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Pulling Up the Chair
A new Korn Ferry study finds board chairs increasingly want a more active role in shaping the future of organizations and examines the impact on the CEO role.
May 05, 2025
The New Board Chair Playbook
It’s always been a grand-sounding name, one that evokes images of importance in movies and popular culture: chairman of the board. Even so, the reality has long been that most board chairs play a somewhat passive governing role. They provide oversight, ensuring a company is in compliance and financially sound. They meet with their fellow directors four times a year and follow the same agenda that has been in place for decades.
But a new Korn Ferry study suggests that something is dramatically changing in the boardroom. In particular, chairs are finding that their roles aren’t just operational—they’re increasingly strategic. Now, instead of meeting quarterly, they’re in close regular contact with the CEO.
“Chairs are having to step up and play a completely different role,” says Tierney Remick, vice chairman and co-leader of Korn Ferry’s Board and CEO Services practice. “They’re playing chess now, not checkers.”
In the study—a survey of nearly 200 board members titled Board Chair of the Future—respondents noted that a typical board chair now functions as a company strategist, CEO mentor, and overall stabilizing force in these uncertain times. Forget ushering through approvals: Board chairs are actively shaping the company’s direction, whether it’s the need for adaptability and innovation (singled out by 75% of directors in the study) or the adjustments required for a heightened risk and regulatory environment (cited by 70%).
Much of the shift in chair responsibilities stems from the complexities of today’s business environment. Whether companies are responding to geopolitical pressures, trade wars, increased shareholder activism, or more vocal employees, they’re having to pivot in real time. “To move the agenda faster and manage the stakeholder community, chairs need to step up,” Remick says.
At the same time, the number of first-time CEOs (among them, 85% of those appointed in 2024) has risen. “The changing role of a board chair is a direct correlation relative to the unprecedented CEO turnover,” says Jane Edison Stevenson, global vice chair of Korn Ferry’s Board and CEO Services practice.
This has amped up the relationship between the chair or independent director and CEO: Today, the chair’s job is to push the CEO to think bigger and act more boldly, while also setting them up for success with the board. Indeed, a number of directors in the study said that great chairs orchestrate creative friction to sharpen strategy and challenge groupthink. “Good chairs will meet with the CEO often to understand what’s keeping them up at night and ask them how they want the board to deal with things,” says Joe Griesedieck, vice chairman at Korn Ferry and managing director of the Board and CEO Services practice. “They also rein in directors if they start going off the ranch during meetings.”
Amid so many newly minted CEOs and in a time of heightened uncertainty, boards need to become more skills based, be it expertise in data and tech or in international business. While chairs don’t want one-topic board members, the study found that they do need members who are “T-shaped”—able to go deep in one area while thinking strategically across the business as a whole.
Above all, the study found that a chair’s most powerful role is to create a board culture that prioritizes continuous feedback and continuous learning. When chairs normalize feedback and embed it into the rhythm of their work, they make it safe for directors to speak up. Similarly, when a chair prioritizes continuous learning, they show directors and the CEO that curiosity is a requirement for their roles. As Remick puts it, “This is a full-on, real-time job.”
Dive into the full Board Chair of the Future report.
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