Profile & Highlights

Expert on governance leadership, recruitment, development, assessment & accountability.

Executive Summary

The author of such concepts as “boardroom behaviors,” “competency matrixes” and “position descriptions,” Richard Leblanc has changed the focus and language of corporate governance and accountability. His work has been described as “one of the most important pieces of original research in governance in the last 20 years” and “a systematic blueprint for how boards are actually led and function.”

Author, lawyer, professor and speaker, Richard Leblanc is a champion of effective governance. Instead of focusing on what boards should be doing from the outside, Richard studies what boards actually do from the inside, how they are led, work and behave. He is the leading proponent of competency-based recruitment and assessment, a bold new approach to governance effectiveness.

Richard shows how effective boards and committees oversee management, work as a team, and add enormous value to the organization. His research is based on interviews with hundreds of directors and observations of boards in action, together with the assessment of boards, committees, board chairs, CEOs and individual directors. He presents a model of board effectiveness.

What Audiences Learn

  • Emerging regulation, key trends;
  • Innovation & best practices by exemplar companies;
  • Leadership development & succession planning;
  • Improving meetings & decision-making;
  • Enhancing governance and stakeholder accountability;
  • Ethical leadership & transparency;
  • Pay-for-performance oversight;
  • Effective oversight of risk & strategy;
  • Developing effective relationships & communication; and
  • Getting the right people;

Credentials

Relevant: Expertise relied upon by Fortune 500 companies, judges, media & regulators;
Experienced: Award-winning educator and top management/executive/director programs in North America, Europe & Asia-Pacific;
Credible: Widely acclaimed books, publications & expert reports;
Named: Top 40 Under 40™ (past recipient) and “Governance guru in high demand” (media);
Professional: Speaker, consultant, lawyer & tenured professor; and
Education: BSc, MBA, LLB, JD, LLM, PhD.

Most Requested Topics

  • The “New Normal” of Corporate Governance
  • Challenges of Shareholder Democracy
  • Risk Management and Crisis Planning
  • Executive Compensation and Succession Planning
  • Audit Committee Effectiveness
  • Women on Boards – The Business Case
  • Not-For-Profit Director Questions
  • Governance Trends Around the World
  • Boards in Distressed Environments

On why we speak

The practice of public speaking, the effort to marshal all one’s forces in a logical and forceful manner, to bring to the focus all the power one possesses, is a great awakener of the faculties. The sense of power that comes from holding the attention, stirring the emotions, or convincing the reason of an audience, gives self-confidence, assurance, self-reliance, arouses ambition and tends to make one more effective in every way.
Dr. Orison Swett Marden

My goal is to motivate the audience to learn, think and act, with real change occurring after I leave the room.
Richard Leblanc

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