Chairman / Lead Director Playbook — Chairing, Not Running

Three chairman moments in six weeks at Vianet Comunicaciones, S.A.: a board split 4-5 on a €420M Portuguese fibre capex, a CEO succession trigger, and an Argonaut activist letter. The participant plays the chair, not the CEO. Process-quality scoring across the four chairman tools — framing, sequencing, recusal, after-the-meeting — and three failure modes: shadow-CEO, rubber-stamp, sole-channel.