Why the Chair is the Key to a Board Appointment

Regardless of what avenue you are pursuing to gain an appointment – through a recruiter, in response to an advertisement, by directly approaching an organisation or through a personal connection – the chairperson is key to whether you are appointed. It is, therefore, paramount that you understand and address the Chair’s motivations for your potential appointment. This will seem obvious to many, but it is worth pausing to consider their motivations and why. So, I am going to break it down for you.

Why is the chair key to a board appointment?

It is fundamental because they are the ultimate decision-makers who sign off on any new appointments to their board. That means they have the final say as to whether you are offered the role or not. This is right and proper. After all, their board and reputation are first on the line should your appointment not work out. 

Of course, they do not make their decision in a vacuum. A Chair must also appease various stakeholders – internal and external, board members, shareholders, clients or even the CEO and executive team – many of whom will want to be consulted and might need to provide consent before any new board appointment is made. 

A board is not like a rockpool

Consider a rockpool – like the one you might find on a headland or beside the beach. It has a fragile ecosystem that thrives on change. The tide comes in and out twice daily, delivering any number of new entities the ecosystem counts on to survive. 

Many think of chairs and their boards in a similar way, as an ecosystem that thrives on change. So when an existing board member leaves and a new member joins, it adapts accordingly and becomes stronger for it. For some boards, this might be true. However, the reality can be vastly different. There have been plenty of examples, even on high-profile boards, when following the addition of a new board member, the dynamics of that board have changed adversely, some to the extent that the board implodes. 

This is an unacceptable risk for chairs and a headache they do not need. Imagine the impact for a moment. In fighting, rolling of eyes, board members not wanting to attend meetings or extra-professional activities, NEDs resigning, new NEDs needing to be recruited – with the associated costs and time required to do so. The list probably goes on, but ultimately, the ecosystem is damaged:

• reducing the effectiveness of the board; 
• making proper governance challenging and
• most importantly, jeopardising the hard-fought reputation of the chair.

Here is the point: regardless of whether the change makes a board stronger or weaker, any potential change to a board’s composition makes a Chair extremely nervous and therefore, all candidates are considered a risk. 

So, forgive me for Australianism, but chairs do not consider their boards to be rockpools. Instead, they see themselves as a Northern Quoll and you (a potential appointee) as a cane toad.

Northern Quolls and cane toads?

In the last century, the native grey-backed cane beetle devastated northern Queensland’s cane fields. Poisonous cane toads were introduced into Australia in 1935 to control this situation. Despite best intentions, the introduction of this single entity led to plague proportions of cane toads with no natural competitors. This had a devastating effect on Australia’s native and fragile ecosystem, particularly the Northern Quoll – a cute Australian marsupial – who consumed these poisonous cane toads and died as a result.

You see, a Chair considers their board a fragile ecosystem and themselves a Northern Quoll wondering if you are a cane toad or not. Simply put, they don’t know if you are worth the risk. Understanding this will naturally help you provide the Chair a level of comfort by addressing their motivators (of which there are just 5) rather than focusing on your motivators (which are important but don’t get you appointed). Providing this comfort makes a world of difference because if they even sense that you might put them at risk, I can guarantee that you won’t be appointed. 

To get the Chair’s approval, do three things

In short, before any appointment decision is made, the Chair requires full confidence that you are not a risk to their board’s dynamic or the organisation’s future. It is, therefore, your responsibility to focus on three things during your interactions with the chair:

1. De-risking your potential appointment 
2. Separating yourself from your competitors 
3. ‘Dare them not to appoint you’.

Exactly how you implement these three things is what I am going to write about in my next few articles. Specifically, what some might consider a dry subject – research. Of all the support we offer our members, one of the most valuable things we teach them is how to conduct research. Because, when implemented properly, it will revolutionise your appointability!

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