The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu The leading online blog in the fields of corporate governance and financial regulation. Wed, 08 Jul 2026 11:32:24 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.8 https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/cropped-photography-4-e1706898544564-1-32x32.png How to Be a Good Board Chair – The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu 32 32 How to Be a Good Board Chair https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2018/04/24/how-to-be-a-good-board-chair/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-to-be-a-good-board-chair https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2018/04/24/how-to-be-a-good-board-chair/#comments Tue, 24 Apr 2018 13:10:36 +0000 https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/?p=106464?d=20180424091036EDT Posted by Stanislav Shekshnia (INSEAD), on Tuesday, April 24, 2018
Editor's Note:

Stanislav Shekshnia is Senior Affiliate Professor of Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise at INSEAD. This post is based on his recent article in the Harvard Business Review.

What do good board chairs do in and outside the board room? To explore this questions, INSEAD Corporate Governance Centre launched a research project that included a survey of 200 board chairs from 31 countries, 80 interviews with chairs, and 60 interviews with board members, shareholders and CEOs.

An effective chair, the people in our study largely concurred, provides leadership not to the company but to the board, enabling it to function as the highest decision-making body in the organization. As one survey respondent put it: “The chair is responsible for and represents the board, while the CEO is responsible for and is the public face of the company.” That crucial distinction makes the chair’s job very different from the CEO’s, and it calls for specific skills and practices. Here are some of them.

(more…)

]]> https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2018/04/24/how-to-be-a-good-board-chair/feed/ 1