The Principles the Best Boards Use to Support and Challenge Their CEOs

Across hundreds of conversations on Enter the Boardroom, one theme consistently emerges when CEOs and Chairs talk about high-performing boards.

The best boards are neither passive nor overbearing. They create space for CEOs to think, give cover when it matters, and challenge in ways that sharpen judgment rather than undermine confidence.

Below are the principles that our guests repeatedly highlighted as defining effective board–CEO relationships.

What this article reveals at a glance

1. Great boards create thinking space, not just accountability.
The most effective boards actively pull CEOs out of execution mode and force time for strategy, reflection and long-term choices. 

2. Trust is the foundation of useful challenge.
Boards that fail to invest in relationships default to either distance or conflict. Honest challenge only emerges once psychological safety and mutual respect are established.

3. Support and challenge are not opposites; they’re complementary.
The strongest boards give air cover in crises, legitimise difficult decisions, and protect CEOs externally, while being rigorous and demanding behind closed doors.

4. One size does not fit all CEOs.
Effective Chairs adapt their style to the individual CEO, not the other way round. Tailored challenge consistently outperforms formulaic intervention.

5. Boards add a significant amount of their value outside the boardroom.
Much of the real work happens between meetings, through informal contact, operational exposure, and quiet conversations that help CEOs make sense of complexity.

Taken together, these patterns suggest that modern boards are moving away from episodic oversight and towards continuous, relational leadership. The boards that get this right improve CEO performance. The ones that don’t often discover problems too late.

Key Support & Challenge Principles 

Encourage CEOs to stop doing and start thinking

“I was spending a lot of my time really squeezing the last drop of juice out of some of the things we were doing, and what I wasn't doing was spending any time looking forward and thinking about strategic bigger challenges or opportunities on the horizon. And the advice from the board was, you need to ensure that you've got enough time to do that kind of thing.” Suranga Chandratillake OBE, General Partner at Balderton Capital, Advisory Board Member at Cambridge University Endowment Fund and Founder of Blink

“It’s so easy as a founder or CEO to get bogged down by the day to day and just survive Monday through Tuesday. The right board forces you to stop and check what’s really happening.” Marta Krupinska, CEO & Co-Founder of CUR8, Chair of YBI and NED at ACUA Ocean 

Build playbooks for your CEO, without over-relying on analogy

“We have onboarding playbooks, strategy playbooks, restructuring playbooks, giving clear guidance on what we expect. But they aren’t checklists. The CEO and board can adjust where needed, depending on real business developments. This helps ensure alignment while leaving room for dynamic board leadership.” Christian Unger, Partner at Partners Group

Proactively build trust: without it, boards default to unhelpful

“You tend to find boards in one of three states: at war with the executive, kept at arm’s length, or genuinely delivering value. You can't get to that happy state without honest conversations.” Doug Gurr, Director of the Natural History Museum, Chair of the Competition and Markets Authority and The Alan Turing Institute 

Use objective criteria to measure CEO performance

“I tend to work on a balanced scorecard approach… people, members, money, growth… quarterly measuring against that.” Joanne Hindle, Chair of Stafford Railway Building Society and Shepherd’s Friendly Society, NED at Bank of London and Middle East 

Encourage CEOs to find challenge and support beyond the boardroom

“There will be times that you will need someone to talk to because I won’t be the right person… that’s why I think you need to have a coach.” David Sole OBE, Managing Partner of School For CEOs, Owner of David Sole & Associates 

Do the work between board meetings so you can move fast

“The time between meetings … is vital because that's where relationships can be strengthened, where you clear the windscreen so that at the board meeting you can just move quickly through what you need to get through.” Susannah Nicklin, CFA, Chair of Schroder BSC Social Impact Trust plc, NED at Ecofin Global Utilities & Infrastructure Trust plc and North American Income Trust plc

Challenge CEOs who can’t articulate the vision beyond KPIs

“It’s all very well to talk about seven-and-a-half percent growth, but if you can’t paint pictures of what that actually looks like, there’s some work you need to do.” Owen Eastwood, Author of Belonging and Performance Coach at HoKo 

Tailor your approach to your CEO

“A lot of what makes a good chair is understanding how your particular CEO works.” Kate Swann, Chair of Moonpig, Beijer Ref, Parques Reunidos, and IVC Evidensia and former CEO of WH Smith

“One of the key roles of a chair is to have a chameleon-like quality where you fit yourself to the personality of the CEO.” Rupert Soames OBE, Chair of the CBI and Smith & Nephew plc and former CEO of Serco Group plc and Aggreko plc.

Give CEOs air cover in crises and when making long-term bets

“The board has to coalesce around being brave and telling shareholders profits will fall while we build for the future.” Roger Parry CBE, Former Chair of Oxford Metrics, Director at the Donmar Warehouse, Partner at Stoneglade Capital 

“Part of the chair's role in the best companies is to give air cover to the chief executive. To put themselves between the chief executive and the outside world in situations in which the individual is doing a good job but needs to be protected.” Sir Douglas Flint CBE, Chair of Aberdeen, IP Group and the Royal Marsden NHS Trust and former chair of HSBC Group Holdings and NED at BP

Encourage CEOs to take on non-executive roles

“Being on a board helped me understand what board members are actually looking for, and I brought that straight back into how I ran my own board.” Shellye Archambeau, Fortune 500 board director, strategic advisor, former CEO and author

Reassure CEOs that progress isn’t linear

“In an entrepreneurial world, the line does not go straight from bottom left to top right.”
Dame Jayne-Anne Gadhia, Lead Non-Executive Director at HMRC, Senior Independent Director at Tate, Chair of Moneyfarm and an Advisor to The Vanquis Banking Group, UniCredit and the Fintech Growth Fund

Provide credibility the CEO cannot manufacture

“Part of our pitch was our credibility: the advisory board chaired by the former chair of NHS England gave comfort immediately.” Wais Shaifta, Chief Growth Officer at The Co-op, NED at The Gym Group and Reach plc, Senior Independent Trustee at Football Foundation, Samaipata and Ex-CEO Push Doctor

Legitimise difficult but correct decisions

“The board helped legitimise a controversial decision, even though the CEO probably would have made the right call anyway.” Roger Martin, Professor Emeritus at Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, best-selling author of over five management books, including Playing to Win  

Free CEOs to focus on what they’re best at

“We try to take away the things the CEO isn’t best at and let them focus on what they enjoy and excel at.” Stuart Roden, Chair / former Chair of Lansdowne Partners, Hetz Ventures, Lewis Advisors, Tresidor, the Design Museum and Unlocking Potential, NED at LSE and Trustee at the National Gallery and Centre for Social Justice

Create decision ‘practice ranges’ with real feedback

“What we advocate is for the creation of… ‘shooting ranges’… an environment in which people can practice and get good, clear, solid feedback … with real world forecasting questions. Unfortunately, most people don’t have access to that at all.” Dan Gardner, best-selling author of Superforecasting, How Big Things Get Done, Risk and Future Babble

Watch out for new CEOs dismantling what already works

“If you hire somebody and on day one they take over completely, there’s a tendency to take things apart and put them back together again in their own image. That can be catastrophic. Sometimes you only discover afterwards why things worked before.” Nick Jenkins, Founder and former CEO of Moonpig, former Dragon on Dragon’s Den, Chair of Virtualstock, NED at Green Energy Options and Trustee at Operation Fistula

Help CEOs make sense of difficult events, not avoid them

“All events in organisations need help from leadership to help people make the right sense of them, not the wrong sense. If people conclude the organisation is now a scarier place, they will hold back ideas, questions, concerns and mistakes. Ironically, that puts both them and the organisation at greater risk.” Amy Edmondson, Professor of Leadership & Management at Harvard Business School, ranked #1 management thinker in the world by Thinkers50 in 2023

Ground challenge in firsthand operational knowledge

“If you’ve been and visited and seen what’s really going on, you can add value. Otherwise, you’re just relying on board papers, and you have to believe them. Visiting operations gives you the confidence and the facts to challenge properly.” Gerry Brown, Chair of NovaQuest Capital Management and G Brown Associates,  co-author of Disaster in the Boardroom

Show the CEO your working when it comes to decisions

“The board should be very clear what decision it is making and why. The resolution should be articulated clearly, together with the reasons, so the CEO and management can implement it effectively.” Professor Stanislav Shekshnia, Professor at INSEAD, where he directs board development programs, and Chair of TechnoEnergy AG 

Only invest time coaching CEOs who can be coached

“Leadership development can have value, but only if it’s connected to assessment of potential. You should invest in people who are curious, humble, self-aware and coachable, otherwise you’re just inflating confidence rather than improving competence.” Dr Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Professor of Business Psychology, UCL & Columbia, Chief Innovation Officer, ManpowerGroup

Create spaces for honest reflection outside board meetings

“He would come in early, sit down with a coffee, and an hour later I’d told him all the things I wasn’t planning to tell the board. He never told me what to do, but he helped me think clearly about what really mattered.” Kate Swann (see biography above)

Drop a note to C-suite members when you’ve noticed their work

“As a board member, you have to show interest in the business. Drop a note to the person that is responsible for whatever that thing is that you've seen so that they know you've got skin in the game and aren’t just turning up for board meetings.” Karen Blackett CBE NED at Diageo plc and Chancellor of the University of Portsmouth, former UK President, WPP

Be countercyclical to the business: when CEOs move fast, encourage them to slow down, and vice versa

“Often your job as the board is to be countercyclical to the business. So if you've got a really hard driving, determined, committed management team that's doing their absolute best to solve whatever the problem is, often the job of the board is to say, well done, and to calm them down.” Baroness Dido Harding, former Chair of NHS Improvement, Executive Chair of NHS Test & Trace, NED at the Bank of England, and CEO of TalkTalk Telecom Group plc

Never forget what you’re actually asking executives to do

“Part of my job is to be involved in national policy development and to try and shape it, inform it, respond to it. But also being an enormous support to your senior team and being aware of what they're going to go through because they're the ones that are going to have to be looking into the faces of people and, and delivering this.” Dame Marie Gabriel CBE Chair of the NHS Race and Health Observatory and NHS North East London Integrated Care Board and former Chair of NHS Improvement’s London Regional Board

Encourage CEOs to share problems when they arise, not after they’ve tried to fix them

“Boards want to know there’s a potential problem and then let’s talk about how we’re going to solve it… rather than… ‘I spent a month dealing with it… there’s no problem now.’” David Sproul, Chair of Starling Bank and Pennon Group, former Deputy Global CEO of Deloitte UK

Frequent, short contact beats formal meetings

“Frequent communication is better than long meetings. Most things can be done in 20 minutes if you trust each other.” Gillian Wilmot, Chair of ZOO Digital Group plc, Jisp and SYNALOGiK Innovative Solutions Ltd

Get the worm’s-eye view to assess performance

“The best single marker of integrity is upward feedback. Go and speak to the people that person has managed and ask one simple question: did you trust your boss, and did they have your best interests at heart?” Dr Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic (see biography above)