The Effective Board Chair: What the Role Really Requires
The Effective Board Chair: What the Role Really Requires
David Beatty’s Masterclass & Book Launch | December 14th
What separates an effective board chair from a productive CEO or C-suite executive?
Many new chairs arrive in the role after accomplishing successful careers as CEOs and senior executives. These were careers built around making decisions, setting direction and leading from the front.
However, a chair’s job requires the opposite instinct because the best chairs make no sound. Like a conductor, their effectiveness is measured less by their own performance than by their ability to bring out the best in everyone around them.
The chair leads the board, not the company. The chair’s job is to create the conditions in which every director can make a better contribution to the board as a whole: drawing out different points of view, focusing the agenda on issues that matter, demanding better information, building an effective relationship with the CEO, and ensuring the board is prepared when the organization faces its most consequential decisions.
In this 60-minute Boardchair session, taking place December 14 at 12:00 PM EST, David Beatty will unpack the practical lessons from his new booklet, The Effective Board Chair.
We will answer the following questions that define the job:
- What must a new chair accomplish in the first 100 days?
- How does the chair build trust with their CEO without becoming too close?
- How does the chair maximize board meetings to address key issues?
- When should the chair speak and when should they deliberately remain silent?
- How should boards approach CEO succession and leadership crises?
- What policy should a board develop for their company's AI oversight?
David will also return to his four Compass Points of Good Governance—People, Agenda, Briefings and Structure—and examine the chair’s responsibility for ensuring they all work as a coherent system.
This session is designed for current and aspiring board chairs, directors, governance committee members and CEOs who seek a practical framework for making their boards more effective.
Registration & Booklet
Get the book: The Effective Board Chair
Go deeper on the ideas from this event with David Beatty’s practical guide. Purchase it for you or your board colleagues. Reach out if you would like to get customized copies for your entire board or have David brief your board on the topic.
Location: Zoom link provided upon registration. Sign up now.
We look forward to welcoming you and your colleagues to this event!
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Speaker Highlights
Decoding Generative AI, Augmentation Age
David's welcome message to AI Tsunami.
David R. Beatty, C.M., O.B.E., F.ICD, CFA
David R. Beatty C.M., O.B.E., F.ICD, CFA, is the Founding Chair of the David & Sharon Johnston Center for Corporate Governance Innovation and Professor Emeritus of Strategy at Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto.
One of the world’s most experienced corporate directors and educators, David has served as a Director on 40 boards in Canada, America, Mexico, Australia and England and been chairman of 9 public and 2 private companies.
He was the founding Managing Director of the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance (2003-2007), an organization that today represents 50 institutional investors with ~$3 trillion of assets under management (AUM).
In 2004, he helped create and still helps oversee the Canadian Directors’ Education Program with the Institute of Corporate Directors (ICD), a rigorous 12-day course that has now graduated over 8,000 senior Canadian entrepreneurs, directors, and family office members. Upon graduation and the completion of both an online examination and then a simulated Board meeting, a post-nominal is bestowed – the ICD.D. David was made a Fellow of the ICD- the F.ICD – in 2012.
Overseas, he has taught in dozens of other jurisdictions. For example, From 2010 until 2017, he created and led the Directors Education Program for Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest company headquartered in Dammam, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
In 1994, he was made an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (O.B.E.) by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace for his services to Papua New Guinea. In Papua New Guinea, he was the principal economic architect for Independence in 1975. He was subsequently presented with the 30-year independence medal.
In 2012, he was awarded a Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee medal for his contributions to Canadian mining. In 2013, he was inducted into the Order of Canada (C.M.), the nation’s highest civilian honor. The only recipient ever to be cited for his work on Canadian Corporate governance.
In 2018, he was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN) a grouping of global asset managers with AUMs ~$50 trillion in 47 nations. He was only the third Canadian to be so recognised.
Our Hosts
David R. Beatty, C.M., O.B.E., F.ICD, CFA
One of the world’s most experienced corporate directors and educators, David has served as a Director on 40 boards in Canada, America, Mexico, Australia and England and been chairman of 9 public and 2 private companies.
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