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Boardrooms no longer need four walls. Increasingly, boards are governing with directors spread across cities, regions and countries — sometimes by necessity, increasingly by choice. What began as a pandemic workaround has hardened into a permanent governance option, forcing chairs and directors to confront a practical question: How do you govern well when you are not in the same room?
For governance adviser Heidi Dugan MAICD, Managing Director of Arete Group, dispersed boards are not a downgrade on traditional governance. “I see dispersed boards as a design choice, not a compromise,” she says. When directors are positioned in strategic markets — internationally, regionally or close to key stakeholders — distance can strengthen oversight, rather than dilute it.
The risk of a two-class boardroom
The risk, argues Dugan, lies in how that distance is handled. “The real challenge is the ‘two-class boardroom’ — those physically present and the director who is online.” If that divide is not actively managed, she cautions, the remote director can become a spectator, nuance gets lost and the board can slip into false alignment. Everyone thinks they agreed, but they agreed to different things.
That risk is familiar to Natalie Egleton GAICD, CEO of the Foundation for Rural & Regional Renewal (FRRR), whose board and senior leaders are geographically dispersed across Australia. In her experience, the hardest part of governing at a distance is not decision making itself, but staying connected to the organisation.
“Good directorship is about asking the right questions and that can happen as effectively online, as being in the room,” says Egleton. “When boards and executives are spread across the country, as we are at FRRR, the biggest challenge is staying truly connected to the organisation’s culture and day-to-day reality.”
Without being physically present, she notes, it is harder for directors to understand how the organisation operates, how people work and what the culture feels like on the ground. “Virtual meetings can also limit a board’s ability to build its collective ‘governance muscle’ — the depth of insight that comes from site visits, informal conversations and shared in-person experiences,” she says.
As a result, board culture inevitably shifts. Remote meetings reduce corridor conversations and informal side discussions, but they introduce new risks as well. “They carry the risk of divided attention, which can affect the quality of deliberation,” says Egleton. “An online meeting is a room and it’s important to treat it like that. Pay as much attention to the screen as you do to the room you’re in.”
Tone also becomes more important as distance increases. “When you’re physically together, directors can land a challenging question more easily because they can see the CEO or senior executive and observe their body language,” she says. “When you’re virtual, directors and staff have to spend more effort focusing on tone. It’s harder to read the room.”
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Why discipline and clarity matter more at a distance
For Dugan, this is where disciplined chairing becomes critical. She says inclusion in dispersed meetings must be treated as a governance discipline, not a courtesy. “Make the remote director real in the room,” she advises, which means deliberately drawing them in early, checking their view mid-discussion and ensuring the meeting does not fracture into side conversations or off-mic commentary.
“I’ve also found structured participation helps, particularly for big decisions,” she adds. “Don’t default to 'whoever speaks first'. Create a rhythm that invites perspectives in a deliberate sequence, including the remote director’s insights from their location, market or operating environment.”
Egleton sees the same discipline pay off in practice. “Effective engagement requires purposeful, structured meeting design to create space for real debate,” she says, including clear agendas, well-paced sessions and clarity about where input is needed.
Without that, online meetings can drift or become performative.
But not all work translates equally well to a screen. Egleton believes routine matters can often be handled efficiently online, but future-focused conversations, strategic initiatives and opportunities to connect with staff and culture are almost always stronger in person.
Decision making itself becomes more demanding when directors are dispersed. In physical rooms, chairs often rely on visual cues to test whether consensus has been reached, but online, those cues largely disappear.
“In dispersed meetings, the chair must turn decisions into visible outcomes,” says Dugan. “I always summarise decisions in plain language — what we are approving, why and what conditions apply — then I make the result explicit.” The reason, she says, is simple: “Remote directors can’t read the room, so the board has to name the room. Clarity isn’t administrative, it’s governance.”
Egleton agrees that clarity does not happen by accident. “Boards need strong summarising moments — clearly naming the decision, confirming all directors have contributed their view, outlining the rationale and identifying next steps before moving on,” she says, noting the heightened importance of high-quality minutes and timely written follow-up.
Geography adds another layer of complexity. Many FRRR directors join meetings from rural, regional or remote locations, often while travelling or dealing with unreliable connectivity. Despite this, with the right meeting structure and support, she says, their grounded, real-world perspectives significantly enrich board discussions. However, the digital divide remains a real barrier in some communities.
Both Dugan and Egleton argue for balance rather than nostalgia. “Adopt a ‘both/and’ approach,” Dugan says. Use dispersed directors strategically, but retain a proportion of face-to-face meetings, because “trust, candour and connection still compound faster face-to-face”.
“For an organisation like FRRR, which exists to strengthen remote, rural and regional Australia, we believe people who come from the regions are the best voices for the regions.”
As boards continue to operate beyond a single room, the message from both governance design and lived experience is consistent. Distance itself is not the risk. The real risk is assuming participation, understanding and alignment will simply take care of themselves, rather than being deliberately led.
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