Boardroom Reflections Study

We listen to our global network of directors and shared the information generated freely and widely. Launched in December 2020 the Boardroom Reflections Study provides valuable insights into what is really going on in board rooms.

10000
Data points

The Big Conversation

When the global covid pandemic hit, we reflected that too much of the messaging to directors was telling them what they should be doing (you have this problem, we have this readymade solution!), rather than listening to directors expressing their views, without a marketing agenda.

We worked with psychologists, data specialists, academics, GDPR experts and more than 20 directors to design a format to have “a big conversation” with directors, so that we could genuinely share our experiences.

We are now in the third year of this “big conversation” and clear patterns are emerging. The work continues. Each year we publish bar charts of the data and produce short videoscribes to bring to directors’ attention highlights and trends from their contributions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oTurM7gESE
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Boardroom Reflections Study

4:05 duration

The Findings

We spotted some really interesting behaviours in the responses, so we approached Geoff Trickey and his team of Chartered Psychologists at Psychological Consultancy Limited to drill down further into the data. Geoff’s team triangulated the data and uncovered some statistically significant trends, particularly in the areas of risk and the financial benefits of having a psychologically safe working environment.

The findings were presented at PCL’s “Decision making, Success & Survival” conference in London in September 2022. The data scientists were able to reveal their analysis of tens of thousands of data points and they established a direct link between the freedom to respectfully disagree in organisations and an increase in the organisation’s turnover, capacity and capabilities.

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Inclusion Nudges

Lisa Kepinski and Tinna Nielson point to some important reminders on “inclusion nudges”  to help ensure the psychological safety, that is promoted when people

  • feel free to express their views, even when contrary to the prevailing view,
  • are able to open up about who they are and their experiences without a filter of fear of sanctions,
  • feel acknowledged and appreciated for their contributions.
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“One big takeaway of the 2023 Boardroom Reflections Study is that the more comfortable board directors and senior management reported themselves in being able to speak up, and the more they they trusted each other, the better they reported their company had performed. That’s not an accident, as structured debate and open dialogue are essential to good decisions and smart strategy. Nurturing trust and psychological safety is a good predictor of success in the biggest, obvious and highly likely “gray rhino” challenge organizations reported for 2023 and the future: recruiting and retraining talent.”

Michele WuckerFounder, Gray Rhino & Company and Stakeholder Supervisory Board Member, DCRO Risk Governance Institute

“The data collected by Resilient Corporates provides invaluable insight into the experiences and challenges facing senior board-level staff across a tumultuous 3-year period. Analysing the views reported by the survey’s respondents has afforded our research team a fantastic window into the impact of the preceding years at an individual, board, and organisational level. This has enabled us to identify and communicate various lessons and trends that can inform the understanding and best practice of organisational leaders.”

Dr Simon Toms

“Policy development and decision making is never easy and always critical. From the perspective of a psychological business consultancy working across many sectors, we have seen that the current challenges faced by boards are of unparalleled complexity and uncertainty. In the current mix of economic, technical, cultural and social instability, questions about the path to follow are inevitably fraught.

Good decisions rely on sound information. Much of our own work as business psychologists relies on high quality metrics. At the granular level the focus is on data about employee characteristics and the individual differences that contribute to high performance. At the level of team functioning the focus shifts to analysis of interpersonal dynamics. A further step up to organisational culture raises the bar again. At an inter- organisation level, the Boardroom Reflections Survey shares experience and information between directors. Pulling together a national cross-section of boardroom impressions from a diverse range of contributors, this is proving to be a very canny and informative approach. Growing in its utility with each successive year of survey completion, it facilitates an exchange of high-quality information from board rooms to board room. This is an especially relevant networking process.

At PCL, working with the survey data, we have been intrigued by this very tangible contribution to the challenges of decision making. As the longitudinal picture extends, the power of this database increases. New insights will continually emerge from this organic process. This ability of the Boardroom Reflections Survey to add new layers of information into the mix year on year, makes it increasingly relevant. Inclusion of the COVID period and the tragic events in the Ukraine will be a particularly significant points of reference as we progress through the inevitable challenges that lie ahead.”

Geoff Trickey

““The Directors Convention would again like to thank Resilient Corporates for running this valuable survey, and all our clients and contacts who contributed to it. It enables directors to have their voices heard and identifies critical trends and features of the prevailing business climate across all sectors.
This well-structured study, analysed by specialists, tells us much about the challenges faced by leaders. Having held their organisations together through Covid and recessionary times to finally secure a return to enhanced performance, leaders now find their margins eroded by soaring energy costs. This is causing tensions in the boardrooms as executive teams face burnout, but directors demand better returns. Of significant note however, is the importance of psychological safety. Where staff feel safe to be authentic and speak up, business performance is enhanced. It is also enhanced when we truly engage with customers, so as leaders we need to learn to be more open, to listen more, empathise more and truly engage with those that pay us, (our customers), and those we pay, (our staff).”

Dr. Deborah Benson