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Transitioning from CEO to chair requires finding a new way to ask questions, says UNICEF Australia chair Ann Sherry AO FAICD, explaining why curiosity and empathy are essential qualities for all chairs.
When she became chair of Carnival Australia in 2016, Ann Sherry had been CEO of the cruise company for almost nine years. It was a major shift. “It took a lot of discipline not to behave like the CEO, because you’re leaving the zone where you feel like you need to have the answers,” says Sherry. “As chair, I had to find a new way of asking people the right questions – guiding them to a solution, rather than providing one. Having the answer is a habit that’s hard to let go, especially because I’d just left the CEO role to become chair.”
Sherry remained chair until 2019. Today, her roles include chancellor of the Queensland University of Technology, chair of Queensland Airports, UNICEF Australia and the Super Members Council, and non-executive director at NAB.
“It took me a while to work out the right questions to ask when I wasn’t sure we were heading in the right direction. Not saying, ‘This is the wrong path’, but instead asking, ‘Why did you choose this path?’”
During the decade she has chaired boards – and from her wide experience as a director before that – Sherry has honed her key principles to establish productive partnerships with her CEOs. “All are slightly different and I’ve learned a lot since Carnival,” she says. “The principle for me is to establish relationships first, rather than hierarchy.”
Sherry begins by having an open conversation with the CEO to explicitly discuss expectations. “Experience teaches you to be clearer,” she says. “In the beginning, there were things I assumed people would do, but I realised you can’t do that, you have to be open and clear. For me, it’s about no surprises. I don’t want to read about it in the paper; I’d prefer you told me. It’s about establishing ground rules that work for me as chair and for you as CEO.”
Leave a legacy
Sherry is now in her ninth year as chair of UNICEF Australia. “Everywhere I’ve been, I want to leave as a legacy that something changed as a result of me being involved in that organisation, big or small,” she says. “That something shifts should be the hallmark of all of us who end up in positions of power, otherwise we’re just jumping up and down on the spot and wasting everyone’s time.”
When she assumed the UNICEF chair role in 2018, she focused on how to help the charity make an impact in “a pretty crowded giving market”. She challenged management to dig in to find more insights around what the organisation could do to stand out from the crowd. “I kept asking the question and that led to us producing the first State of Australia’s Children report, so we had data to point to,” she says.
“You develop a muscle that’s about constantly challenging what you’re doing in a world that’s changing fast. The NFP space is about giving management the courage to push ambition, because most people want to do better and sometimes boards sit on top of them. I’m always interested in the ‘What if we tried something different?’ We make sure to do it in a way that doesn’t smash the organisation, but we try to step out from the pack. That really led to significant growth in support from individual giving and corporate partnerships, too.”
As head of the Office of the Status of Women in 1992, she paid particular attention to First Nations disadvantage and developed a national policy on superannuation for women. As group executive with Westpac, she fought for paid maternity leave, which led to the bank becoming the first private sector company in Australia to offer it in 1995.
“I wasn’t even CEO then,” she says. “Was it easy to do? No. Was it the right thing to do? Absolutely. And it gave Westpac an absolute kick along in the employer of choice stakes.”
Sherry is candid about her frustration with those in positions of power who don’t use it well, in particular to champion a difficult cause. “I’ve done lots of that – it’s about being true to yourself. I observe people being fearful and I think, shame on you, when there’s an opportunity to do things differently and drive change.”
Learn from the best – and the not-so
“When I was on the Sydney Airport board, David Gonski FAICDLife was chair and he has a style that gets the best out of everybody,” says Sherry. “He is supportive of the CEO in the room, but I watched him go to the CEO after the board meeting and talk through what could have been better. Many chairs theoretically have wisdom, but their style is about power. David’s power is implicit, not explicit, and a lot of authority comes from implicit power, rather than having to be seen as the most powerful person in the room. You actually get less out of people when you do that.”
Sherry adds she has learned a lot just by watching people – and by dealing with chairs who aren’t quite so good. “I had experiences as a director where the chair was didactic, the smartest person in the room, but not very good with other directors. I remember thinking, ‘When I’m sitting in that chair, I must remember how I felt watching the CEO squirm because the chair wasn’t managing the situation very well. I didn’t like it as a director, and the CEO wasn’t responding well, either.”
Always ask, what if?
The breadth of Sherry’s career in both senior management and the boardroom spans banking, tourism, sport, tech and NFPs. She trained as a radiographer before heading back to university to earn a degree in economics and politics.
To help bring the positive shifts she seeks – whether commercial or societal – Sherry is constantly asking questions. “It requires different thinking and bringing that to the broader conversations around the table.”
The more layers to the organisation, the more questions, more often. “The idea that you have a five-year strategy and plough on as though the world is static doesn’t work,” she says. “Management teams sometimes don’t think they have permission to push the boundaries, but sometimes it’s just the question, ‘What if?’ and ‘What’s changed?’
“Think about how almost everything has changed for airports in the past five years. It’s about pushing the boundaries all the time. If you’ve got people in your precinct, what can you do differently? Who would’ve thought airports would be filled with quality retail and food? The complexity of running these businesses requires organisations – and their boards – to be open to new opportunities.”
Getting to know the frontline staff and customers
The chair of Queensland Airports since 2022, Sherry loves to sit and study people.
“Sitting in an airport, watching the way people move through and how everything is handled gives you a really good sense of whether that revamped layout we just invested in is working,” she says.
She is also known for getting out on the frontline.
“All management teams want to tell the best story to their board,” she says. “I did it when I was in management and it’s not uncommon to get very sanitised material. You learn so much when you go out and talk to frontline people – including how committed they are to their jobs.”
While she sees this as essential for senior management, she notes that boards have much to gain – and vice versa – by getting closer to their staff and customers.
“Closing the gap between frontline, management and board gives teams confidence that the organisation is thinking about what they do. Boards and chairs should understand that reading the data on hundreds of spam complaints will never give you the same gist as sitting on the end of the customer phone line listening to calls,” says Sherry.
“When you hear people speaking about what’s happening to them, you feel what’s going on. You have a better chance of understanding where there should be investment, where something should change in the organisation or what questions you should ask.”
This article first appeared as 'The power of the curious chair' in the June/July 2026 Issue of Company Director Magazine.
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