Trustees as Leaders

Last week I posted (see here and here; also see Don Frick's excellent post here) about traditional organizational structure and some of its limitations. This week I'd like to spend some time on another of Robert Greenleaf's passions: trustees.

What exactly is the basic role of the trustee within an organization? In his essay The Institution as Servant, Greenleaf says this:

Part of the problem of moving our institutions along is that persons outside the institution either do not know enough to make a pertinent criticism, or the institution has its guard up and the external critics cannot penetrate it. Those inside who might be critics are sometimes suppressed by an arbitrary discipline or encumbered by loyalty and do not appreciate the importance of criticism to the health of the institution. Sometimes they do not know how to make their criticism effective. It is a major trustee role to build legitimacy by being sensitive to critical thinking from all quarters and helping to interpret the meaning of it to the internal leadership and administration. Thus the trustees should exploit their inside-outside objective position to become instruments of understanding.

Do you work in an institution that has a board of trustees? How well do they function? Are they listened to by the administration/leadership?