'Your head has to be up, not down': a good tip for chairmen on being more effective in leading their hoards.

• Author: Behan, Beverly
• Position: ENDNOTE - Reprint

Some CEOs like to conduct a run-through of the entire board meeting with their executives a day or two in advance. This can be an extremely useful practice, particularly when you are trying to create improvements. Right away you will see where the discussion is likely to become bogged down in details, or where a particular presentation may lull the board to sleep. This enables you to make changes that will lead to far more effective meetings. it may not be necessary to follow this practice every time, but when you are focused on heightening the effectiveness of your board and its meetings, this can be a useful exercise.

It's important to factor your executive team into the boardroom equation. Most executives--and most CEOs for that matter--are not trained on how to be effective in working with a board. They learn from watching their bosses, picking up good and bad habits in the process. Make sure to give your executives feedback on how they are coining across in board meetings, reinforcing what they are doing well and making suggestions for improvement. Consider asking the board for their comments on the management presentations in an executive session of only the board and CEO at the end of board meetings, and passing these comments on to your executives.

Directors' perceptions of an executive's boardroom capabilities are important; among other things, they can become a significant factor in succession planning discussions. One CEO of a health care company held a half-day governance tutorial for his entire executive team shortly after the company's IPO, explaining," I wanted to give all of my senior management an overview on how boards work so that they fully understand the context in which they will now be working with our board as a public company." Others have offered coaching to some of their top executives who lack strong presentation skills or seem uncomfortable responding to board questions during the meetings.

Leadership issues extend to board meetings themselves, where the quality of discussion and decision making is often directly related to the chairman's skills in running the meeting. Most CEOs and chairmen learn how to run board meetings by watching their predecessors, or by watching another chairman do it if they have an opportunity to serve on an outside board.

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If you are serving as chairman and CEO--which remains the predominant model in the United States--it's important to recognize that chairing...