Building Trust with Your Board

Harvard Business Review Executive Playbook (May 28, 2025) by Rachel DuRose frames trust as the single most-important precondition for CEO-board alignment. Without trust, boards second-guess leadership and slow momentum; with trust, CEOs speak openly about challenges and boards supply clarity, perspective and sound judgment when uncertainty rises. The piece offers a structured set of moves CEOs can run early in tenure to build that durable trust. For SEA mid-market boards where the CEO-chair relationship is often shaped by ownership tenure rather than design, the playbook surfaces the deliberate building blocks that founder-influenced rooms rarely codify.