Knowing how to chair a board meeting is about enabling better governance: keeping the board focused on purpose, creating space for constructive challenge, and ensuring decisions are clear, recorded, and actioned.
This article covers what effective chairs do before, during, after, and between meetings — from agenda and board pack discipline to facilitation, tone, conflicts of interest, and follow-through. It also draws on BoardPro’s How to be a good chair webinar, sharing insights from governance experts Giselle McLachlan, Steven Bowman, and Julie Garland McLellan.
A board chair leads the process of governance. This means structuring the meeting so directors can do their best thinking together, ensuring the agenda and papers support decision-making, and maintaining the disciplines that protect fairness and accountability. These include quorum, conflict-of-interest declarations, and clear resolutions.
Just as importantly, the chair shapes how the board works: how it debates, how it listens, how it treats time, and how it makes room for different voices. A chair doesn’t need to be the most vocal person in the room, but they do need to be the person who keeps the conversation purposeful.
The role of the chair is not to manage the CEO (or the general manager, operations manager or whoever runs the organisation). When it comes to working relationships, few matter more than the relationship between the CEO and the chair. If it becomes either too close or too combative, the board’s ability to govern effectively is compromised — and the consequences can ripple across the organisation. Finding the right balance of trust, challenge, and role clarity is essential for a high-performing board and a well-led organisation.
The company secretary (or governance support role) is often the chair’s closest operational partner. They help coordinate the agenda and board pack, support the meeting process, and ensure minutes and actions are documented properly. When the partnership works well, the chair can focus on facilitating the meeting and guiding the board’s discussion, while the secretary helps the governance ‘engine’ run smoothly before, during, and after the meeting.
Good chairing is built on governance discipline: a clear purpose, consistent meeting practices, and a shared understanding of how the board governs. Without that foundation, meetings can drift into operational updates or circular debate—neither of which serves the organisation well.
A practical way to strengthen discipline is to anchor your board’s work to a recognised governance framework. The ISO 37000 is a useful international model, or you can choose a framework your board understands and will actually use—whether that’s an international standard or guidance from your local country’s governance institute.
If your board doesn’t currently use a framework, start with one and make it visible in your meeting rhythm. Use it to shape what goes on the agenda, what ‘good’ reporting looks like, and how the board links discussion back to purpose, strategy, risk, and performance.
Giselle McLachlan identifies five levers that consistently shape effective chairing: time, tone, talent, teamwork, and traditions (or, in Aotearoa New Zealand, tikanga—the way the board operates). They also emphasise the practical realities: chairing shows up before the meeting, during the meeting, after the meeting, and between meetings, and it relies on strong people, paperwork, and processes around the board table.
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The Five Ts model frames great chairing around five core levers — time, tone, talent, teamwork, and traditions (or tikanga in Aotearoa New Zealand) — supported by the three Ps of people, paperwork, and processes. It also highlights that a chair’s work spans three connected phases: before and after meetings, during meetings, and between meetings, with what happens in the room shaped by preparation and follow-through.
“Chairs need to be Switzerland in their chairing, but be opinionated in their directorship,” says McLachlan. “Great chairs don’t open the meeting with their opinion, and they don’t tell the board what to think.”
That idea is a useful anchor: the chair leads the process and creates space for the board’s collective judgement. The chair may have views, but doesn’t lead with them.
Meetings run on time when time is designed well. It starts with the board’s programme of work—your annual work plan or rolling programme—so the board can stay strategic and avoid cramming everything into a single meeting cycle. It also clarifies what work belongs where: what must be decided now, what should be developed further, and what can be delegated.
Julie Garland McLellan recommends a 15-month rolling programme. “It takes you beyond the current period, and stops people cutting off their thinking at specific points in the year. It opens you up to being slightly more strategic.”
Time discipline includes expectations around preparation. If directors are reading for the first time in the meeting, discussion can become reactive. Encourage questions on notice where possible, and set a clear expectation that substantive questions should be raised early enough for proper responses (rather than arriving at the last minute).
Steven Bowman finds that time is a construct often used as a justification for doing or not doing something. “One of the roles of the board is to make sure that their directors know that anyone who says ‘I was too busy’ or ‘I didn’t have the time’, is actually saying ‘I’m choosing not to’. That clarity of thinking can help bring people back into the fold again, so that they’re actually choosing to create the time, not trying to fit it into other things.”
Boards don’t just decide; they set the cultural standard for the organisation. If the board’s tone doesn’t reflect the organisation’s values, that mismatch will show up elsewhere.
Tone needs active management. If someone dominates, derails, or undermines others, effective chairs deal with it — not once, but consistently: in the meeting, after the meeting, and before the next meeting if it needs resetting.
“People are often too polite,” says Bowman. “But ‘polite’ is not the opposite of rude; the opposite of polite is saying what needs to be said in a manner so that people are willing to receive it.”
A chair’s influence is often invisible. It shows up in the quality of contributions around the table: whether quieter directors are invited in, whether expertise is used well, and whether new directors are supported to become effective quickly.
The webinar also touches on mana — respect, authority, and influence — highlighting that chairs can build others’ mana by recognising contributions and creating a boardroom where thoughtful participation is valued.
A board’s performance depends on information flow and clarity of roles. Management prepares papers and executes. The board governs, challenges, and decides. Committees can support deeper work, but their purpose should be clear and their reporting should elevate what requires board discussion rather than simply forwarding minutes.
Every board has habits — some helpful, some inherited. Chairing includes protecting the good traditions (such as regular board-only time) and refreshing practices that no longer serve the board’s effectiveness, including the mix of online versus in-person meetings and the realities of hybrid meetings.
Many boards inherit routines without examining whether they still work. Chairing includes protecting the traditions that help and revisiting the ones that don’t.
The five Ts give you the principles of great chairing — but they only matter if they show up in practice. Time, tone, talent, teamwork and traditions (tikanga) aren’t abstract ideas; they’re the levers a chair uses to shape what happens before the meeting, in the room, and after decisions are made.
The next sections translate the model into a simple rhythm you as the chair can apply every meeting cycle: prepare for pace and decisions, facilitate balanced participation and clear resolutions, and then lock in follow-through through minutes, actions and accountability.
A well-chaired meeting begins with clarity: what the board is there to achieve, and what decisions or direction are needed.
Start by defining purpose in practical terms. What must be decided? What needs discussion? What is genuinely 'for noting'? One simple exercise is to ask directors to articulate the organisation’s purpose without checking papers. The range of answers can be a useful prompt to reconnect the board to why it exists—and what the meeting should serve.
Time is a shared discipline. Directors need time to read; management needs time to prepare responses; and the chair needs to protect meeting time for decision-making.
A practical approach is to set expectations, such as:
This doesn’t need to be rigid, but it should be consistent—especially for high-stakes decisions.
Your agenda should make it easy for directors to prepare and contribute. Label items clearly (decision, discussion, noting) and allocate time accordingly. Avoid overloading the agenda; if everything is urgent, the board will spend its time reacting rather than steering.
Use agenda discipline to keep discussion strategic. A board’s role is to ‘create the future through the choices and decisions it makes’—and the chair plays a key part in keeping the board focused beyond short-term cycles, including the longer-term implications of decisions.
Logistics shouldn’t consume chair attention, but risks should be managed: confirm timing (including time zones), make sure technology works, and build in breaks for long meetings.
The first minutes of a meeting set the tone. Start on time and signal the standard you expect to meet. Confirm quorum in line with your constitution or governing rules, deal with conflicts of interest early, and make sure directors understand what the meeting is there to do.
Chairing is often described as ‘leading leaders’. Some directors will speak quickly and confidently; others will contribute more selectively. Your role is to make sure the board benefits from the full range of expertise, not just the most forceful voices.
A strong chair frames discussion clearly and then creates space for the board to think. Chairs need to be ‘Switzerland’: neutral in process, disciplined in facilitation, and careful about when (and whether) you offer your own view.
If you want better decisions, you need better questions. Guide debate by framing the decision clearly, and then inviting different viewpoints deliberately — especially when agreement comes too quickly.
Prompts that improve discussion include:
Some of the most effective chair interventions are simple and curious. Modelling a learning mindset can lift the quality of discussion and reduce posturing. “Sometimes the most powerful thing we can say is ‘I’m not sure I understand that,” says Garland McLellan.
Conflict-of-interest declarations should be handled consistently and recorded properly. Where a genuine conflict exists, follow your governance rules regarding participation and voting.
As decisions are made, ensure they are expressed clearly and captured accurately. Summarise the decision, confirm whether consensus or a vote is required, and explicitly confirm actions, owners, and timeframes. Silence should never be treated as agreement.
Minutes are not a transcript; they are a governance record. They should clearly capture resolutions, key decisions, and agreed actions. The chair’s role is to review minutes for accuracy and clarity—particularly where wording affects accountability, compliance, or execution.
Follow-through matters as much as the meeting itself. If decisions drift between meetings, board time will be consumed repeating and re-litigating.
Chairing doesn’t stop when the meeting ends. Between meetings, the chair plays a key role in keeping governance work moving, supporting board capability, and ensuring the board’s rhythm stays healthy.
The board ‘lifecycle’ view of governance work looks at appointments and capability (including skills needs), investment in training and development, working effectively together, and evaluating performance — then repeating as the board changes over time. The chair doesn’t do this alone, but does need to lead how that lifecycle shows up in the organisation.
A practical chair discipline is to treat board development as an ongoing responsibility, not a once-a-year event. That can include induction, occasional learning, reflective evaluation, and development conversations that keep the board effective as the organisation’s needs evolve.
When meetings overrun, it is rarely because the chair ‘didn’t talk fast enough’. Overruns usually come from overloaded agendas, weak paper discipline, or discussion that isn’t being framed towards a decision. Tighten the agenda, protect time for judgement, and use summary-and-park techniques to maintain momentum.
When behaviour disrupts tone, the key is early intervention and consistency. Boards watch the chair for signals about what is acceptable. If the chair avoids it, the board normalises it.
When groupthink shows up, invite alternative views deliberately. Strong chairs don’t fear disagreement; they fear untested consensus.
When papers arrive late, weigh urgency against governance risk. For high-stakes decisions, deferral is often the most responsible option.
Great chairing is less about running a meeting and more about enabling governance: creating the conditions for directors to apply judgement, challenge assumptions, and make decisions that stand up over time. The most effective chairs combine discipline (clear agendas, good papers, consistent process) with facilitation (balanced participation, productive debate, respectful tone). They also protect follow-through — because governance only creates value when decisions are recorded clearly and acted on. When chairs treat time, tone, and teamwork as deliberate practices before, during, after, and between meetings, board meetings become a tool for strategy, accountability, and better outcomes — not just a reporting cycle.
The chair leads the meeting process—setting the agenda, managing time, facilitating discussion, ensuring governance requirements are met, and confirming clear decisions and actions.
By using a realistic agenda, framing each item towards an outcome, and managing discussion flow through summarising, refocusing, and parking issues when needed.
By leading with questions, inviting different perspectives, and holding back their own opinion until the board has tested assumptions and trade-offs.
The chair typically reviews minutes for accuracy of decisions and actions, ensures resolutions are clearly expressed, and approves/signs minutes in line with the board’s process.
Take your next steps by downloading the free Chairperson Checklist, or watching the on-demand webinar 'How to be a great chair'. You can also visit BoardPro, sign up for a free trial, and learn more about how board management software enables you to run refreshingly simple board meetings.