Board leadership is one of the highest-performing areas in the 2025 Boardspan Benchmark. In this year’s data, Board and Committee Leadership ranks third out of nine critical governance areas, with scores rising each year since 2023. These results reflect increasing confidence in how board chairs or lead independent directors and standing committee chairs are helping boards elevate their effectiveness and add more strategic value. 

The most effective board and committee leaders are strategic thinkers, knowledgeable about governance, skilled at culture building, and adept at chairing meetings.  They understand that they have enormous influence on board culture and intentionally model respect, integrity, and constructive inquiry, while encouraging healthy debate and shared accountability.  

These leaders work closely with the CEO and management team to shape meeting agendas with a keen sense of strategic priorities. They facilitate discussion: welcoming divergent opinions, coaxing quieter voices into the conversation, working to integrate varied perspectives into a more robust understanding of the issue at hand, and building consensus. They manage time effectively to ensure that time-sensitive discussions take place and that board decisions and committee recommendations are made as needed.  

Skillful board chairs or lead independent directors typically forge strong relationships with their CEO, yet maintain an independent perspective, setting a tone for the whole board that balances trust with appropriate oversight. At times they may informally coach individual board members or the chief executive in private conversations to diminish tensions that can arise from differing expectations or communication styles, or to help everyone understand how best to add maximum value. 

Committee leaders must, of course, bring the expertise required to oversee issues under their purview, such as fluency in financial oversight (Audit), executive compensation (Compensation), or board composition and evaluation (Nominating & Governance). They review committee charters periodically both to ensure the committee fulfills its responsibilities and to recommend changes or updates when needed. 

Board chairs (or lead independent directors) play a central role in ensuring that the board’s work is aligned with the organization’s long-term strategy. While management is responsible for formulating and executing the strategy, it is the board’s job to oversee and challenge that strategy—bringing a broader perspective, identifying risks and opportunities, and ensuring alignment with the organization’s mission and stakeholder expectations. The chair’s influence in framing discussions and guiding the board’s focus can be pivotal in keeping strategic priorities at the forefront of governance. 

Without strong leadership in this area, boards can drift into a reactive posture—spending most of their time on operational or compliance matters while strategic issues receive inconsistent attention. This imbalance can lead to missed opportunities for growth, insufficient preparation for emerging risks, and misalignment between board oversight and organizational direction. 

Best Practice: Effective board leaders ensure that strategy is not treated as an annual exercise but as a continuous thread running through the board’s agenda. They integrate strategic considerations into committee work, encourage scenario planning, and ensure that the board periodically steps back to evaluate whether decisions and priorities remain aligned with the organization’s overarching goals. 

Strong board leaders will: 

• Work with management to prioritize strategic topics in meeting agendas, ensuring sufficient time and focus on long-term value creation. 
• Encourage the board to examine strategic assumptions, test resilience against different scenarios, and explore alternative pathways. 
• Connect committee insights back to the full board so that risk, financial, and talent considerations inform strategic deliberations. 
• Prompt reflection on whether board decisions support agreed-upon strategic priorities and adapt when external conditions shift. 
• Foster a culture that balances strategic ambition with prudent oversight, keeping the organization both forward-looking and grounded. 

Board leaders help shape the agenda and set the tone in the boardroom, which gives them influence on what gets discussed and how. Board leadership that is overly confident in, intimidated by, or feels beholden to the CEO or management team, and so fails to hold them accountable, can leave the organization vulnerable.  

Allowing key performance indicators or warning signs to go unexamined can result in delayed responses to emerging threats, while unenforced accountability can lead to unchecked executive decision-making. Not only does this disempower the board, but ultimately it may bring reputational or financial harm to the organization.  

Best practice: Strong board leadership ensures that governance is not only well-intentioned, but disciplined and rigorous. Fostering a cordial and productive relationship with the CEO and other executive counterparts is essential, though maintaining independence of perspective and critical thinking is equally important.  

Strong board leaders will:  

• Role model and encourage fellow board members to ask probing questions, challenge assumptions, and offer dissenting views—creating space for independent judgment and a balanced dialogue with management.  
• Manage meetings to ensure adequate time for critical discussions and to avoid rushed or postponed decisions.  
• Preserve time for executive session, creating a constructive space for board members to have candid conversations and bring up concerns without the management team present. 

Leadership roles are always a balancing act and especially so in the boardroom, where there is a lot to accomplish in a short period of time, many voices to hear from, and consensus decision-making. It’s essential that board leaders approach this work with the intention to facilitate rather than dominate. Board leaders are most valuable when they have the self-awareness to guard against inadvertently stifle debate by presenting their preferences first, managing discussion such that dissenting views are not entertained, or using a tone that suggests that a recommended course of action is an agreed-upon decision just awaiting formal approval. Ideally, board leaders make sure “every voice is heard,” not allowing any individual to dominate the discussion or the decision-making. 

When leaders allow themselves (or a select few) to dominate discussion, meetings may feel performative, with limited opportunity for board members to challenge assumptions, highlight emerging risks, or contribute novel, out-of-the-box thinking. The result is often some form of groupthink, blind spots, and a diluted sense of accountability. Factions may form within the board when some voices are lifted up and others are disregarded.  

Ultimately, an absence of open dialogue can lead to poor decision-making, missed opportunities, and diminished board cohesion, weakening the board’s effectiveness and the organization’s strategic resilience.  

Best Practice:  Strong board leaders foster a culture where every director feels respected, informed, and heard. They understand that good governance depends not on unanimity, but on full participation and shared understanding. They don’t control discussion, and instead create an environment that encourages honest, sometimes difficult conversations, and help the board to navigate them constructively. 

When a topic surfaces competing viewpoints, a skilled chair engages the whole board in seeking common ground or determining how to close the gap in perspectives. Rather than forcing agreement or deferring the issue, the best chairs guide the board toward thoughtful resolution. They develop a sense for when to pause for reflection, when to synthesize the group’s thinking, and when to move forward decisively.  

Strong board leaders will: 

• Cultivate a non-judgmental culture of open-mindedness, curiosity, and inquiry. Invite candid conversation. Ask open-ended questions. Acknowledge differing perspectives. 
• Encourage every board member to speak.  
• Make room for insight: Sometimes the most valuable board contributions come from directors who are invited to share a contrarian view or offer a new framing of the issue. 
• Guard against any particular person’s or sub-group’s opinions being given undue weight. 
• Seek to find common ground and build consensus. 

Board and committee chairs shape how a board governs. They influence not just what gets discussed, but how, and to what end. The most effective leaders ensure that board discussions are strategically aligned, balancing near-term oversight with forward-looking vision. They foster open communication, invite diverse viewpoints, and guide the board toward thoughtful consensus without diluting accountability. By modeling integrity and maintaining independence, they help the board navigate complex risks and opportunities while staying true to the organization’s mission. 
 

The rising Board & Committee Leadership scores in the Boardspan Benchmark suggest that many boards are getting this right. Of course, leadership is not static and it will be important for boards to continue to select savvy leaders, prepare them for their roles, and hold them to a high standard that ensures the inclusive and strategic leadership that today’s governance challenges demand.