When an organization sets out to appoint a new director, the search almost always begins with the same question: "What expertise are we missing?"
A digital expert. Someone with international reach. A financial heavyweight.
It's an understandable instinct. The challenges organizations face today are more tangled than ever, and boards genuinely need a wide spread of experience and knowledge to meet them.
But that lens, on its own, doesn't hold up.
The research is clear: boards rarely fail because expertise is missing from the room. They fail because that expertise never becomes collective intelligence. People stop listening to one another. The wrong questions get asked. Good minds sit at the same table and never quite meet.
The illusion of the perfect expertise matrix
Most board appointments still start from an expertise matrix. What knowledge is missing? Which sector experience do we lack? Whose network do we want to bring in?
Those questions matter. But they capture only part of what makes a director effective.
In Managing Difficult Directors (Harvard Business Review, 2026), Zangrillo and colleagues show that the greatest threat to board effectiveness is seldom a shortage of knowledge. Instead, they point to three recurring behavioural patterns that quietly erode the quality of decisions:
- The Passive Passenger
- The Dominator
- The Misguided Expert
None of these profiles is about a lack of intelligence or experience. Quite the opposite. They tend to be accomplished professionals.
The point is that success in a boardroom isn't measured by what someone knows. It's measured by how they shape the thinking of the group. When directors don't listen closely, don't challenge one another, or retreat into their own field, more diversity can actually lead to worse decisions.
So diversity is never an end in itself. It becomes a real advantage only when a board has the skill to combine different perspectives and turn them into something better than the sum of its parts.
The quiet director may be the biggest risk of all
Here's the surprising part. The greatest threat in the room today isn't necessarily the loudest voice.
It's the Passive Passenger. And this is a profile we're likely to see more of, not less. As directors grow ever more specialised in a single domain, whether that's AI, geopolitics or ESG, many fall silent the moment the discussion moves beyond their own patch. Expertise becomes a reason to hold back rather than to contribute.
When experience takes up too much space
At the other end sits the Dominator.
Usually acting from genuine commitment and the best of intentions, these directors steer the conversation, land the conclusions and nudge decisions in a particular direction. We often see former CEOs or founders step straight into the chair and, almost by reflex, into this role. They know the organization, they've been there before, and they bring a deep network with them.
But that's precisely where a governance risk hides. Amy Edmondson's work on psychological safety puts the question sharply: how do you keep the conversation open? How do you make sure constructive disagreement still has room to breathe?
Executive assessment deserves a broader brief
All of this raises a more fundamental question.
Why do we still judge board candidates mainly on their expertise?
Of course we need to understand what someone has achieved, the experience they carry and the sectors they know. But more and more, those are hygiene factors. They get you into the room; they don't make you effective once you're there.
What actually drives a board's success is a different question altogether: how will this person influence, enrich and facilitate the way the board thinks?
That calls for a different kind of assessment. One that looks past expertise alone and into behavioural competencies, influencing style and the way someone organizes their contribution.
At Quintessence, we believe a board assessment should examine at least four dimensions.
- Expertise. Does this person bring the strategic and functional knowledge the board needs?
- Cognitive flexibility. Can they synthesise complex information, connect competing perspectives and think beyond their own specialism?
- Interaction and dialogue. Do they listen actively? Do they challenge assumptions with respect? Can they build support for their own view, and do they create space for other voices, or quietly take that space themselves?
- Strategic thinking. Do they act in the long-term interest of the organization? Can they move fluently between the numbers, societal impact, culture and continuity? Because in the end, a director doesn't represent a function. They safeguard a mission.
In closing
Boards rarely fail because there's too little knowledge around the table.
They fail when that knowledge stops finding its way to itself.
Charlotte Van Beirendonck GM People & Consulting — Executive PhD Candidate, University of Antwerp
Sources
Edmondson, A. C. (2018). The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. John Wiley & Sons.
Zangrillo, M., Keil, T., & Pavićević, S. (2026). Managing difficult directors. Harvard Business Review, 104(3), 76–85.