Co-Leadership: How Does It Work And Is It Right For You?

As with all leadership styles, finding the right fit takes time. It continues to evolve as your business needs and team grows. You adapt with feedback and experience, and make it your own in time. It’s no different with co-leadership. This Power Read seeks to offer an introduction to a model that remains relatively rare in practice, and ways to get started if it sounds like a leadership style you’d like to explore. You’ll also see examples and anecdotes from my experience as a co-leader, which I hope serve as starting points for you to build your foundations.

In this model, leadership responsibilities are shared among two equal partners. It’s a lot like marriage or life partnerships in that sense, where you and your co-leader are united as a team. As co-leaders, you’re partners-in-crime. You’ll have someone you trust to spar with, to learn different perspectives from, to be your sounding board – something rare in increasingly senior positions.

You also become each other's mentors. You get the chance to teach and learn from each other. One of things I’ve especially appreciated is always having someone in my corner. On occasions when my confidence wanes, encouragement from my co-leader offers a boost that keeps me motivated and empowered to achieve our goals.

From an organization’s standpoint, the co-leadership model exemplifies the saying ‘one plus one equals more than two.’ With co-leaders, the organization gets to draw on the best of both individuals to drive better decisions to improve the quality and speed of work.

For example, my co-lead and I are of different genders and come from very different cultural backgrounds. While we both have a background in Finance, we specialize in different areas. The diversity widens our perspectives in analyzing and making decisions. Co-leadership gives us, and the organization, the chance to draw on our understanding of and perspectives from Latin America and Germany. Our experiences in sales and corporate functions respectively help us to better understand business and stakeholder needs as we shape solutions.