To most people, how a board of directors works as a team seems like a mystery. It is seldom in the news, and almost always behind the scenes. In fact, the principles for any functioning teams (such as sports teams, leadership teams, work teams) govern a team of board directors as well.
This article focuses on one of the most important factors for a board’s team performance – the composition of a board of directors. How to find the right fit?
To watch it as a 9-min video
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For those who have secured a board position with a “get-in by fitting-in” mentality, quite often, it doesn’t turn out to be “happily ever after”. Bear in mind that each new board member has been carefully assessed, evaluated, interviewed. All the boxes have been checked off for the required industry expertise, domain expertise, functional expertise, and specialty expertise.
There is record-high discontent among board members regarding their peers: 49% of directors want at least one director on their board to be replaced; 25% of directors want two or more board members to be replaced. This is a high-water mark, says PwC’s 2024 Annual Corporate Directors Survey.
What can be done to increase the amount of “right-fits”, on the part of both individual board candidates and the boards?
For individual candidates, a common mistake for a board search is taking a job seeker’s approach, forgetting that the fit between a board and a board member is a two-way street.
The right fit happens when your unique value propositions and your personal brand attributes match a board’s needs and culture. More than checking off a list of required functional, industry, and domain expertise, you also need to present your holistic self as standing for and grounded upon your core competencies, values, and beliefs.
You must lay the foundation with personal brand building, before even thinking about creating your LinkedIn profile, board bio, and resume.
Our 13-year experience in brand building, for both leadership personal brands and company brands, has proven again and again that only AFTER you know your unique value propositions and own your power as a value contributor (and maybe a niche-filler), can you take the next step: to align your personal brand with the company brand, and with the company board’s mission, values, and culture, in order to ensure the right fit.
To avoid the misery of ending up on a board just to be replaced, it is way better for a candidate to first do the deep diving and heavy lifting up front by decoding your own brand DNA, so you are completely and objectively in touch with yourself, your value propositions, your vision, mission, and goals. Then you need to do the research and analysis to define your narrowly focused target audience, as well as your competitive landscape.
All the above is a personal brand building process that lays the foundation for the next stage of developing your BRANDED LinkedIn profile, board bio, and resume – the manifestation and result of brand DNA decoding and brand building.
Then and only then, you can position your personal brand for the right-fitting board.
Again, taking a job seeker’s mindset for landing a board seat, or worse, acting like a color-changing chameleon just to “get in by fitting in”, is doing a disservice to both yourself and the board. You not only lose credibility, you also lose yourself.
At 10 Plus Brand, we are proud to have helped many leaders and high achievers decode their personal brand DNA with our proprietary, multi-disciplinary processes. Many of them have landed on boards or in C-suites after we have customized their LinkedIn, bio, and resume for their well-defined target audience.
Flawed assessment process of board members is to blame
According to the same PwC 2024 board survey, “Directors who don’t think their board’s assessment is an effective tool to enhance board performance are significantly more likely to be unhappy with their peers. And even when directors feel the assessment is an effective tool, nearly four in ten still believe at least one director should be replaced.”
“Directors who are more unhappy with a peer’s performance are more likely to view the assessment process as a check-the-box exercise and feel constrained from giving candid feedback that could inspire change.”
“Among directors who believe their board process is an ineffective tool to enhance board
performance, 44% attribute it to members being insufficiently invested in the process.”
“With fewer directors reporting that their boards are acting on assessment results and many believing the process doesn’t drive change, a truly effective approach to board refreshment may require directors to look beyond the assessment.” supra.
As in all teams, the board leadership (chair or lead independent director) sets the tone. Leadership needs to take responsibility for improving feedback and transparency, and hold the members accountable with actions, such as:
“When evaluating the board’s skills, the objective is to compare the current directors’ suite of attributes with those matching the company’s future. Identify any gaps and incorporate this information into a plan to move the board toward an ideal makeup, aligning expertise and experience with strategic goals and business trends.”
https://www.pwc.com/us/en/services/governance-insights-center/library/board-composition.html
10 Plus Brand and our partners offer both individual candidates and boards our objective and detached vantage point. We combine expertise and insight to ensure board candidates simplify their authentic value propositions to find the right fitting boards. We also help boards improve their onboarding assessment processes to find the right fitting board members.
Contact us for more information.
©Joanne Z. Tan all rights reserved.
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