You sit where you stand.

• Position: LETTER FROM THE CHAIRMAN

AT GRAND EVENTS such as formal state dinners as well as at more humble gatherings such as neighborhood dinner parties, where you sit often denotes where you stand. If you are a head of state, you'll be seated next to the President. If you are an important neighbor, you'll be seated next to the host. This pecking order holds true for boards of directors as well.

Over the course of the past 30 years I have served on approximately three dozen boards of public companies, private firms, charitable institutions, and civic organizations. As a director or trustee, my standing, i.e., my assumed status or importance, is often reflected in where I am seated. On corporate boards, particularly public ones, seating around the board table is often assigned. The seating arrangements generally reflect the board tenure of individual directors, with the longest serving nearer the chair. These "senior" directors are given the best seats and literally have the ear of the man or woman in charge.

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Although the lead director might be assumed to be the ranking director, he or she is often seated away from the chair, which may reflect the limited power of this increasingly popular board designation. In my experience, power resides most strongly in an executive chair and falls off significantly to a nonexecutive chair and even further to a lead director. Their varying degrees of power are reflected in their positioning around the board table where the executive or nonexecutive chair is seated at a position of prominence, whereas the lead director is frequently off to the side.

The chair is most often positioned at the head of a long rectangular table...