In an era of regulatory scrutiny, reputational risk, and rising stakeholder expectations, boards are under pressure to deliver robust oversight and strategic clarity.
Yet despite years of progress in board diversity and compliance, groupthink in decision-making continues to undermine board effectiveness. It’s not always loud — often it hides in politeness, deference, or discomfort. But the cost is high: missed risks, diluted challenge, and overconfident decisions that go untested.
This behavioural blind spot is the silent saboteur of board effectiveness. Groupthink isn’t loud, disruptive, or easy to diagnose. It shows up in polite agreement, in deference to the loudest voice, or in the discomfort that prevents challenge — and it’s far more common than most directors would like to admit.
In a recent Genius Boards online event, Groupthink – Risk to Decision Making, CEO Sharon Constançon was joined by governance expert Loretto Leavy, co-author of the Board Behavioural Dynamics Handbook. Together, they unpacked how groupthink quietly derails board performance — and what leaders can do to spot, address, and prevent it.
Six Core Processes that Influence Behavioural Risk
To help boards diagnose and manage behavioural dynamics, the Board Behavioural Dynamics Handbook identifies six essential processes that shape how groupthink takes root or is challenged:
- Appointing
- Inducting, Training & Developing
- Evaluating & Acting
- Succession Planning (focusing on the under-reported Non-Executive Directors (NEDs))
- Composing & Designing
- Reappointing
Each of these areas can either reinforce behavioural resilience or leave the board vulnerable to conformity and silence. The Nomination Committee (NomCom), in particular, plays a vital role — yet is often underutilised.
❝ If you’re not talking about behavioural dynamics at board level, you’re only doing half the job.❞ Sharon Constançon, CEO of Genius Boards
NomCom: A Strategic Lever Against Groupthink
The Nominations Committee (NomCom) may not be the first place boards look when addressing groupthink — but it’s one of the most influential.
By shaping board composition, succession, and reappointments, the NomCom plays a direct role in creating or disrupting the behavioural conditions that lead to groupthink. When a board becomes too familiar, too aligned, or too static, challenge fades. Strategic renewal becomes critical.
An effective NomCom asks:
- Will this appointment strengthen cognitive diversity?
- Are we building a board culture that values inclusion and challenge?
- Does our reappointment process reinforce healthy behavioural dynamics — or erode them?
Used intentionally, the NomCom isn’t just about governance compliance — it’s a tool for safeguarding behavioural resilience at the top.
❝Nomination committees must look wider, deeper, and further ahead, and challenge themselves on what skills and experiences are truly needed.❞Peter Swabey, Policy and Research Director, CGIUKI
Why Strategic Inclusion Matters More Than Diversity
It’s no longer enough to tick the box on diversity. As Sharon Constançon explained, the real work lies in strategic inclusion — ensuring those diverse voices are present, empowered, heard, and engaged.
Boards need to move beyond tokenistic representation and into inclusive culture-building. That means chairs must set the tone, company secretaries must enable the process, and directors must model active listening and respectful challenge.
The Role of the Chair and Company Secretary
Much of a board’s behavioural tone is set by its leadership. A chair who is overly directive can unintentionally suppress dissent. A passive chair can allow imbalance to flourish. The maturity maps outlined in the Handbook offer a framework to help chairs and boards assess where they are — and where they need to grow.
Meanwhile, the company secretary is often the overlooked enabler of challenge, inclusion, and behavioural consistency. As Constançon noted, company secretaries who are confident, trusted, and informed can play a transformative role in countering groupthink and ensuring board processes foster healthy dynamics.
What Groupthink Actually Looks Like
During the session, both speakers shared lived examples of how groupthink manifests in real boardrooms:
- A lack of pre-meeting preparation, leading to rubber-stamping of management papers
- Overreliance on a dominant CEO or chair, who unintentionally sets the “acceptable view”
- Tokenistic appointments of NEDs who don’t feel empowered to contribute
- Board packs with too much or too little information, reducing quality of debate
- Succession processes that reinforce sameness rather than renewal
Boards facing these patterns aren’t dysfunctional — but they are vulnerable.
❝Governance can look perfect on paper, but still fail at the behavioural level.❞Loretto leavy, Company Secretary & PhD Researcher
Practical Steps to Challenge Groupthink
Tackling groupthink in decision making requires more than awareness — it demands intentional, ongoing interventions at the board level. Sharon and Loretto offered several practical interventions boards can implement immediately:
- Refresh the board regularly – Consider rotating two directors every two years to introduce new energy and thinking
- Appoint a devil’s advocate – Create space for structured challenge without personal risk
- Improve induction – Go beyond process to embed behavioural expectations early
- Clarify expectations – Make challenge and curiosity part of the board’s values and language
- Invest in the NomCom – Empower the committee to drive behavioural and skills-based recruitment
- Use maturity maps – Diagnose where the board is culturally and design development strategies accordingly
Making the Implicit Explicit
One of the most powerful takeaways from the session is this: many behavioural dynamics that fuel groupthink are implicit — unspoken, assumed, or accidental. Boards must surface them and make them explicit.
That means writing behavioural expectations into role descriptions, embedding challenge into agendas, and reviewing governance not just through a compliance lens, but through a culture lens.
Featured Webinar Replay
Despite robust structures, many boards are still blindsided by behavioural risks like groupthink — often without realising it.
In this high-impact session, Sharon Constançon and governance expert Loretto Leavy reveal the hidden dynamics that derail board decisions and share practical strategies drawn from FTSE board research and real-world evaluations
A New Standard for Governance Maturity
Boards today are under unprecedented pressure — from shareholders, regulators, and society. It’s no longer enough to comply; they must engage, question, and lead.
Addressing groupthink in decision making isn’t a soft skill exercise — it’s a governance imperative. As Constançon summarised, “Structure without behaviour is just theatre. Boards need both form and function.”
The Board Behavioural Dynamics Handbook, co-authored by Leavy and developed in collaboration with Henley Business School, University of Exeter, and CGIUKI, is an open-access resource that helps boards embed this thinking in a practical, scalable way.
Final Thought
Governance frameworks won’t protect an organisation from poor behaviour. Only people can do that.
Tackling groupthink requires courage, clarity, and commitment — from chairs, company secretaries, NEDs, and advisors. But the reward is worth it: better decisions, stronger leadership, and boards that truly perform.
Want to explore how groupthink may be shaping your board’s decisions?
Get in touch to learn how a behavioural board review or tailored training session can help.
