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What it takes to get a board seat, and what nobody tells you beforehand

Matthew Wright has held multiple NED and board advisor roles across private and public companies. In this session with Rich, he covered the real mechanics of board appointments: what boards want, how to get your first role, and the mindset shift that trips up even the most experienced executives.

Most senior professionals think about NED roles too late, too vaguely, and with the wrong mental model. They assume board experience is a natural next step that will materialise once they reach a certain level, and then wonder why it doesn’t.

Matthew Wright’s take is less flattering, but more useful: boards are not waiting for you. They’re looking for a very specific combination of skills, sector knowledge, and personal chemistry, and if you’re not actively positioning yourself, you’re invisible.

Here are the key things that came out of the session.

The NED vs board advisor distinction, and why it matters

An advisory role and a NED role sound similar from the outside, but they carry fundamentally different legal and fiduciary responsibilities. NEDs have formal duties: to the company, to shareholders, and under governance frameworks. Advisors don’t.

Matthew’s advice: before you accept any board-adjacent role, be very clear about which one you’re being offered. The upside of a NED role (credibility, governance experience, network) comes with real downside exposure. Know what you’re signing up for.

The mindset shift is the hardest part of the whole transition.

For executives who have built careers by driving things forward (owning outcomes, managing teams, solving problems), the NED role is a jarring adjustment. The role asks you to challenge, question, and occasionally slow things down in service of better decisions.

Matthew is unusually direct about this: most first-time NEDs slip into executive mode. They want to fix things. They over-step. And it damages their effectiveness, and sometimes their relationships with management, quickly.

What boards are actually looking for

Three things, in practice:

• Sector relevance. Boards want people who understand their market. Generic corporate experience is rarely enough.
• Functional depth. Finance, technology, and operations are consistently the most in-demand skill sets. If you have deep expertise in one of these, make it legible.
• The perspective gap. The most valuable board members bring a viewpoint the existing board doesn’t have. Before you pursue any board, ask: what do they currently lack that I can credibly offer?

Chemistry, Matthew notes, matters more than most people expect. Boards are small rooms with high stakes and long time horizons. Fit, in terms of how you communicate, how you handle challenge, how you build trust, is genuinely decisive.

Getting your first role: the network / sector / cause framework

Three practical routes in:

• Your existing network. The most common route. Someone in your network recommends you to a board they’re connected to. This is relationship-driven and tends to move faster than any other route.
• Sector expertise. If you have deep domain knowledge in a sector actively looking for board talent, that’s a legitimate and direct route. This is where sector mapping and deliberate positioning pays off.
• Purpose-led organisations. Charities, educational institutions, cultural bodies. Matthew frames them as genuine preparation: you learn governance fast, you build a track record, and you do something meaningful in the process.

On search firms: they’re relevant for FTSE and large private equity-backed boards. For most other roles, appointments are almost entirely relationship-driven. Knowing which route applies to the role you’re targeting matters.

Time commitments: model them before you commit

Private boards typically require around two to three days per quarter. Listed companies, especially if you’re on audit or remuneration committees, require substantially more. Committee chair roles can feel close to a part-time executive commitment during busy periods.

The advice here is: map the time before you say yes. Not after. A NED role that conflicts with your executive calendar, or takes more than you budgeted, creates stress in both directions.

Due diligence: the part most people skip

Matthew is clear: a bad first NED experience is hard to undo. If the board is dysfunctional, if the company’s finances are fragile, if the chair is weak, your tenure will reflect that, regardless of how good you were.

Before you accept, get clear on: the quality and credibility of the chair; the financial health of the business; the dynamics of the existing board; and what the board genuinely expects of a new NED. The interview process is as much your due diligence as theirs.

Want to go deeper

Matthew goes further in the recording on LinkedIn positioning, governance requirements, and what he wishes he’d known before his first board appointment. All of that is in the video above.

If you want access to sessions like this one, plus direct coaching from Rich and our cohort of professional coaches, feel free to explore the benefits OnUpBeyond offers through Career Advice & Coaching.

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• Four 1:1 coaching sessions with a pre-selected coach from our curated group (all coaches are highly experienced and have been partnering with us for the last year)

• Integration between your coaching conversations and the wider Momentum ecosystem

• Weekly bespoke advice from Rich

• Senior guest speakers — new recordings every two weeks

• On-demand video library with over 150 videos

• Access to psychological profiling 

• Unlimited access to “Rich AI” — trained on 20 years of expertise

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