What makes an outstanding chairman? The views of more than 400 directors – A unique survey reflecting the views of 430 chairmen and directors from more than 900 boardrooms. This Directorbank report is unique in two ways. It is drawn from the experiences of a great diversity of boardrooms – from venture capital backed growth enterprises, through family businesses and private equity backed buyouts to public companies, listed on both the FTSE and AIM markets. It is also a two-part survey – having first asked our respondents to nominate “outstanding” chairmen from their own experiences, we went on to carry out face-to-face interviews with more than 30 of those nominated.

The results provide some definitive views on a variety of subjects – including an overwhelming “no” to combining the roles of chairman and CEO and to progressing
from CEO to chairman in the same company (with people who have done so admitting it was a mistake in hindsight).

One poignant response of Lord Marshall, former chairman of BA, to our question on significant challenges in his career –

• “we had an aircraft that had just landed in Kuwait and within about 20 minutes Iraqi tanks were blasting away…we had about 350 passengers stuck there and 3 complete 747 crews…they held all the male crew and put them in strategic sites around Iraq until December. Some of them had dreadful stories to tell of their experiences.”

Whatever challenges face outstanding chairmen, let’s hope few have to tackle situations of quite that magnitude.

http://www.directorbank.com/library/files/Chairman_s_Report.pdf