Life as a board director: One woman explains how she does it - Women's Agenda

Life as a board director: One woman explains how she does it

Robyn Weatherley’s had a long and successful career as a board practitioner, but sometimes wishes there were things she knew before she started out. Below she explains why she’s written a book on how to navigate your way through your first board appointments, in this extract from Eyes Wide Open.

I look to my experience as a story to be shared with others who find themselves in this new and bizarre, tribal territory called the ‘boardroom’. I’ve worked with everyone from deeply experienced directors, to those who are board-ready and seeking their very first appointment, and I know exactly what their concerns, fears and unknowns are.

Unless you’ve actually been in a boardroom and sat through an entire meeting (and more than one at that – in fact an entire year of meetings) it’s difficult to really know about the ‘ins and outs’ beyond the texts and journals you can read or what you see in a TV drama series. What you don’t see or read about are the situational and professional matters and details that go hand-in-hand with director ship (both at and away from the board table) and which no-one really tells you about upfront.

If you had a sneaky insight into just some of these things going in, you might feel that little bit more match-ready when fronting up for your first game.

It’s like joining a new animal herd (don’t be offended – you’ll appreciate the analogy I’m trying to draw here). As a brand new director, or someone going onto a board for the first time, you need to see yourself as something akin to a little elephant who is newly birthed into a long-established and well-populated herd which, by its nature, has its own cliques, territories, systems, culture, codes of communication and conduct already established – all of which are known and adhered to (or at least understood) by the current group.

As the brand new baby of the herd you can avoid getting your little toes stepped on by the bigger bulls and cows by getting some inside tips from another worldly elephant in the group. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Limping around in the corporate jungles of Australian boardrooms with a big sore elephant toe can be avoided and I’ll tell you how you can achieve this.

My insights can’t save you on the courtroom witness stand if you neglect your legal obligations and duties as a director (that’s of your own doing); however they might just allay some insecurities or uneasiness on the occasion of your very first appointment, or when you are moving up the director ranks into larger commercial enterprises and suddenly you are working with professional secretariats and a whole new level of boardroom sophistication and complexity.

I’ve had the fortunate experience of being privy to the board tables of a multi-billion dollar ASX-listed entity, a massive industry super fund, medical companies, an insurance company and other variations of operating collectives. My university and post-graduate education spreads across business, legal and governance areas, I’ve published through the AICD Company Director magazine, on LinkedIn and I was a founding member of National Australia Bank’s extraordinary Board Ready program.

Board Ready was started a few years ago by myself and some beloved NAB colleagues. It was developed from nothing but our own education, experience and a burning drive to teach women how to be first-time directors – giving them a direct insight into how it actually works
through demonstration, education and collegial support.

If I wasn’t a director at these board tables, then what was I?

Sometimes my role has been as a company secretary or lead corporate governance adviser to a board or committee or group of committees. Sometimes I was charged with the integration and management of governance capabilities and services across an organisation and that meant attending every board and board committee meeting held by that company (in parallel to being there in a governance advisory capacity). Other times saw me sitting at the table as a contractor running my own business as a governance adviser and minute-taker.

In every case, regardless of what my formal role-title was, I have been the minute-taker.

Someone has to do it and while it means spending many more hundreds of hours typing out the board’s minutes and reliving a variety of discussions, in my opinion it’s one of the best gigs you can get in a corporate career. It’s also the only one that allows you to share in, or be privy to, the company or board’s glory for all the great decisions made; you are also in the fortunate position of being able to duck and run when the bad ones come home to roost (unless of course you’ve been part of the debacle for some reason).

Sitting in my chair I get a ticket to the grandest game in corporate Australia, i.e. the opportunity to sit around the board tables of some of our most exciting, progressive and interesting companies, observing how companies develop, grow and contribute to the economy; watching and learning from some of the sharpest, most commercially experienced and exciting minds in the country. I also get to see how people react and respond to very difficult, pressing and uncertain times.

In my role, I have been privy to some of the most amazing information sessions, presentations, decisions and discussion experiences, and that’s what always makes it worth the admission price.

Attending meetings with some of the most highly-regarded and experienced directors in Australia during the global financial crisis, for example, was undeniably one of the greatest educational periods of my career. What I saw and learned during that period, on a professional level, can’t be taught at university, learned through director tutorials or read about in a textbook. Observing these directors as I did, managing their way through exceedingly difficult and complex decision making (as was the case for a great deal of institutions at the time) was both uplifting (to see how they lived with, carried and extinguished that degree of responsibility) and scary at the same time (given what was at stake for the economy). I hold those directors and executives in the absolute highest regard for their courage, tenacity, leadership and ability to remain steady in the face of immense difficulty and uncertainty.

To be in the company of those directors and to observe their conduct during the GFC was a definitive educational and career privilege. That’s not to say that I also haven’t been privy to decisions taken by the boards of smaller or different companies which have been just as impactful on the lives or commercial outlook of many of their shareholders and stakeholders.
Companies don’t need to be behemoths for their decisions to be any less scary or of a lesser consequence for those who will live with the outcomes of those decisions.

Being around boards and directors every day of my career is what has set me up to share the valuable advice and hints that you find in my book, Eyes Wide Open. It’s not only what happens inside a boardroom during a preset agenda that counts, it’s all the administration, volume, regulations, planning, execution, co-ordination, relationships, diplomacy and meeting expectations that happen outside the boardroom that add up to the great story and marvelous education that I share with those who are intrigued by the inner workings of this space.

So I get the pressure. I get the importance of how these things can and do play out. I get the depth and complexity of matters you have to consider and that you are on the hook for them all the time. The responsibilities and decision-making don’t ever go away; the work doesn’t get any easier or less voluminous. I understand your frustrations, the unrelenting pages of papers to read in your board pack (as it’s usually me who has compiled and sent you these meeting packs, so I already know what’s coming your way).

The insights I want to share may make you feel a little more comfortable in your role, just a little sooner, freeing you up to concentrate on the bigger matters at hand, i.e. helping your board to build a strong and robust company culture, develop the company’s strategic leadership and capabilities and create and grow its financial strength and long-term sustainability.

An exceptional director

What I’ve compiled in my book are some attributes and insights which I hope will help, in a small but meaningful way, to make you an exceptional director. In my opinion, being an exceptional director is quite frankly what every director in this country should be aiming to be when they sign their Consent to Act.

If that’s not your intention, you should do the company and society a favour and find something else to do. Because being an exceptional director should be a nonnegotiable
in this game.

Society gives companies a licence to exist through its laws and governance systems. Society also grants people the opportunity to sit on boards and to partake in the privilege of leading our companies. Your appointment necessitates and demands an exemplary contribution to the corporation, because it is society – and therefore all of us – that suffers from the unfortunate incompetence of under-committed and under-educated business leaders including those at the board table.

Let’s be frank, if you really stuff it up you can find yourself on the front page of the Australian Financial Review, or on the TV news as you walk into court with a legion of lawyers and their voluminous team of juniors who you personally can’t afford, or who are costing your shareholders or members an arm and a leg, on the charge of not having fulfilled your duties and obligations as a director. You could wear a very large financial penalty that your company may be prohibited from insuring you against.

Then there’s your reputation at stake too which in the small corporate world that is Australia cannot be re-built easily or a fresh one bought off the shelf. Bad stuff can happen (to both the good and the not so good) and it’s a daily risk for any director.

Directors who are fully committed to their roles are acutely aware of their obligations and responsibilities, and acknowledge the relentless (though sometimes enjoyable) ongoing education required to stay up to date with advancements in governance, risk, strategy, the law and financial best-practice.

These are the directors we must support, nourish, guide and advance through our commercial enterprises and governance systems. These are the people who have an exceptionally reduced chance of being seen on the court-house steps.

Confidence in the key

My experience means that I can confidently step into any sized boardroom, of any company or industry type, and deal with any level of director present – and it is this confidence I want you to have. Don’t ever forget that regardless of who you find yourself sitting next to, at
the end of the day, they are just a person – someone who eats, drinks and functions exactly the same way as you do.

As I sometimes say to colleagues or junior staff who are intimidated by their company’s chair
or any one director (having met them or not), they all put their pants on one leg at a time just like the rest of us. Don’t lose sight of that, and don’t be overwhelmed by the résumé of anyone you find yourself sitting next to. Use it as an amazing opportunity to learn, listen, absorb and advance. Enjoy the ride and the gift of the discussions.

All great directors start from somewhere (everyone has to have a ‘first’ appointment, a first meeting, ask their first question, etc.), and most people feel slightly overwhelmed, unsure, unsettled or just excitedly nervous (or a combination of all of the above) about taking their first seat at the board table. Everyone comes from a starting block somewhere – you all just end up swimming down different lanes of the same pool.

Eyes Wide Open is published by Major Street Publishing.

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