I have the advantage of seeing the executive search relationship from both sides simultaneously — the client’s perspective on what they need from a search firm, and the search firm’s perspective on what it can and cannot provide. This dual view has given me a clear picture of the gap between what chairpersons and nomination committees expect from executive search relationships and what they typically receive, and the expectations that are reasonable versus those that are not.

Let me share what I have learned from chairs and nomination committee members about what they value, what frustrates them and what they wish search firms understood better about their position.

What They Value Most

The expectation that chairpersons articulate most consistently as the most important quality in a search firm relationship is directness — the willingness to tell them what they need to hear rather than what they want to hear. This sounds straightforward. It is not. The social dynamics of a senior advisory relationship create pressure toward agreement and affirmation that is very difficult to resist consistently.

The specific manifestations of directness that chairs value most are: an honest assessment of whether the brief as written is realistic given the actual talent market, honest feedback about why strong candidates have declined to progress, and honest evaluations of shortlisted candidates that include the concerns alongside the endorsements. Chairs who have been through search processes where the firm presented candidates without surfacing material concerns — because the firm was worried about disrupting the relationship — have learned to ask explicitly for the concerns before trusting the endorsements.

The second quality that chairs consistently describe as important is genuine senior engagement. The partner who attended the kick-off meeting and has since been absent, with the work being done by a less senior team, is a consistent frustration. Chairs who are being asked to make consequential governance decisions based on shortlisted candidates expect those candidates to have been assessed by an executive of equivalent seniority to the role being filled. The senior associate who conducts the candidate assessments and the partner who presents the shortlist are providing different things, and experienced chairs know the difference.

What Frustrates Them

The frustrations that chairpersons most frequently express about executive search relationships fall into three categories. The first is process over judgment: search firms that follow a rigid process regardless of the specific context of the mandate, that produce long lists when a focused approach would be more appropriate, that conduct the same number of reference calls for a Non-Executive Director appointment as for a CEO appointment, that present shortlists at a predetermined time regardless of whether the search has produced candidates of sufficient quality.

The second frustration is the management of candidate expectations: situations where candidates have been told things about the role, the organisation or the likely timeline that are not accurate, and where the chair discovers this through the candidate rather than through the search firm. Candidate management is a significant part of the executive search mandate, and the firms that do it poorly create governance problems that chairs spend significant time resolving.

The third frustration — and this is the most delicate — is the conflict of interest that arises when a search firm maintains active relationships with both the organisation conducting the search and candidates who are being considered for the role. This conflict is managed with widely varying levels of care and transparency across the industry. Chairs who have encountered it managed badly are permanently cautious about it.

What They Wish We Understood Better

The observation that I hear most frequently from chairs about what search firms do not adequately understand is the governance context within which board appointments are made — the political dynamics of the nomination committee, the prior commitments and relationships that constrain the board’s freedom of choice, the communications implications of different appointment decisions and the timeline constraints that are created by the board’s external reporting obligations.

These governance realities determine what is possible in an executive search for a board appointment, and the search firm that does not understand them will consistently propose approaches that are technically well-designed but practically unworkable. At JOlivier & Partners, we invest in understanding the governance context of every board appointment we lead. This is what it means to be an advisor rather than a service provider.