Text: Marjolein de Jong | Photo: David Meulenbeld | February 22, 2022
“Could we perhaps call a little later?” Marilieke Engbers asks in an email ahead of our phone conversation. “My Wednesday morning walk is sacred. With all the commotion surrounding the release of my book right now, that sometimes creates an internal conflict.”
But conflicts aren’t a bad thing, according to Engbers herself. As she explains in her recently published book *Onder commissarissen*—which has been nominated for Best Management Book of 2022—facing conflicts is what keeps you growing. In it, she examines how the unspoken—interpretations, feelings, blind spots, and conflicts—influences decision-making in the boardroom.
You write in your book that supervisory board members often lack the time to truly understand what’s going on in a company. That seems like an easy problem to solve.
“You’d think so, indeed. In practice , supervisory board members often serve on multiple supervisory boards and meet only a few times a year. How can you possibly know what’s going on in a company or organization under those circumstances? It goes beyond simply studying the annual financial statements. If supervisory board members don’t know what’s really going on in the organization—because they’re only involved part-time—how can the decisions they make be helpful? Moreover, this means the company’s CEO is being evaluated by people who have far less insight into what’s happening in the organization than he or she does.
And when the supervisory board members do meet, there’s little time and many items on the agenda. In just a few hours, they have to comply with numerous regulations and make important decisions. Such a packed agenda doesn’t encourage sharing your reflections, dilemmas, and uncertainties or thinking through major issues together.'
'Conflicts don’t just come up openly when the substantive conflict automatically turns into a relational conflict.'
How did you find out what else was going on beyond what was actually said?
“I listened to what was said during the meeting and, afterward, asked the executives in one-on-one conversations what they had thought and felt but hadn’t said. I discovered that board members and supervisory board members interpreted parts of the meeting differently but didn’t share this with one another. This is partly due to a lack of time, but also because when things get tense, a lot of relevant information isn’t formally stated but is discussed in the hallways instead. Conflicts do not simply come up openly when a substantive conflict automatically turns into a relational conflict.
Preventing an open relational conflict among one another is in everyone’s best interest because such a conflict damages mutual trust and, consequently, the quality of decision-making. In particular, no one wants to risk an open relational conflict with the executive. After all, the supervisory board members depend on the information the executive has about the organization.”
And of course, it doesn’t help that the CEO in question is attending the meeting.
'Exactly! The idea is that the supervisory board members are bold enough to speak their minds about the CEO and the organization. That turns out not to be true. They, too, fear being excluded if they disagree with the CEO or with their fellow supervisory board members. The result is that they sometimes all put on a show that everything is going well, even though they have strong opinions about one another. This is not without risk.
If certain issues aren’t probed thoroughly enough, if people trust each other too much, or if there’s too much gossip about one another, the wrong decisions can be made. That can then have major societal consequences. Consider, for example, the ING money-laundering scandal, or the debacles at Vestia, DSB, and Eneco. “Despite all the rules, codes, supervisory board members, and external regulators, we have been unable to prevent these debacles.”
'Even if a CEO says they’re open to criticism, employees sometimes still don’t dare to speak up about what’s really going on.'
Recently, John de Mol came under fire for sexually inappropriate behavior on the television show *The Voice*. How do you view this?
“WhatI find missing from the discussion about*The Voice* is the role of RTL’s supervisory board. Who oversees this powerful John de Mol? The supervisory board members also bear responsibility. Look, it’s possible that John de Mol really didn’t know about the misconduct. I call that the ‘CEO disease.’ Even if a CEO says they’re open to criticism, employees sometimes still don’t dare to speak up about what’s really going on. As a result, very little information makes its way up the chain.'
What do supervisory board members think of your book?
“I’m getting mostly positive reactions. People appreciate that there’s now a way to articulate the serious dilemmas that supervisory board members and executives face. It’s also not my intention to criticize board members. They’re generally nice people who want to do the right thing, but they operate within rules that, in my view, don’t work. I hope that through my work, they’ll learn to develop a language that makes these many dilemmas discussable and truly engage in dialogue with one another about the rules of the game.
Sometimes I wonder: doesn’t my book just create even more dilemmas for executives and supervisory board members who already have limited time together? Haven’t I made their job even harder? Still, I think we first need to embrace that complexity and then see what we can improve about the rules of the game.'
