What does it take to earn a board seat and influence what happens once you’re in the room? Award-winning corporate director Deborah Rosati shares what she’s learned from over two decades in the boardroom. 

In this episode, you’ll learn:

✔️ How to show up with presence without dominating the room

✔️ How the W.A.I.T. acronym can elevate your boardroom presence

✔️ A strategic approach to finding (and exiting) the right board roles

✔️ How women can build credibility even as the only one in the room 

Deborah Rosati is the founder and CEO of Women Get On Board and co-founder of Women Funding Women. Her mission is clear: to help women show up with confidence and credibility at the highest levels of leadership.

From asking better questions to knowing when not to speak, this is essential listening for anyone pursuing board roles or seeking to show up with confidence in high-stakes meetings.

CONNECT WITH ANDREA

💻Website: TalkAboutTalk.com

💼LinkedIn – Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/

💼LinkedIn – Talk About Talk: https://www.linkedin.com/company/talkabouttalk/

📣Newsletter: https://www.talkabouttalk.com/newsletter/

🟣Podcast – Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/talk-about-talk-communication-skills-training/id1447267503

🟢Podcast – Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3afgjXuYZPmNAfIrbn8zXn?si=9ebfc87768524369

CONNECT WITH DEBORAH

💻Website: https://deborahrosati.ca/

💼LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/deborahrosati

📱Instagram: @deborah_rosati

CONNECT WITH WOMEN GET ON BOARD

💻Website: http://womengetonboard.ca/

💼LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wgobcanada/

📱Instagram: @wgobcanada

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

📖 Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins: https://amzn.to/41mgXuf

📖 Bragging Rights by Lisa Bragg: https://amzn.to/3Jiz1Pz

TRANSCRIPTION

Deborah Rosati: I think, as women, we sometimes hold ourselves back. We’re not good enough. We’re not smart enough. We’re not pretty enough. And you know what? We are enough. 

Andrea Wojnicki – Talk About Talk: If you ever wondered what it takes to land a corporate board seat, you’re about to hear from someone who’s made it her mission to show you how.

About Deborah Rosati

Deborah Rosati is an award-winning corporate director who served on boards for over 20 years. She’s also the founder and CEO of Women Get On Board and the co-founder of Women Funding Women Incorporated. She’s on a mission to increase the number of women on boards, close the funding gap, and cultivate the next generation of female corporate directors and founders. In this conversation that you’re about to hear, Deborah shares what boards actually look for in their candidates, what holds many women back, and the exact playbook that you can use to go from quiet expert to board-ready, visible, and in demand.

You’ll also learn an acronym that you can use to guide your communication in board meetings and beyond. And I love this acronym. Let’s do this. Let’s talk about talk. 

I’m Dr. Andrea Wojnicki, and this is Talk About Talk, where we coach ambitious executives to stand out with confidence and credibility. To learn more, click the links in the show description. Now, let’s jump right into my conversation with Rosati.

Thank you, Deborah, for being here today to talk with me and the Talk About Talk listeners about getting women on boards. 

DR: Well, thank you, Andrea. Delighted my favorite topic each and every day. 

Communication Skills That Matter in the Boardroom

AW: So we’re gonna put a little bit of a communication skills spin on this as we were talking about, and my first question for you is, can you help us identify some communication skills that are particularly important for board members?

DR: That is a great question. I think I’ve thought long and hard on that. I would say for board members in particular, you have to remember your role. Your role is there to have an oversight, insight, foresight in hindsight. So you’re not there to manage the business day to day. So how you’re showing up is really important.

That ties back to your role from an oversight perspective. So active listening. You have to be going into the boardroom, not telling the executive team what to do, but listening and be really active. And I know I have to work on that each and every day. But that listening, because if you’re there to provide and make informed decisions, you have to understand the issues, and you need clarity around the issues.

And so a way that I like to communicate on the active listening is, so Andrea, let’s say you are the board member and you’re presenting a sensitive matter, I might come back to you, Andrea, and say, so Andrea, what I’m hearing you say is x, y, z. Am I missing anything, or can you help me understand? Right? And that’s really that active listening, where you’re listening to that person.

But maybe you need to clarify, maybe you need some additional information, or, uh, you don’t wanna come across as a board member telling the person across the table from you what to do. And I’ve been on the other side of that as an executive, where once a quarter would come in and tell me what to do as the CFO, and I vowed to myself, I would never be one of those board members.

So I feel like active listening is number one. Secondly, showing up with empathy, being an empathetic listener, and being empathetic in your communications. So. I think as women, we do a really great job of showing up with empathy. We’re listening. That’s our EQ, right? EQ, our emotional intelligence. Empathy is one element of it.

So when you’re coming in, you’re looking, you’re observing. I might be observing that someone’s really tired in the boardroom, someone’s really tired around the table. Executive, it could be a board member, and maybe it’s a communication that you have not right then and there in the board meeting, but it might be after you call the person up and say, Hey Andrea, I noticed you’re really tired.

Is everything okay? Being empathetic? Maybe understanding, you know, the board meetings that the length of the board meetings, the time that you’re communicating with each other, and maybe some people have different styles, right? Some people like to be confrontational, some like to be collaborative, and so really that rolls up to that emotional intelligence, and I think as women, we do a really good job showing up with that, but we can lean in with that empathy.

AW: So, listening and being empathetic. I have to tell you, I’ve been on some not-for-profit boards, and I remember this, this sort of mantra, which was nose in, hands out. You see the head nod. Um, I feel like this should be updated based on what you said, which makes a lot of sense. Maybe it’s ears in hands out. 

DR: I love that. Well, so yeah, so Andrea, you’re right, there’s a commentary called Nose and Fingers Out. So whether you put your fingers in or you pu