Effective leadership from the Chair is a key contributor to board performance but is not sufficient.  High performing boards need the right structures and processes, a positive climate and clear capability. 

Once a board is up and running effectively, it is time to focus on developing the capability of individual board members.  Based on our research, and feedback from our clients, we have identified our top eight areas for director training.  We have designed a series of  highly interactive Masterclasses that can be can be tailored to meet the specific needs and aspirations of your board members. 

​We have kept these to a half day, being mindful of the demands on board members’ time.


​Our Masterclasses are offered as in-house programmes and as open programmes in partnership with Policy Hub Scotland.
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Masterclass Topics

Our Masterclasses are delivered by consultants experienced in leadership development.  Many of them also have personal experience as senior managers and non-executive board members.  The topics are
  1. High Performing Boards: what makes the difference between average and outstanding?
  2. Effective Boardroom Conversations: learning to 'read the room' and improve the quality of the conversation
  3. Creating a Positive Climate in the Boardroom: what factors create a positive boardroom climate and how can you develop more of them in your board.
  4. Managing ‘High- Stakes” : what happens when internal or external pressures lead to stress and bring out the worst of our shadow behaviours.
  5. Strategic Thinking for Boards: easily applied tools to improve your strategic thinking.
  6. Strategic Influencing for Boards: how does a board infuse the culture and performance of an organisation, how do board members engage and influence stakeholders to achieve their strategic goals
  7. Large Group Facilitation for Board Members (for those chairing Boards, committees or stakeholder forums with more than 20 members). This is aimed at those chairing health & social care integration joint boards or chairing large stakeholder groups.
  8. The Expert Chair: how do you chair a board or committee in a way that ensures effective scrutiny, challenge, leadership and creativity.

Effective Boardroom Conversations

Before you arrive you will uncover your own Behavioural Profile – your own personal blueprint for talking and interacting with others – by completing the Kantor Institute's Baseline Behavioural Profile (BPP) online.   Your profile offers an insight into your own behaviours in interpersonal situations at work or elsewhere in your life. 

​You will learn about 'reading the room', how to recognise when the Board is getting stuck in unhelpful, often repeating patterns of conversation (group think, 'I'm right, you are wrong', going round in circles) and how to intervene to change them.
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The Board in 'High Stakes' 

You know you are in high stakes when you are triggered by something or someone.  You experience typical stress responses: in extreme cases your heart rate speeds up and your hands get clammy.  In less extreme situations you can feel rising emotion, increasing tension and experience outbursts of behaviour that you can't explain.   When we are in 'high stakes' the shadow side of our behaviour emerges. What impact do these shadow behaviours have on the Board?

​How do we recognise these high stakes behaviours in ourselves and others?  How do we learn to manage them and lower the stakes?
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