You may have heard about the abrupt and somewhat controversial firing of Philadelphia Art Museum director and CEO Sasha Suda back in November. Recently Philadelphia Magazine published a long article revealing many more details surrounding that event.

Other than finding out what the heck the story was behind all that, the article reveals a lot about dynamics between large, high-powered boards of directors and the leadership teams of large cultural organizations. It also illustrates the type of leadership board chairs are expected to exhibit.

On one hand, the article depicts a board chair who is quite overbearing and controlling and wields influence even after they have left that role. At the same time, there is also a suggestion that the board chair that replaced her lacked some of the qualifications required of the role.

The article also illustrates communications within the board. As might be expected with 70 members on the full board, there were many that were disengaged from organizational governance and keeping abreast of the situation.

But there was one instance where a sensitive personnel matter couldn’t be fully described in a meeting agenda so Suda expected the board chair to engage in back channel conversations to make the members aware of what was going to be discussed. When that didn’t happen, many on the board felt blindsided. In fact, that also seemed to be the case with Suda’s firing where some board members seemed unaware that was in the works even though Suda had some indications in weeks prior.

In many respects the whole incident is something of a cautionary tale about destructive board-leadership relationship dynamics. There are lessons to be derived about how things could have been done better. The article also provides some insight into how boards are generally expected to operate in normal, very mundane, operating conditions.