Building Board Effectiveness With A National Television Broadcaster

A changing landscape and new Chairman caused the organization to adopt a smaller, close-knit Board model. As a newly formed Board, they required support in how best to move forward and add value beyond regular governance responsibilities.

Non-executives did not spend sufficient time outside of formal board meetings to share reflections and build relationships. Consequently, there was a lack of shared understanding and alignment of how the board could collectively add value.

Non-executives felt managed by the CEO and senior executives. There was a sense that people went through the motions of listening and processing the inputs of the board.

Board members were too distant from senior executives and also one another. Broadly, there was appetite to invest time building deeper relationships from all parties.

YSC Consulting began with individual developmental deep dive sessions with each Board Member to increase self-awareness around key strengths and development areas.

We then led a team exercise to share key learnings about how their unique leadership styles impacted their work together.

Additional coaching dialogues were set up with key stakeholders to enable the development of key leadership strengths that were imperative to the Board dynamics.

Our interventions enabled a more productive dialogue at the Board level where members were more comfortable leveraging their strengths more effectively. This ultimately led to a reduction in non-value adding dialogue.

Through coaching, we focused on capability transfer throughout the organization, how to deal with conflict and have difficult conversations and ultimately created alignment around a shared mandate.