How to Secure Your First Board Role

Demonstrating advanced professional achievement and personal growth, a board role offers great scope in influencing the future of an organisation through impactful decision-making, as well as providing opportunities to hone and expand your skillsets required for navigating complex   commercial challenges.

On the journey in reaching your first board role, there are seven steps to consider when planning your new endeavour. Read on to learn how to take your seat in the boardroom.

Step 1: Know your motivations

As a prospective director, although board membership is highly paid relative to the time commitment, there will often be times when your role is all-consuming.

Directors are held to accountability standards by the companies they serve, the shareholders of that company, as well as various oversight organisations - therefore, be sure of your motivation to take it all on.

Step 2: Define your proposition

Properly identifying the skills, perspectives, and experiences you can bring to the boardroom is a make-or-break task and is therefore important to approach systematically. Your eventual goal is to build your proposition in the same way that, for example, a fashion brand shapes its image in the minds of the consumer.

This process is neither as simple nor as comfortable as it first sounds as it involves a good deal of honest self-analysis. The process of self-analysis is not easy or comfortable, but it is important to be truthful with yourself. The best business leaders are self- aware. They know their strengths and their weaknesses, and they are not afraid to consult with or delegate to others. These qualities are especially valuable in the boardroom, where the framework of power and change is consensual.

You need to be aware of any aspects of your skillset, employment history or mindset that might serve as red flags to prospective employers. It is important to be clear-eyed in your identification of these red flags because, as you go through the board search process, you should be working to circumvent or explain them.

Step 3: Know where you are needed

Once you know what you can offer, it is a good idea to identify what kind of companies can benefit from your skills and experience. Personal branding requires more than just self-awareness. You also need to identify your audience before you can customise your message to them. In thinking about the kinds of institutions that will most benefit from your presence, you shouldn’t ignore those outside of your own industry, or immediate geographical location.

Step 4: Write your board CV

Your board CV is a highly specialised version of your executive CV. Keep in mind the unique demands placed on directors and your target audience.

If you are an executive, your current CV most likely focuses on accomplishments, whereas your board CV should add emphasis on how you effected that change. What ideas drove the change? How did you ‘socialise’ those ideas? The goal of the board CV is to convince recruiters and others that your executive experience will translate into their boardroom.

Step 5: Elevate your image

Once you have identified your brand and consolidated it in your CV, it’s important to build brand consistency. What happens when you type your name into Google? A prospective director should appear not just on LinkedIn and X, but also in conference videos, publications, and podcasts.

Your LinkedIn account needs to reflect the changes you’ve made to your CV and display directorial mindsets. Your X account should demonstrate a socially conscious, forward-thinking professionalism. You should demonstrate active and considered thought leadership on all these forums. If negative things appear in relation to your name, you should work to either remove them or develop an explanation.

Step 6: Raise your profile

A board’s decision makers will be looking for candidates with significant media presence. But that should be for reasons that will reinforce, rather than distract, from your board member brand.

After looking at current members of public or private company boards, those searching for potential company director candidates often study conference speaker lists, professional associations and author pages. That is where you should advertise yourself: write papers, speak at conferences, try to publish articles in major outlets, trade journals and ‘best-in-class’ periodicals. Also, seek out speaking engagements, panels, and conferences, ideally at industry-leading events. Younger candidates may need to build up to these, but some exposure is better than none and will lead to more.

Step 7: Leverage your network

Who you know and who knows you can be half the battle as relationships of trust are a huge part of hiring at all levels. In your network, you should consider reaching out to both the obvious connections as well as people in less conventional sectors to help you explore alternative routes to the board.

Odgers Berndtson’s Board Practice combines extensive knowledge, insight, and networks across the executive and non-executive space, identifying and developing the best talent for leading organisations across the world.

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