There are lots of resources and support out there that can help you become a good director. But there's one ingredient that you have to bring to the table yourself, and that's your personal undertaking. And that's equally important whether you were pressed into putting your name forward to fill a vacant seat or you won a hotly contested election.

As a committed director you understand and take your role seriously:

• You understand that together with your fellow board members you have a responsibility for the well-being of your co-op and you are ready to meet that responsibility on behalf of the members.
• You are dependable - you go to board meetings regularly.
• You prepare for meetings and think carefully about the decisions you will be asked to make.
• You accept the importance of ethics in the role of a director.
• You are ready to meet the standard for directors set out in the various co-operative acts in Canada. These acts usually say that directors must act honestly and in good faith in the best interest of the co-op, and that they must be prudent-in other words, as we said earlier, directors have the twin duties of loyalty and care.
• You understand that directors can be personally liable in certain circumstances. To our knowledge, no co-op housing directors in Canada have been found personally liable. But you should be aware of how that could happen. For instance, directors can be personally liable for unpaid wages to employees. And there are other examples. Get some advice from your lawyer, or go to a legal clinic workshop
  put on by the sector.
• You ask questions. You look for the information you need to make sound decisions. Being a director is not a passive role where you sit back and wait for things to go wrong. A committed director is not a spectator. If you have an opinion, share it.
• You listen and keep an open mind. As a director you need to be open to new ideas that you hear from your fellow directors. That means paying attention to the discussion in the first place. So listening is an important responsibility for a director. So is keeping an open mind about what you hear. A board can bring together a range of views and experience that help us make better decisions than one person might make alone - as long as there is a commitment to sharing ideas. The whole really can be greater than the sum of the parts.

If you fit this picture then clearly you're making the commitment to good governance that a co-op needs from its directors. And you're ready to put the next good governance building block in place - training for the directors