The Ground Has Shifted | A Governance Series | Post 4 of 6
In the last few weeks, I have been reflecting on what boards are seeing, and when they are seeing it. Behind both of those questions sits a more fundamental one.
❓ What is the quality of culture in your boardroom, and is it fit for the complexity we are navigating?
Culture in a boardroom is not a values statement on a wall. It is lived....
🔹In what gets said and what doesn't.
🔹In whom speaks and who stays quiet.
🔹In whether a concern gets airtime or gets smoothed over.
🔹In whether the chair's first instinct is to move to a decision or to stay a little longer with the question.
The chair sets that culture more than any other single factor. Not through policy or agenda, but through presence.
The chairs I have observed navigating complexity well, share something in common:
🌀 They are deeply curious.
🌀 They listen. Not just to the words but to what sits beneath them.
🌀 They notice what is not being said as much as what is.
🌀 They are comfortable naming a blind spot, acknowledging uncertainty, sitting with a question that does not yet have an answer.
🌀 They understand power. The difference between power over a room and power with a room.
🌀 They are honest about the say-do gap. The distance between the values a board espouses and the behaviours that actually show up.
Culture is not what we say it is. It is the gap between what we say and what we do. This matters more right now than it ever has.
The chair who actively tends to the human conditions in the room, as well as the governance ones, is building something more than a functional board. They are building the psychological safety that allows people (both board and management) to bring their full thinking to the table.
Some questions worth sitting with:
❓ Does the culture in your boardroom create the conditions for the most important questions to be asked, not just the most comfortable ones?
❓ Where might there be a say-do gap between the governance culture your board espouses and the one that actually exists in the room?
❓ Is curiosity in your boardroom a moment, or a practice?
