The Board They Never See

How Peer Networks Change Leadership

A fortnight ago, Best Buy announced that Corie Barry will step down as CEO at the end of October, after seven years in the role.

When she leaves, she will remain with the company as a strategic advisor for six months, helping her successor transition into the seat.

It is a thoughtful arrangement.

Jason Bonfig, the incoming CEO, will inherit not just the keys to a Fortune 100 retailer but also six months of access to the person who knows where every door leads. The relationships, the unwritten history, the context that no briefing document can capture.

It is the kind of structured peer support that boards rightly insist on during transitions.

And it made me think about the question that should follow.

Why do CEOs only get this kind of support when they are arriving or leaving, and almost never during the years when the decisions actually matter?

The structural gap

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the cost of leadership loneliness. The data was sobering. Around half of all CEOs report feeling lonely in the role. The majority of those say it affects their performance.

That piece named the problem.

This one names the solution.

Most CEOs operate without the kind of peer support structures that mid-level managers take for granted. 

Their executive team works for them. 

Their board oversees them. 

Their family loves them but cannot follow the technical detail of a supplier dispute or a pricing decision.

There is no peer in the building.

And so the most important decisions in any business are often made by people who have nobody to test their thinking against in the moment.

What the research shows

The data on CEO loneliness is striking, and it has been hiding in plain sight for years.

Harvard Business Review research has long established that around 50% of CEOs report feelings of isolation in the role. Of those, 61% believe it directly impedes their performance.

Two thirds.

Of the leaders most affected by loneliness, two thirds say it is making them worse at their jobs.

Set that finding against last year's retail CEO turnover, which was tracked at 116% above 2024 levels, the highest on record. Retail boards spent 2025 cycling through chief executives at a pace not seen in a generation.

Boards rightly focused on appointment and succession.

Less attention has been paid to what happens in between.

The years when the actual decisions get made.

Why the existing structures fall short

There is an obvious objection. Don't CEOs already have boards?

They do. 

And boards are essential. 

But boards have a job description that includes oversight, accountability, and succession planning. They cannot be the place a CEO admits uncertainty.

The chair who hears their CEO say, I am not sure we should make this acquisition, has just been told something that changes the conversation. Even the most supportive chair is also, structurally, the person who could replace that CEO.

Executive teams have the same problem in reverse. 

Direct reports cannot be the place a CEO works through doubt about strategy, because their job security depends on the answer.

The CEO needs somewhere to think.

Somewhere with no agenda.

Somewhere the answer does not change anyone's livelihood.

What the best ones do

When I placed a CEO into a mid-market fashion retailer.

Twelve months in, I asked her how she was finding the role.

She told me she had what she called her phantom board.

Six people. 

Three former CEOs from adjacent sectors. 

One retired finance director. 

One academic. 

One coach.

None of them on her payroll.

None of them on her actual board.

She met with two or three of them every month, sometimes individually, sometimes as a group. They had no formal authority, no fiduciary duty, no shareholding. They had nothing to gain from telling her what she wanted to hear.

That was the point.

She told me, every difficult decision I have made in this role, I have stress-tested with at least two of them first. 

They tell me when I am being delusional. 

They tell me when I am being too cautious. 

And then I make the call myself.

Three years later, the business has doubled in size. 

She still has the phantom board. 

She is still the CEO.

A pattern, not an exception

In 25 years of placing senior leaders, I have come to recognise the pattern.

The CEOs who sustain performance over five, ten, fifteen years almost always have something like this. The CEOs who plateau or derail almost always do not.

Some call it a peer board. Others, a kitchen cabinet. Others still, a mastermind group, or simply a regular dinner with three trusted contemporaries.

The form varies. The function does not.

These are people who owe the CEO nothing but honesty. Who have walked similar paths. Who can challenge without consequence.

It is, quite literally, a board they never see in the public sense. No company filing names them. No annual report mentions them. But their fingerprints are on every important decision the CEO makes.

Five questions for the CEO without one

If you are a CEO, founder, or senior leader without this kind of structure, the questions are worth asking honestly.

Most leaders I ask these of pause longer than they expect to.

1. Who do I think out loud with? If the honest answer is nobody, or only my partner, that is a structural problem, not a personal failing.

   
   

2. Who tells me when I am wrong? Executive teams are paid to deliver. Boards are paid to govern. Neither is paid to give you the unvarnished truth in real time.

   
   

3. When was the last time I had a conversation about a decision before I made it, with someone who has no skin in the game? If you cannot remember, the gap is wider than you think.

   
   

4. Who would I call at nine o'clock on a Sunday evening with a difficult question? Not who could I call. Who would I.

   
   

5. If I left the role tomorrow, who would I miss professionally? Your answer reveals where the genuine peer relationships are, and where they are missing.

The competency boards rarely measure

When a board interviews a CEO candidate, they assess strategy, financial acumen, sector expertise, leadership presence.

They rarely ask about peer networks.

They should.

Because the leader who arrives with a phantom board already in place is more durable than the one who does not. They have somewhere to take pressure that does not destabilise the organisation. They have somewhere to test ideas before they become directives. They have a quiet, off-the-record way of staying honest with themselves.

And after a year in which retail boards appointed new CEOs at the fastest pace in a generation, that durability matters more than ever.

The CEOs who last are the ones who never carry the role alone.

Not because the role is too heavy.

Because no important decision should ever be made in isolation.

The board you never see is often the one that matters most.

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Maarten Jonckers is the Managing Director of Nicholas Alexander Executive Search, a boutique firm specialising in senior leadership appointments across retail and consumer. He also facilitates peer-advisory boards for business owners through The Alternative Board.