Why do I hold back from saying what I really think in board meetings?

You hold back because you have learned what gets rewarded there, and it is not candour. Nobody ordered you to soften your view. The training is quieter than that. Years of watching what happens to the person who says the unwelcome thing teach you to edit before you speak. It feels like judgement. Mostly it is domestication, and the fence is reward, not force. The question worth sitting with is not why you hold back. It is how long ago you started, and what the board has lost while you have been being sensible.

  • Fifty-five per cent of directors say a colleague on their board should be replaced

    Fifty-five per cent of directors say at least one colleague on their board should be replaced. Seventy-eight per cent say board assessments do not capture the full picture, and nearly three-quarters say their board skips individual director reviews. Eighty-eight per cent say they could personally take steps to improve their board. In a separate survey of executives, 32 per cent believe their board has the right mix of skills.

    The figures are from PwC’s 2025 Annual Corporate Directors Survey, released on 1 October 2025, answered by 638 directors of United States companies, 70 per cent of them with annual revenues above $1 billion. The executive figure is from PwC and The Conference Board, Board effectiveness: a survey of the C-suite, May 2025.

    Source: PwC, 2025 Annual Corporate Directors Survey, 2025-10-01.

  • The Code asks the chair for openness and debate and the non-executives for constructive challenge

    The UK Corporate Governance Code sets out what it expects of the chair and of the non-executive directors. Principle F requires the chair to “promote a culture of openness and debate” and to facilitate “the effective contribution of all non-executive directors”. Principle H says non-executive directors “should provide constructive challenge, strategic guidance, offer specialist advice and hold management to account”. Provision 21 requires “a formal and rigorous annual review of the performance of the board, its committees, the chair and individual directors”, externally facilitated at least every three years in FTSE 350 companies.

    The Code was published by the Financial Reporting Council on 22 January 2024 and applies to financial years beginning on or after 1 January 2025. It applies to companies with a premium listing on the London Stock Exchange on a comply-or-explain basis.

    Source: Financial Reporting Council, UK Corporate Governance Code 2024, 2024-01-22.

  • One director in three says they fully understand their company’s strategy

    Roughly one-third of directors say they have a complete understanding of their company’s current strategy, up from one-fifth two years earlier. Twenty-nine per cent say their board has limited or no understanding of the risks the company faces. Directors say their boards spend 28 per cent of their time on strategy and 12 per cent on risk management. Nearly half say strategy is the area where their board was most effective in the past year.

    The figures are from a McKinsey Global Survey of 772 corporate directors, fielded from 9 to 19 April 2013 and published on 1 August 2013.

    Source: McKinsey & Company, “Improving board governance: McKinsey Global Survey results”, 2013-08-01.

  • Thirty-two per cent of CEOs have a lot of confidence in their board

    Most chief executives have at least some confidence in their directors’ ability to help guide them through the issues facing the organisation. The share expressing a lot of confidence is 32 per cent. From the other side of the table, 87 per cent of directors have faith in their CEO’s readiness to respond to the same challenges, and 51 per cent are very confident. Sixty-three per cent of CEOs say they are increasing communication with their boards.

    The figures are from Spencer Stuart’s Measure of Leadership report, published in June 2024, based on an online survey of 1,036 CEOs and 1,285 directors conducted from 27 March to 4 April 2024, with supplementary surveys of 615 United States and 610 United Kingdom workers.

    Source: Spencer Stuart, “Measure of Leadership: CEOs and Directors on Navigating Change”, 2024-06-01.

  • On the best-performing boards, 90 per cent report high trust between chair, directors and CEO

    A Spencer Stuart survey of more than 1,400 board chairs, directors and chief executives finds that companies are 60 per cent more likely to hit or beat their growth goals when the board works in close partnership with the CEO. On the highest-performing boards, 90 per cent report high levels of trust between the chair, the independent directors and the CEO. On the lowest-performing boards the figure is 24 per cent. Jordan Brugg, Spencer Stuart’s chief executive, told Semafor that on those boards “no one mistakes alignment for a lack of challenge and a lack of tension.”

    The figures and the quotation are as reported by Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson in Semafor on 21 August 2026. Semafor does not name or link the survey report, and it has not been located on Spencer Stuart’s site.

    Source: Semafor, “Spencer Stuart’s CEO on trust and tension in the boardroom” (Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson), 2026-08-21.