For J.C. Watts, boardroom success doesn’t begin with strategy or financial acumen—it begins with character. At our recent Board Forum in Dallas, Watts offered a deeply personal and highly practical reflection on what makes directors effective and what allows boards to consistently deliver superior results.
Why listen to Watts? The former congressman, championship quarterback and veteran corporate director, who has served on boards of companies such as CSX, Paycom, Dillard’s and TerraX, was recognized as the top value-creating director of the past two decades in a landmark study by Corporate Board Member and AlixPartners for driving shareholder returns 15.3 percent above industry peers over a 20-year period.
“If you have to compromise one—strategy or integrity—compromise strategy. Don’t compromise integrity,” he said, quoting General Norman Schwarzkopf to a room full of seasoned directors. “When a leader or a board… when you lose integrity, you lose trust. And if you lose trust… you’ve lost your leadership.” Some tips:
Build the right team.
Watts emphasized that successful boards are structured much like successful teams he’s played on: Not every player has the same role, but each must understand the game. You need people “who can bring that institutional knowledge, that chemistry, that knowledge to a management team to say, ‘Let me tell you how we dealt with that. I dealt with this on another board, and this is how we handled it, navigated through that and worked through those issues.’”
Integrity isn’t just a virtue—it’s a governance necessity.
For Watts, integrity is what earns a director the right to lead—and the trust to influence. A loss of credibility, he said, inevitably undermines the board’s role as stewards of capital and culture. “That’s been true in everything I’ve done… in football, politics, ministry and business,” he said.
Great directors do the work.
“High-performing boards throw themselves into the mix and learn everything there is to know about the business,” he said. “You don’t need to know it at the grassroots level, but you do need to understand the dynamics. How does it make money?” This means studying industry reports, understanding competitive positioning, and being prepared to ask the hard questions that drive real insight into business performance.
Hold management—and yourself—accountable.
“Any CEO worth his or her salt, they’re honest [about performance]. When you’re not willing to be honest with yourself and say, ‘I’m not getting it done,’ that’s when you’re going to have some head-butting,” said Watts, noting that accountability flows both ways; directors must be willing to challenge management when performance lags, while also honestly assessing their own contributions to board effectiveness.
Boardroom effectiveness hinges on humility, not ego.
He encouraged directors to model humility by asking questions, deferring when appropriate and prioritizing the enterprise over personal reputation. “Nobody owes me the opportunity to be a member of Congress. Nobody owes me the opportunity to have a business… You block and tackle like you do in everything else.” This mindset creates an environment where the best ideas surface regardless of their source, and where directors remain focused on value creation rather than personal positioning.
Rethink DEI as ‘intentional opportunity.‘
“When I was in high school, we had no Black people working in the courthouse, the banks, the grocery stores… but someone crossed the railroad tracks and offered me a job,” Watts recalled. “Had someone not been willing to draw outside the lines, I never would’ve gotten that opportunity.” He reframed DEI as “intentional opportunity” and challenged directors to think beyond traditional hiring pipelines. “Often we hire from our network… which is why you have to be intentional about broadening it.”
