The artful activist chair
This article was originally published in Ethical Boardroom Magazine.
Leaders need to provoke and challenge the whole board to participate and engage as a group, to be ready for challenges ahead. But do they have the necessary skills?
The role of the chair has changed significantly over the past 10 years and now requires a set of skills that can balance the significant step change in a board’s responsibilities and reporting, embracing the challenges of widespread stakeholder lobbying across the environmental, social and governance (ESG) landscape.
Since the publication in 2011 of the UK Financial Reporting Council’s (FRC) Corporate Governance Code, sped along by the 2018 revised new Code, there is a clear expectation for the heads of boards to lead and facilitate many additional developments across board effectiveness. This enlarged role means they have needed to develop and enrich their own skills and expertise, with the capability and performance of the whole board now at the forefront of their thinking.
Professor Stanislav Shekshnia, co-director of INSEAD business school’s Leading from the Chair programme, has said: “To be effective, chairmen/women must recognise that they are not commanders but facilitators. Their role is to create the conditions under which the board can have productive group discussions. They should recognise that they are not first among equals. They are just the person responsible for making everyone on their board a good director.”
The Code revisions and their allied board effectiveness guidance have put the chairperson in the driving seat for a whole range of new and developing responsibilities and accountabilities. These growing responsibilities also chime with the international governance ‘standards’ for an effective board.
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