{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"The Boardroom Path","title":"Psychological Safety in the Boardroom with Andrew Seerden","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":2338,"description":"What happens when a board only hears what it is allowed to hear?\nIn this episode of The Boardroom Path, host Ralph Grayson speaks with Andrew Seerden, an independent director and Growth Advisory Board chair based in Auckland, about why boards fail on information rather than intelligence. Drawing on a live case, a $350 million New Zealand B2B business whose long-serving CEO delivered growth while running a culture of fear, Andrew explains why psychological safety is a governance design task for the chair, not a cultural aspiration for HR.\nThe timing matters. PwC's latest board effectiveness survey found that 41% of executives rate their boards as excellent or good, yet only 17% of those who rarely interact with the board say the same, a perception gap that tends to surface only under real pressure. Andrew sets out the mechanics that close it: board charters that codify noses in, fingers out, independent and dotted-line reporting channels, directors visiting sites without asking permission, and a collaboration contract that defines trust with the CEO in advance. Silence, he argues, is the signal chairs should never ignore.\nAndrew Seerden: Andrew Seerden is an independent director and Growth Advisory Board chair based in Auckland, New Zealand, and the founder of Seerden Board Partners, a board and governance advisory practice working with founders, owners, CxOs and chairs in New Zealand and internationally. He brings 30 years of senior commercial leadership in B2B businesses, including senior roles at Hewlett-Packard, Compaq and IBM across New Zealand and the Netherlands, and spent 11 years as Chair of the Board of Trustees at the national charity StarJam, guiding it through scale, financial restructuring and founder-CEO succession. Through Seerden Board Partners and Fresh Perspectives he advises on board effectiveness, advisory board design, commercial growth and CEO counsel, and he writes regularly on governance for a board-level audience. He holds an MBA from...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/G1uU7T2K5h04MQMPyxv_eCIOS7fQfv5ldjQOH6K6dHU/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS80MzQ1/YWYwZWI5NzIzMmIz/NzEyYWJiNTJhZGEy/NTUzOC5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}