If you could build the perfect environment for board burnout, it might look something like the current business landscape.
Corporate directors are tasked with guiding companies in the midst of what some are calling the Great Disruption. They’re dealing with a U.S. presidential administration whose policies are creating deep uncertainty, eroding investor confidence, and exposing employees to stress and layoffs. Directors are also tracking incoming regulations from the EU, while watching for geopolitical risks in unexpected places.
In this tumultuous time, managers are looking to their boards for advice, but also to gain a wider view of corporate strategies, according to Peter Gleason, CEO of the National Association of Corporate Directors. CEOs and other executives want to know what their directors are seeing in other industries and how other companies are reacting to new expectations around issues like DEI or tariffs, he explains. “If you’re a board member, you’re getting pinged more,” Gleason says.
Director types can handle spurts of higher demands, of course, but the risk of hitting capacity is undeniable when people are carrying heavier workloads for indefinite periods. That’s the case for many board members right now: NACD surveys show that directors were already working longer hours heading into 2025, spending nearly 90 hours per year in board meetings alone, compared to a previous average of 70 to 80 hours before the pandemic.
That means it’s a good time for boards to protect their directors from burning out, not only to keep them healthy, but to minimize the risk of governance failures. Here’s what the experts suggest.
Take control of your time
As a whole, boards ought to evaluate how they use their meeting time, says Christine Barton, who leads BCG’s CEO Advisory practice in North America. They can begin by managing their minutes strategically. She has found that directors are craving more time without company management present. When managers are in a room, Barton adds, directors want them to focus on the topics that matter to the board, like long-term strategies and risks, rather than the day-to-day metrics that concern the C-suite. “Instead of treating the board agenda democratically,” she says, it should be “tight and distorted.”
Boards can also leverage technology to solve problems quickly rather than letting them fester until the next gathering, particularly since virtual meetings have become normalized after the COVID lockdowns of 2020, says Gleason. “That was a lesson learned—that you can reach somebody, see their face, have a video conference immediately.”
He adds that video meetings are better than conference calls, arguing that seeing real-time reactions makes it easier for boards to reach a consensus.
Zoom out
Despite the lack of clarity about where the economy is heading, boards can still ward off messy crunchtime meetings by building frameworks to guide future decisions. For example, says Barton, since companies are expecting more M&A activity this year, some boards have developed rules that dictate how they’ll evaluate potential targets. That may include identifying attractive traits or naming undeniable deal breakers. They can also develop similar scenario plans around trade wars or other potential disruptions.
New directors can particularly benefit from perspective-taking, says Barton. A board’s onboarding process should include a high-level briefing on the company’s position relative to competitors in the field. “That gives them a framing of what really matters for the industry and what really matters for the enterprise,” she says.
Stay human
On an individual level, directors who want to ward off exhaustion should not only set boundaries, but plan for recovery periods, says Patricia Grabarek, an organizational psychologist and author of the forthcoming book Leading for Wellness. Recovery periods are “super critical,” she says, especially for leaders who are constantly switching between different tasks and contexts as executives and board leaders, putting them at risk of cognitive overload. “If you cannot let your brain recover from that, it’s just going to take you longer to make those switches,” she says.
One of the most powerful ways to optimize your downtime, she adds, is to master a new skill or hobby and flex a different part of your brain.
Finally, directors should be mindful about looking after each other, says the NACD’s Gleason, who advises that boards “create an atmosphere of checking in.” Many people sit on several boards at once, he notes, and could be facing pressures as directors and in their personal lives. Mitigating the risk of burnout means “checking in with your fellow directors,” he says, “having a conversation and making sure that there aren’t 50 things on their plates so they can’t participate the same way they used to.”
