Boardroom Behaviours - Facilitating effective chair-director decision making

The primary aim of board meetings is to harness the wisdom of all directors and focus on the challenges facing the organisation. However, the approach taken in chairing these meetings can often be overly simplistic - directors express their views, issues are discussed until the board reaches a mutually agreeable solution and adopted as the consensus decision. While this method may have worked in the past, it can sometimes feel like a popularity contest and fails to provide a thorough analysis for critical decision making.

The Rob Newman, organisational psychologist and director panel will explore alternative approaches to standard chairing and decision-making practices, building on the collaborative problem-solving procedures used by group facilitators and mediators, covering:

The host and panel include:

• Building collaborative director relationships
• Brainstorming for the boardroom
• Social dynamics of competition and conformity
• Dealing with disagreement
• Adversarial, Consensual and Dialectical Decision Making

Adapted for board meetings, these procedures start by committing the group to a mutual purpose around a topic, they encourage the sharing of views without judgement, they build collaboration rather than competition between people, and they end by exploring disagreements rather than settling for compromises.

You can find the other topics covered in the Boardroom Behaviours webinar series here.