I have met and worked with a lot of well-meaning board directors and executives in my time, and for the most part they’re an intellectually curious, astute and reliable sort. However from time to time you come across those who rather curiously have chosen to wing their way through their respective tenures instead. For some, that behaviour stems from a vague, unstructured modus operandi, and for others - particularly in the charity and social enterprise space with heightened emotional investment on the part of founders - a fierce resistance to criticism. This article proposes an accessible and reliable means to develop a skill, enhance knowledge and through practice, hopefully enable a competency uplift across the board. Excuse the pun.

It goes without saying that board directors and executives have a lot on their plates. They may be exploring how to operate in an evolving strategic and operational environment - for example, with increased regulatory & client input pressures in the aged care space, or with a completely overturned semi-allocated market like that for employment services under the Workforce Australia program (formerly known as Jobactive); which left even sizeable, largely successful operators subject to significant loss of business practically overnight. And while this Insights article cannot hope to prescribe a magic bullet solution to firm survivability into the long term, one of the most helpful recommendations I like to make to directors and executives is to think critically and read widely, as this practice can provide a valuable resource for new ideas, strategies, and perspectives.

New information as a check-and-balance mechanism

When under pressure, human beings can be fickle creatures and may resort to instinctive biases their decision making called “decision traps”. In a 2016 study, Rongjun Yu of the National University of Singapore observed that in periods of prolonged stress individuals are much less likely to closely consider and examine their responses to a threatening environment, and may also exhibit prosocial behaviours (such as an over-eagerness to please others) which in a boardroom context may translate to an ill-considered, very selective, unduly accommodative and/or defensive, fractious dialogue between a board and its executive management team. That dysfunction if left unchecked may be very costly to the relationship dynamic shared between the two groups and thus I argue that being open to and inviting of critical feedback, even in periods of high stress can be hugely beneficial as a communicator or recipient of information - even if it doesn’t immediately feel that way at the time. Why?

• It respects the board’s stewardship responsibility;

• It provides boards and management teams the opportunity to communicate, consume, clarify and assimilate information in real-time; and

• evidences rigorous debate on the part of the board and in turn, provides a better foundation for strategic decision-making.

If you are a contemporary, high-performing director or executive, chances are that information is a constant in your life. Accounting for officeholder or committee chair responsibilities, some directors are often inundated with information from emails, phone calls, meetings, and reports; not to mention what non-executive directors may consume in their day jobs. This continuous information consumption-assimilation-exchange loop likely shortens in the event of a significant commercial activity (for example, a proposed merger or acquisition), macro-environmental shock (pandemics, natural disasters, and/or political instability) or where there is a heightened risk of enterprise failure (approaching insolvency, administration or exit); the all-absorbing nature of which can make it easy to miss out on new ideas or opportunities. I challenge all readers of this article to do two things: first, carefully evaluate your time commitments and consider whether you continue to add value across that span of exploits, and secondly, where possible - read widely.

Reading as a filter

Reading widely - aside from its evident self care benefits - allows you to expand your cognitive horizons beyond what you already know and gives you access to a plethora of new information to sharpen your critical decision-making lenses. These learnings can help broaden or rationalise your understanding of the challenges facing your organisation and give you fresh perspectives on how to address them. For example, in both news and social media circles you will likely have heard of ChatGPT and the fear that it will replace jobs. Reading more extensively into the AI platform and its inherent limitations will tell you it can add capacity to working humans, sure, but it lacks the critical judgement abilities necessary to write anything sophisticated, or of any real commercial worth. Any journalistic application of the technology still requires measurable user & editorial review and most of its paralegal research output is plainly wrong, not to mention it:

1. invents references such as scholarly articles, scientific studies and legal case names on the spot; and

2. may break down completely when you ask it to perform anything more than a regurgitative effort, like when I asked it to critique some recent Australian Administrative Appeals Tribunal decisions.

Unchecked reliance on that sort of product I'd suggest is pretty cavalier, so there's no need to try and figure out how it fits into a long-term strategy just yet. Use it to write a suggested shopping list instead, or provide some basic blog dot points to work from - which rather ironically I did here (frankly, the quality of its joint collaborative effort with AI chatbot competitor Jarvis left much to be desired).

Continuous learning as a mediator

One of the other key benefits of reading widely is developing a greater sense of empathy and a desire to understand others. By reading books written by authors with different backgrounds, beliefs or perspectives than your own, you can gain insight into how different people view the world and put your own experiences into perspective, as well as open your mind to new ones. This knowledge can be invaluable when making decisions that affect your colleagues, employees or more importantly, when you're either providing or receiving critical feedback.

Canadian leadership expert Jeff Tetz observes that most people are really bad at harnessing critical feedback; generally leading to more pain in the long run - and I agree wholeheartedly. In a board context, the chairperson has an especially important role to play in establishing and upholding a culture of psychological safety so that frank, candid conversations can exist and critical feedback can circulate as part of your ongoing reporting cycle. Its an environment where the accuracy, completeness and timeliness of information may very well be mission-critical, and the clarity of expectations central to an effective board-management team dynamic.

How many times have you been in a pitch meeting or performance review and felt like the feedback you received was too harsh, or the advice you gave wasn't valued? It isn't enjoyable is it? It can be incredibly disheartening, particularly when you've invested in the experience, or come to it with certain expectations that didn't translate to reality. My advice as to how to respond in those situations is to take stock of the situation, remove your own emotional response tendency from it, consider why the other party may have said something or reacted the way they did, and form a considered judgement as to how to proceed. This rationalisation process requires you to actively fight the innate stress response Rongjun Yu examined in 2016 which takes discipline to perfect, but it's worth it in the long run because you'll improve yourself from the experience. Now that's not wisdom learned from Mr Tetz, let alone any management or corporate governance guru - it’s actually a more contemporary application of Roman statesman and philosopher Cato the Elder, who once said:

Anger so clouds the mind that it cannot perceive the truth.

While I'm not sure how Cato would cope in a modern environment of filter-impaired social media I trust that his mind would be open to learning and growing too — as long as it didn't require making peace with Carthage.

What strategies have you employed to improve your decision-making and leadership skills? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.