Summary

IN SUMMARY

Boards are like any other team with different personalities and different responsibilities but ultimately share the same goals (or they should do).

As our session revealed, there are five key areas to address to get the best from your Board interactions and even in waking them up.

Context - what is the remit they are working to, how does your topic relate?

Language - people hear different things from a single sentence, what do you want the Board to hear?

Human dynamics - there are different personalities in the Boardroom and there are different behaviours also, how can you influence these, by feeding them, sitting the right side of them or paying attention to them.

Influencers - not all influencers are in the Boardroom itself. Non-Execs, Personal Assistants, number twos can all help get the context, language and understanding of the dynamics. Then there are the vital Boardroom members and approaching them offline and ahead of meetings to gain more than one advocate before entering a boardroom.

Approach - from corridor conversations, through setting common goals to building on previous wins, there are many ways to approach topics with the Board, even the controversial ones.

Waking up a Board using the above formulas may be less painful and less careerthreatening than it might otherwise have been.

This is a crowd-sourced orange-paper courtesy of Sullivan & Stanley. S&S wish to give its heartfelt thanks to the following contributors;

Birenda Agarwal Chris Tomlinson Adrian Dates Kevin Holian Nigel Bainsfair Ken Towning Duncan Stott Gareth Nutt Christian Tye Helen Bliss Trina Jackson Adrian Stalham Chris McLarnon Margot Daly Nigel Lemmon Jevern Partridge Adrian Alexander Adrian Wakefield