Executive Officers (EOs) who are new to the association occasionally ask if CHBA has a formal mentoring program in place for association staff leaders. A formal mentoring program has been explored, but in working with the EOs, it has been concluded that a variety of options that can serve as informal mentoring are a better solution for HBA EOs, and to that end, there is lots of informal mentoring support available. In practice, EOs are often looking to connect with someone who has first-hand knowledge and experience with the subject matter at hand, which usually can’t be found with any one contact. Depending on the issue, it’s also helpful to connect with EOs based on geographic location (whether it’s looking for someone in the same area, or intentionally seeking out ideas from further afield), or based on similar HBA size. The success of mentoring also largely depends on feeling comfortable speaking frankly together, which is impossible to determine in advance of meeting. Given all those factors, CHBA provides a suite of informal EO mentoring solutions, helping to enable EOs to connect through a variety of ways according to their priorities and preferences, which the information below explains.

Executive Officers' Council (EOC)

EOC Professional Development Forum

Held in a different location each year, the EOC Professional Development Forum (PDF) brings together Executive Officers and HBA staff from across the country for two and a half days to learn the latest techniques and skills for building and maintaining a strong and effective association. 

As EOs who have attended always attest, the PDF is the premier opportunity for EOs and HBA staff to get together and share ideas, best practices, and new initiatives that strengthen their own HBAs and the association as a whole. A big value of membership in the association is networking, and this is no different for EOs and staff of our HBAs. The PDF provides both key educational content and the venue for EOs to build their relationships with each other, so that all can be more effective back home. The ability to reach out to colleagues across the country throughout the year makes every EO more effective, and the annual PDF is an important building block for that. All HBAs, no matter what their size, are encouraged to prioritize sending their EO to the PDF each year. Bursaries are available to those who have financial barriers to attending. CHBA also has letters to send from the CHBA president to HBA Boards who may be questioning the value of sending an EO to the PDF – sending their EO to the PDF is one of the best investments an HBA Board can make. This event is excellent for meeting people and figuring out who you’d like to go to for different questions.  

Eo connect

The EO Connect tool on the CHBA website was designed to help EOs quickly and easily find relevant contacts to connect with. It is essentially a database of EOs and HBAs, and allows you to filter based on province, HBA size, HBA services/events offered to members, HBA staff count, length of EO tenure, and more. So, for example, if you are looking to talk to other EOs about how to implement or improve a home show, you can search to see who already has a home show. Or, if you have operational challenges due to being the only staff person, you can connect with other EOs who are also one-person operations to learn their strategies and bounce ideas off of each other.  

It may be helpful to familiarize yourself with other EOs/HBAs through EO Connect to figure out who you’re interested in meeting at an in-person event, whether to see if you’re a good fit for each other, or to dive right into the conversation.  

Quick e-mail - all eos

Sometimes EOs just don’t know who to ask, or want to ask all other EOs.  To that end, for EOs looking to quickly reach EOs across the country via email, CHBA has a simple button (that only HBA staff can access) to do just that on the CHBA website. EOs can just click the button on the “Quick E-Mail – All EOs” webpage to create an email to all EOs. The distribution list is synched with CHBA's database and should always be up to date. (If you ever see any out of date information, please let us know.) 

CHBA staff

When in doubt, contact the CHBA National Office via eoc@chba.ca! We’re here to support you and facilitate information exchange, and can help point you in the right direction, whether it’s answering your questions directly or suggesting who your next stop should be, either within the national office or elsewhere.  

You can find the full directory of CHBA staff here. If you know who you need to connect with, feel free to contact any staff member directly. We’re happy to help out!