The Chairman’s training

“There is no distinction in purpose between a board’s and management’s role. The board direct the business and oversee the interests of shareholders, while the strategies as agreed by the board are implemented by management. The chairman’s role is to lead the board and ensure appropriate disciplines are in place for the board and to distinguish between the board and management’s roles. The MD or CEO provides leadership to the management and the chairman sees that the CEO does what the board expects. The board does has a collective responsibility on this, but should leave most of the dialogue between the chairman and CEO or MD and only take collective action, if this does not work.” David Cartney, International Business Mentors 2017.

This chairman’s training has been developed and is delivered by experienced chairmen for example -David Cartney FAICD, with 20 years experience on boards. The training for Chairman is delivered through 8 confidential one-on-one meetings each with a separate module with training materials and is interactively discussed with the chairman.

At the end of each session a gap analysis is discussed between current practice or knowledge of the board and what should be happening on the module topic and discuss how to close the gap.
 

Module Topics

1.    The Board’s role
2.    Focus on Strategic Issues
3.    Monitoring the business
4.    Shareholders and other Stakeholders
5.    Board Composition
6.    Managing the boards Business
7.    Managing Board relationships
8.    Assessing and Improving effectiveness
 

Example of check questions with each module

1.    Are all directors on the board clear about their legal duties and responsibilities?
2.    Have they read and understood the company constitution?
3.    Do directors and senior staff know the key purpose of the board?
4.    Are directors and senior staff clear what they must do to assure that the purpose is achieved?
5.    Do the directors realise that the board is there to make decisions? To protect and enhance the interests of the company?
a.    And that management should decide other matters?
b.    Does the management have a clear mandate to make these decisions?
6.    Does the board learn from what it does and how it functions and from what others in the business do?
7.    Do you draw on the full range of opinions, attitudes, knowledge and experience potentially available from your directors?

To discuss further contact us