Building more collaborative CEO and board relationships may hinge on 3 factors, CEOs say

1. Building a culture of openness and ‘robust, respectful challenge’

Boards’ support of CEOs and their executive teams varies across organizations, but support can only work if there’s an openness to receiving it. “There is a perception that CEOs have all the answers, which is not true,” a former CEO of a global agriculture company from Europe says. “Good CEOs seek to generate a culture of cooperation, of openness, of questioning.”

Adds a former global technology company CEO from Asia-Pacific: “Within the enterprise, the CEO ultimately is alone. It’s very important for the CEO to have a group of people that they can connect with for different problems—some to give you a dose of resilience, some a boost to confidence, some to provide reassurance or a nudge toward the right path.”

CEOs told us they value boards that are adept at knowing when and how to ask tough questions. “Being supportive through robust, respectful challenge, when done well, is enormously helpful,” a former CEO of an Asia Pacific-based global financial services company says. “The real job is to provide robust challenge to the CEO in a respectful way. [Boards] have to be aligned around the general strategy and be supportive in the general direction we’re going. But where they can really add value is not just saying, ‘Hey, we’re supportive.’ It’s more: ‘Actually, have you thought about this? What’s the plan B if this goes wrong? Talk me through the way you’re thinking.’”

CEOs, too, can help foster productive dialogue by intentionally tapping the board for strategic input. “You come up with these plans and strategies not in a vacuum,” the former CEO of an Asia-Pacific-based global financial services company explains. “And what you really want is that constructive criticism, [where boards are] able to say, ‘Hey, this is really good, but what about this, that, and the other?’”

2. Regularly auditing board effectiveness: The onus is on boards to stay fresh

Traditionally, CEO succession—selecting the best CEO to move the company forward and then evaluating their performance—has been one of the board’s most important roles. This hasn’t changed. CEOs interviewed understand this is still one of the board’s primary responsibilities. “Management must be accountable,” one CEO of a global North American information management services company said. “I was once in a big play position where the chair said, ‘We’ve got your back.’ And I said, ‘No, you can’t because if this goes south, you have to fire me.’”

How stringently some boards turn the lens inward to audit their own performance and shore up weaknesses, however, may be less clear. In our interviews, CEOs stressed that boards should evaluate board member performance regularly to ensure they can provide the heightened level of governance many organizations need and replace directors who aren’t pulling their weight. They also echoed one of the key takeaways from the Resilience report: It’s up to individual board members to stay fresh.

The survey findings suggest the same: Nearly half of C-suite respondents (46%) ranked boards’ composition of relevant skills and experience as a top concern affecting organizational resilience, their second-highest response. 

3. Upholding the line between governance and execution

While the CEOs we spoke with value boards as sounding boards and strategic advisors, they also emphasized that it’s important to maintain clear delineation between management and governance responsibilities. “I have a good relationship with all our board members, and I reach out to them all the time,” a CEO from a global North American auto retailer says. “They can sometimes help me think through a certain issue. They’re never directive, which is good. But they’ll push on my thinking, which I appreciate.”

Board chairs surveyed for the resilience report also mentioned this distinction between management and governance, reinforcing the need for boards to find ways to be responsive without crossing the line onto management’s terrain. If the CEO or management team perceives the board as overstepping or offering too much unsolicited guidance, trust can erode quickly.

“I think boards need to kick the tires on the strategy [and] pressure-test it [by] asking questions, which helps the management team be more thoughtful,” says a CEO from a global North American information management services company. “But they need to hold the management team accountable for the strategy, which means it has to be their strategy, not your strategy. That separation of powers is really important, because if it goes wrong, the board has to be able to remove the CEO, and not themselves.” 

Quality over quantity

The CEOs told us they see significant value in deeper collaboration, particularly when boards contribute different perspectives and challenge thinking through targeted questions. These forms of engagement were viewed as especially valuable.

But we also heard that more collaboration, if not done the right way, could result in slower decision-making. Particularly, boards that prioritize risk aversion over strategic vision, or those that may not fully understand the need to move quickly, could inadvertently stifle the kind of bold leadership required in volatile markets. “Your board can be a source of fantastic support or a major problem. A dysfunctional board is really an additional challenge to the CEO,” a former CEO of a global European retailer says. “Keep a close relationship with your board, but the relationship goes both ways.”

Read the full report.