Learning self awareness with the AICD Boardroom Mastery course

The AICD’s Boardroom Mastery course teaches self-awareness to highly experienced directors to help them become more effective in the boardroom.

Directors can increase their impact in the boardroom through self-awareness about how their behaviours are affecting board dynamics, according to Rob Newman, an organisational psychologist specialising in meeting dynamics.When boards make poor decisions, it’s usually because of group dynamics rather than poor governance skills, he says.

“It’s actually about how you bring your capabilities to the table and equally, how you respect the capabilities of others in the boardroom. People who are opinionated and domineering in boardrooms will, over time, lose credibility because they’re not giving credit and respect to their colleagues to have an equal opportunity to have their say.”

Newman is the convenor of the AICD Boardroom Mastery course, which teaches self-awareness to help directors become more effective in the boardroom. It is aimed at highly experienced directors seeking to refine their skills and deepen their understanding of boardroom dynamics under pressure.

“Self-awareness is about understanding what personality traits, behavioural patterns and value sets you bring to decision-making,” he says.

The Boardroom Mastery course operates by assembling two separate boards of participants, then putting real-world scenarios forward for each board to grapple with. Two facilitators — including organisational psychologists — are assigned to each board to provide insight to the participants on how they perform under pressure.

“Having an organisational psychologist to provide me with direct feedback over three days of simulated board meetings was very appealing, because I could get that direct feedback and also implement those strategies almost immediately,” says Belinda Loke GAICD, a director at several healthcare organisations. “It’s very challenging to navigate the pressure — and also to be making high-stakes decisions in a short amount of time with directors you don’t have a relationship with, who you’ve just met on the day.”

Loke says she is often one of the youngest directors in the room and has a tendency to listen before providing her input. She says the facilitators encouraged her to put forward her point of view earlier and to be one of the first speakers to talk, as she will often provide alternative perspectives.

Each 10-member board receives the same board packs and scenarios, but the decisions and outcomes from each board can be markedly different, which Loke says demonstrates the importance of boardroom dynamics, a chair who leads effectively and a clear agenda.

The course focuses on three behaviours that affect how directors perform.

“The first is their ability to advocate for their point of view,” says Newman. “To put forward a logic and a rationale to solve a problem, or an understanding of the problem or an articulation of the solution.

“The second behaviour pattern we’re looking for is a willingness to listen actively to the points of view of others.”

The third behaviour pattern is how a director supports the group to know where it is in the decision-making process. Is the group trying to understand the nature of the problem and attempting to articulate the potential key levers within the problem. Is it at a point where they’re starting to identify solutions?

Newman describes supporting the group as “a massively powerful facilitative technique” and a behaviour demonstrated by high-end performers.

“The key to this is that there is a balance here,” he says. “If you look at the three behaviours I talk about as the manifestations of impacts in the boardroom, then you can see that being a strong advocate can actually sometimes undermine being a strong listener.” 

Scenario role play

Participants are provided with extensive background material to read before the course, so that by the time they assemble around the board table with other participants, they’re up to speed with the company and the scenario. In this case, it’s a $1b dairy company facing a number of immediate challenges.

“They have to quickly come to grips with the nature of the problem then come up with solutions and decisions to move forward,” says Newman. “It’s that kind of rough and tumble, and the challenge they’re facing, that brings out some of the behaviour patterns we’re looking for.”

They also have to contend with making decisions with incomplete information, just as they would in real life.

Participants are observed and given feedback as the course progresses. They are also asked to rate others’ performances. Newman says when asked about who on their board had the greatest impact, the directors who display the three behaviours they are taught and balance them out are rated the highest.

Gaining self-insight is not easy and only those who are motivated will succeed.

“It’s painful, you have to face your dark side,” says Newman. “Who wants to do that? I’d rather just be who I am. People come and they’re motivated. Their main motivation in Boardroom Mastery is they want to be more impactful as a director. They want to gain respect. They want to be chairs of boards. Many are aiming towards chair careers. These are people who say, ‘I’ve got all the technical capabilities, but I’m not making the impact I want — or I want to advance it’.”

The fact that participants are driven to do the course and to change — along with results they can see in their own boards after the course — will help ensure the new behaviours stick, he says. After the course, many directors who follow the techniques find they’re receiving feedback from board colleagues that they’re doing a better job.

Pressure tested

Cameron van den Dungen GAICD, a director of bedding retailer Forty Winks, says that a week or two after the course, he was in a meeting where a volatile discussion about Gaza took place.

“There’s nothing much more political than that,” he says. “But I drew down on every single skill I learned during the course. It helped me get through a very difficult discussion and end up with a united resolution from the entire group. I was actually very proud of that, but I wouldn’t have been able to do it without having done the course.” Before completing Boardroom Mastery, van den Dungen was sceptical about how much pressure he would feel while sitting as a director of the fictional dairy company. However, he says, it accurately replicated the pressure of a real boardroom. He notes he signed up for the course because governance is crucial at his companies and he wanted to set an example for the various directors he sits on boards with. “This actually focuses more on you as an individual and how you impact good decision-making in a group environment,” he says. “It’s very, very sharp.”

Course participant Roger Chow — who sits on public sector and NFP boards — says he signed up to move beyond the technical and learn more about boardroom dynamics.

An important lesson was that before he could start to lead in the boardroom and have a broader impact, he needed to understand who he is as a director and what drives him psychologically. He found receiving blunt feedback on what he was doing in the boardroom and how it affected board dynamics to be confronting.

“Things that are very challenging can also be the most enlightening in terms of your learning and growth journey,” he says. “But it meant I could actually shape my behaviour, change and adapt it. I could try different approaches during different scenarios on different days. I found that really, really valuable.”

Directors wanting to do the course will have to demonstrate they have the requisite knowledge and experience, including: completion of the Company Directors Course and three-plus years of board experience, or five-plus years’ experience on multiple boards if they haven’t taken the course. Newman says governance is often not the problem on boards. The Banking Royal Commission revealed even boards with high-powered, experienced individuals can still make bad decisions, which relates to how directors interact and resulting collective blind spots. Indeed, people don’t attend for governance lessons.

“They want to make a difference and they’re aware that sometimes being the smartest person in the room or the most powerful isn’t actually going to make a difference to whether their board is effective or not,” says Newman.

Boardroom Mastery is an immersive three-day, application-only program that challenges experienced directors through intensive simulations, one-on-one mentoring and behavioural insights. It only runs a few times a year. The next course is in Melbourne, 25–27 February 2026. (Applications close 30 November.) Register here or call your member partner on 1300 739 119 to find out more.

This article first appeared under the headline 'Performance under pressure' in the October 2025 issue of Company Director magazine.