina. One, remove the word me, I and my from board conversations.
It will absolutely change the context of conversations that occur at the board level.
And two, and I can't stress this enough, nominations, nomination committees take the time to interview people, to meet them, see if their personality and their values align with your organization, see what areas they want to contribute to. Is it policy, governance.
But if it's running the tournament again, is that, is that the place for them on, on the board and I, we've done it tens of times for clients and we get resumes and you read the resume and you're like, wow, Dina's great. And, and then you kind of meet that person and recognize their personality or values are not in line with what we're trying to achieve. And, and I would rather organization discover that prior to elections than after that person's been voted in for a three year term.
[00:18:03] Speaker B: Yeah, let's stay, let's down the nominations committee because I think this is going to be for some listeners, a little bit newer, maybe novel, around the importance of nomination committees. And Steve, this was something that when you and I traveled across the country with the HOPE Tour, we spent a lot of time educating people on nominations committee. But just as an aside, when you started talking about your little story, you know, about the guy who had all these criteria, I thought you were going to tell the story of, you know, there's this great candidate and she steps forward and she speaks about why she wants to serve and she has all the criteria and the responsibilities and she's not a member. And then a member stands up and he turns to everyone and he says.
[00:18:46] Speaker A: You all know me, you all know me.
[00:18:50] Speaker B: So we have these, you know, the risk of sport is our passion gets in the way. Sometimes our relationships get in the way. We feel like we owe each other loyalty. And we have to remember as fiduciaries, our loyalty has to be to the organization, not to ourselves, not to our values. I mean, we'll talk a little bit about that or if we have attachment to our team or our children or other organizations, we have to really Step up and be fiduciaries of the organization.
So back to the importance of nominations committees.
Some of the things that we feel are really important is that you strike a committee and the committee can be a standing committee, but only really alive when you need it. Right. And we would recommend what about a year before that committee is meeting to look at resumes, call references. We can't say enough about that. Right. That we're looking for a broad skill base based on the current slate of directors and then the new ones who are all the ones that have to leave. And so what are you doing? And then we want it to align also with the strategic plan of the organization.
And hopefully you're bringing in people that, whose skill sets will help you kind of realize your, your purpose. Right. Your vision. What else might we be looking for, Steve, like considerations for the nomination committee or the nomination process? Anything else we should share?
[00:20:17] Speaker A: Oh, I mean, at minimum there's the legal requirements. You know, you have to be over 18, you have to be an individual, you have to have a sound mind. And that's based on a legal principle, not of people's other alternate opinions of somebody. You can't be in the status of bankruptcy. You know, those are the minimum things. Usually we would ask for a police record check or a vulnerable sucker check to make sure that's clear.
And then for me, I like to just first and foremost get to know the individual. Tell me about yourself and your, your involvement in life and then transition that to sport. And again, I'm really trying to sense, get a sense of who that person is and then dive into. How do you see yourself fitting into this board as well as educating them, Dina? And saying, look, this is the commitment that you're putting yourself into. We meet every Monday. Can you meet every Monday or every fourth Monday or.
And we're going to ask you to volunteer probably four hours a week because not only are we a governing board, we do run the canteen on, on the weekends. So can you do that? So it's a, it's a bit of a two way street trying to learn about the candidate, but also trying to express the, their, the expectations that we would have of that individual.
And then I always love in a nominations process, don't be afraid to tell people what you're looking for. We're looking for a diverse person. We're looking for somebody with governance expertise. We're looking for somebody with fundraising expertise.
People ask us all the time, you know, what's your perfect board?
My, I said a couple words. I don't like hearing at the board table me, I, my, what are the. One of my favorite words is flexibility.
So how big is the board? Well, here in Ontario particularly, and even at the federal level, you can have a min and a max. So we can say we're going to be five to nine. I think that's the sweet spot we have. We can also have flexibility on terms up to four years without being re elected. So I like three year terms. And I say this jokingly, but again with some truth.
First year you know nothing. Second year you figure it out. Third year you might get something done.
So I like three year terms, but I also like having everybody elected as a director, period.
When we have the first board meeting, we will assign portfolios based on people's skill sets and desires.
And again, you mentioned it. Sometimes it becomes a popularity contest. I don't want somebody without financial acumen being the treasurer.
I would like, I would like the, hopefully the board to have the common sense to put the right person into that role. But going back to my recruitment, if I know out of my nine directors, I'm losing my finance person who's done their three year term and is moving on.
Don't be afraid to say we're looking for a director with financial experience. Go out and ask for what you're looking for and I'll, I can go on this forever, Dina. But one more, I'll say one more thing is go outside of your circles, post on Cirque that you're looking for a director. I've had, we've had clients go to the National Post, the Globe and Mail.
Go broad. Because if you only look within the, the members that you have or the registrants or parents of the people that play your sport, you have a limited po.
And as I said, you likely have enough people who know your sport but may not know about marketing or fundraising or all the other things we have to tackle to be a successful organization.
[00:23:55] Speaker B: I so appreciate that, Steve. It reminds me, I was asked, so I, I've been asked by many sport boards to join and because of our commitment to serve without conflict or to the extent possible in sport, we just none of us serve as directors in sport. We serve different ways. You know, I coached my children's soccer teams and I served as, you know, coach, like a leadership coach to some of the different sport organizations as a volunteer. So I think knowing that is really helpful. So, you know, as we wind down our, our time together, you know, let's get more pragmatic about the course. Right. The who, what, where, when, why and how.
So the course is available through our website, as you said, At SportLaw CA, we have a sliding scale price structure. So if you only need one course, you're gonna pay, I think it's under 50 bucks for the three hour session. But if you need like if you have a slate of directors and you want to ensure that all of them are educated, which we would recommend and include your senior staff. Heck, I think if you've got a small, most sport organizations have less than 10 staff. So it's a great opportunity to ensure your frontline staff, your coordinators are also educated in the essentials around good governance. It's a great opportunity. And then if you have more than 50, 60, if you're a national sport organization and you want to ensure that all of your provincial and clubs are educated, then we have extra special costs for that. The mechanics of the course are really simple. It's really, it's a virtual learning environment. It's self paced so you can join when you want and then maybe target it. There's only five core curriculums and then an introduction to kind of set the scene around your personal values, that of the organization. And the reason we start with values, Steve, is because we've noticed and this is entrenched in literature, good governance literature, as well as leadership literature. If you don't, in the early stages of forming a group, really cemented around shared beliefs, it really exposes you to all kinds of unnecessary risk. So we advise people to get really clear about what their personal values are.
And then we cover all kinds of topics, many of which Steve and I have talked about today. Right. So nominations. We've talked about good communications, we talked about risk management, we talk about different structures, different board structures, and then we give you some case studies as well that are actually real scenarios that we've had to support our clients through. And then we conclude with a call to action. Our invitation. Steve and I had a dream. The dream would be that every single director in the country must not should, but must ensure that their directors above being the age of majority and not insane. And all the other things that are a baseline that they show some form of proof of education.
It can be our course, ours is sport specific, or you can go online and take other governance courses.
And we think that if we do that, we're going to elevate the capacity of sport to fulfill its full potential and to minimize harm to participants. Anything else that you want to add, Steve about?
[00:27:23] Speaker A: I just love Dina, that at minimum it gives us all the same foundation says at the be. I said at the beginning of the podcast, there's no governance police to knock on the door and say, why are you talking about this event when you have 19 staff looking after it? You know, why aren't you talking about, you know, the new hiring practices that were just implemented in 2026, or what about how's their policy review? And we've talked about this before. You know, running a sport org now requires somewhere between 20 and 30 policies.
If we look at two of them every year, that's a 10 to 20 year transition before we get around to it. So, you know, I, I recognize that being a director and talking about the things, that foundational piece is maybe not what we all think is exciting, but it's, that's, it's so necessary.
And again, giving us the foundational education language, shared understanding of what we're supposed to be doing as directors, that's really the foundation of Governance Essentials is to, is to have that baseline. So I, I really like it from that purpose. And then hopefully it allows organizations to understand I've got staff who are managing operations and I've got board who's managing my governance. Now, yes, again, there might be a little crossover depending on the size of the organizations, but if I focus and we're not doing the same thing twice, what the sport is infamous for, that's really. I just see that as success.
[00:28:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I completely agree. And I would offer, you know, the Governance Essentials.
The design of this really was an invitation to help to first minimize risk and then to increase effectiveness towards the organization's full mission. So our hope is that people who are listening become inspired to check it out. And really the audience for this primarily was clubs, right? Because the clubs, these are people that aren't serving maybe at the national level, maybe it's their first time serving.
So that really was the design of this. But as with anything, in order for a national sport organization to walk the talk, it's been our experience and we have testimonials now because we have five, you know, close to five years of people taking the course. And we designed it with people, right? We went to a whole bunch of different volunteer directors with sport organizations that said, hey, can you beta test this for us? So we feel really confident in the quality of the, of the information. And we would say to NSO partners, have your board take this. Chances are there's something new that you have, you will discover by, by taking the course. And hopefully it enriches the quality of the conversation that you're having as directors. That's the intent. Right.
So thanks, Steve. Any last words about Governance Essentials?
[00:30:14] Speaker A: Yeah, just take the time. You can do it in pieces. You don't have to do it in one session. Again, I think it's important that your, your entire board take it to have that same common understanding. You know, take your time over the holidays, you find three hours, maybe in three one hour blocks. But yeah, we really, really recommend it for those, for, for all board members. Even now, Dino, even with Governance Essential still being live for four or five years now, we're still getting requests to do one on one trainings with organizations that, and that still exists. There is of course value and, and having dialogue. But we still always recommend creating that foundational piece and understanding through Governance Essentials. So thank you Dina for today.
It is just before the holidays. Happy holidays. Looking forward to relaxing in 2026.
[00:31:07] Speaker B: And eating apple pie.
[00:31:08] Speaker A: And eating apple pie. So in the episode notes below, you'll find some sport law blogs where you can find more information related to our conversation today.
Thank you so much to our listeners. We are grateful to share our vision of Sportopia with you and to elevate sport.
[00:31:25] Speaker B: Happy holidays as always to have your say in Sportopia. Email us at helloportlaw ca to let us know what you want to hear about next. We hope you had a wonderful holiday season and we look forward to connecting with you early in the new year. Thank you so much.
[00:31:48] Speaker A: It.
