Boardroom blues: CEOs left high and dry by their directors even before Trump's tariff turmoil

Even before U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs threw markets and companies into turmoil, global CEOs were already unhappy with the support they were getting from their boards of directors in navigating uncertainty, a survey showed on Monday.

Just 22% of the corporate chief executives surveyed in late 2024 by the consultancy Spencer Stuart felt their boards were providing the help they needed in an increasingly uncertain business environment, the study found.

Directors, while happier with their own performance, also saw ample room for improvement, with just 43% saying they felt boards effectively supported top managers in a "rapidly evolving and complex" business environment.


Spencer Stuart surveyed 787 CEOs and 1,694 directors. Trump's sweeping levies on goods entering the U.S. have upended markets, sent governments scrambling to respond and left many companies pondering only bad options.

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Global trade issues and navigating differences of opinion on policies have made the CEO's job harder in recent weeks, said Spencer Stuart's head of CEO and board practice, Jason Baumgarten. "In this moment of need, CEOs are reaching out to their boards to get counsel," Baumgarten said. "It's really stress-testing the relationship between the board and the CEO."

Boards are often composed of current and former executives from other companies, and typically meet four times a year. They have a legal duty to fire top managers on behalf of shareholders if they underperform, and a recent study indicated they were becoming more willing to do so.

But those heightened expectations are also being turned on them, according to one CEO quoted in the report. "In normal times, the quarterly advisory nature of boards is just fine, but in volatile times... it would be great to feel like your board is operating with an 'all-hands-on-deck' attitude when they see you and your team working incredibly hard day and night and weekends to deliver for them," the CEO said.

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More companies than ever before want to fill their boards with active CEOs, in part because COVID-19 taught them valuable lessons about virtual work and managing supply-chain disruption, Baumgarten said.

"Many boards have fewer active executives on them than in prior decades," he said.