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.

Types of Co-Leadership: A Case Study

There are many co-leadership models to adopt. To decide what works for you, return to why you’re using this model to begin with. For example, as co-leaders you could delegate responsibilities so that you each take charge of matters specific to your strengths. Or you could also be ‘substitutes’ for each other, the model my partner and I chose, where your co-leader could jump in at a moment’s notice to assist in your place.

Some background: my current role wasn’t initially intended as a co-leadership position. I was excited when I was first offered the position as it was a role I had deep respect for and it presented an opportunity to grow in security – a field that was new to me at the time. But the role also meant that I would be responsible for two time zones at once. At that point in my life, my priorities had shifted. While I continued to have ambitious career plans, finding balance was also important as I was a new mum to a one-year-old. Taking on the role as a sole leader would mean I would not be able to give my best at work or at home.

I lobbied hard for co-leadership as it offered the opportunity to balance my career ambitions with my goals as a parent. There are, as mentioned, many ways to shape the partnership, but for my case we chose to be ‘substitutes’ for each other. My co-leader and I chose to be completely on top of each other’s responsibilities and were ready to step in to cover one another, even without creating a separate handover list. As such, when unexpected childcare matters inevitably surfaced, I was able to commit to being there for my child at a moment’s notice. Likewise, when my partner needed cover, he knew that I would focus on getting things done at work.

Is Co-Leadership For You? Here’s How To Decide

Finding your own style of leadership takes time. If you’re interested to see if the co-leadership model may be for you, the three questions below would help you assess whether your organization, potential co-leader, and you yourself are ready to adopt this model.

Are You Willing to Share the Limelight?

While there may be slow shifts in mindsets, most professional settings continue to reward individuals. You may have been conditioned to believe that this might be the only way to advance professionally. Taking a step away from this to co-lead therefore takes quite a bit of unlearning.

Be honest: How willing are you to be that vulnerable and open with your partner? Are you ready to trust someone else to have such a key role in driving your career? Whether it’s obtaining visibility from higher management or staying in-sync on daily matters, you need to be okay with a relatively intense level of communication. Without being able to do so, the benefits to this model are moot.

Do You Respect Your Potential Partner?

You need to really trust your partner for co-leadership to work. While you can never really know your co-leader completely, mutual respect helps you to find your way back when either party shows unexpected behaviour. My co-leader and I had the advantage of knowing each other before taking on this partnership. We had the benefit of a relatively strong foundation of trust and respect before reinforcing it through working together as co-leaders.

This said, I’d wager that co-leadership could work as long as both parties are invested in building trust. If you’re thinking of co-leading with someone new to you, take the time to suss them out to see if your values truly align. Be sure to ask for concrete examples in which they demonstrate these values. For instance, previous examples of how they dealt with unexpected challenges or steps they took to resolve conflicts. Again, you can never fully know another person. But these stories offer a way for you, if nothing else, to practice having open conversations and a starting point to see if you might be a good fit.

Is Your Organization Open to New Ideas?

Co-leadership remains a relatively rare model, and you’ll need to make the case to higher management to show why it’s worth taking the risk. You’ll need to show them what they stand to gain from taking a step away from the status quo. My current position as co-leader was new, and it took a fair bit of lobbying to persuade key stakeholders – even in an organization that valued innovation and was anchored in a relatively high level of trust.

Take time to audit your organization’s values. If efforts to champion transformation have been nothing more than lip service, or if most teams function in relatively toxic environments, think twice about trying to make co-leadership work in this instance. Even if you and your co-leader make a dream team, any impact you make – if at all – would be minimal if no one is open to change.

After you find the right person to co-lead with and get the green light for this leadership model, take the time to build the right foundations. Co-leadership is anchored in trust. You and your co-leader need to be able to trust each other 110% of the time. You need to make sure that your values continue to be aligned through the partnership. So don’t agree on the basics and try to ‘figure it out’ as you go along. Instead, build a system that holds you both accountable to each other and your team.

Commit to being open and direct. As individuals, what are your career plans? If your goal is to be promoted to a specific position in the organization, how can you build the skills and portfolio needed to achieve this? You will both be working together and as such, being up front manages expectations and establishes the ‘why’ that drives your decisions.

As leaders, what principles and values do you stand by? What behaviours and ethics do you both expect your team to demonstrate? How will you manage unacceptable behaviours? You will need to present a united front. Get clear so that you can jointly present a consistent message as leaders.

Make a plan for how you will manage disagreements which will inevitably arise. Define steps you’ll collectively take together. For example, my co-leader and I resolved to discuss disagreements only between us. We take turns to listen and explain our views. We honor the outcome of the discussion and present this shared view to the team.

Create a system that helps you to stay on track with your commitments and be explicit about keeping to it. Things can look especially rosy when you first lay the necessary ground rules, but motivations can fade. Different situations will demand that you adapt. Having this predetermined structure allows you to stay aligned and change as needed together.

To give you a better idea of what this could look like, here are specific strategies and rules that my co-leader and I honor, building on the principles listed above. The ‘how’ of doing things can be challenging to define, and my goal here is to offer examples that you and your co-leader could use. If anything seems challenging or excessive, that’s fine. This isn’t meant to be a checklist. Take what works, and return to the principles above to create steps that would work for you.

Set Clear Goals

Both my co-leader and I, as well as the leadership model, were new to the team when we first started. We knew it was important to start on the right foot and developed 30/60/90-day plans so that we knew what we wanted to achieve. This helped us stay on track and the small wins with each milestone helped us to build trust with the team.

Establish One Voice

Our core rule was to speak with one voice and to always be aligned. To help us achieve this, we cc-ed each other on every email. We relayed this to the team from the get go so that they’d know to do the same. The sheer volume of email was a bit of a shock at the beginning, but having access to the same information helped us to stay on the same page.

In interacting with the team or stakeholders, we always had one conversation. In these instances, staying up to date on information at all times was important. Our rule on cc-ing each other on all matters helped to facilitate this. In the event that only one of us attended meetings, the other would take notes and share key points and decisions after.

This rule extended to all matters – from business decisions to employee matters. For instance, one of our teammates may have had a personal issue that they felt more comfortable raising with only one of us. Whether this was because of a one-to-one setting, rather than two on one, or that they were more at ease with one of us, we were open that these details would be brought to our co-leader’s attention separately. This reinforces our ‘one voice’ rule while meeting teammates on their terms.

Schedule Check-Ins

To make sure we stayed on track, my co-leader and I scheduled check-ins to get feedback from each other, discuss key issues, and review our joint strategy so that we continued to stay aligned. These check-ins are in addition to all the other discussions and meetings we attended together. This might seem like a lot, but these conversations also helped us to build trust that in turn allowed us to continue to stay aligned.

When we started co-leading, we met daily. We were new to this – both in terms of executing this leadership model and working together in this capacity – and the frequency helped us to give honest feedback and adapt our plans, and change what wasn’t working quickly. After things stabilized, and both the team and ourselves found a good rhythm, we reduced these check-ins to 2 to 3 times a week, for a shorter duration of 30-minutes each.

Manage All Stakeholders

Once you’ve established a system between you and your co-leader, it’s time to lay ground rules for how you would manage your stakeholders – from teammates, to colleagues in other departments, and higher management.

For your team, consider what happens when you don’t present a united front: your teammates, knowing one co-leader is more likely to give in to certain behaviours than others, may reach out to the co-leader that would give them permission to do what they want. They may seek permission for something small and relatively inconsequential, but this act makes it harder for you to help them trust this new model. To trust that you are indeed acting as one when your behaviour suggests otherwise.

Admittedly, presenting a united front can be challenging when teammates connect better with one co-leader over the other. Let’s say your teammates like co-leader A over co-leader B. It’s human nature that B may feel a little slighted. And it’d be easy for A to keep being the ‘favorite’, and feel good about themselves. But taking the easy route here makes it even harder to build trust and drive the team with the co-leadership model.

Instead, use this misalignment to your advantage. In this instance, A has an opportunity to influence their teammates’ views to help them see value in reaching out to both co-leaders and how B can actually support them as well. This action reinforces the united front that both co-leaders have worked hard to establish, and helps teammates to adapt to this leadership model.

This united front extends to how you reach out to higher management. Remember: you’re working together like machinery. You need to be aligned in the messages you’re presenting and consistently ensure that you’re both getting the same visibility.

So devise a strategy together that lets you both shine. Who do you want to raise visibility with? What do each of you want to be known for? How do these connections impact your team’s ability to deliver? For example, depending on your career plans, it may make sense for one co-leader to build visibility with leaders in certain departments more than the other. Depending on your current experiences, one of you may have shared experiences with other stakeholders that help with building better and stronger connections.

Again, one co-leader may be more likeable than the other. If you’re the relatively unfavored one, it’s tough, but take a step back to focus on the bigger picture: what are the larger goals you and your co-leader want to achieve? Does having a stronger connection, perhaps because of shared interests, help your team? Even if it doesn’t feel great, could you use this as an opportunity to learn from your co-leader? For example, if they seem more charismatic, observe their body language and stories they use to connect with others. Ask them for feedback on your own interactions with others. This isn’t to say you should become them – it’s a suggestion to build your skills, if you choose to, with someone you trust.

Lastly, just as you check-in regularly with your co-leader, make it a point to actively seek feedback from all your stakeholders. This can be especially challenging when it comes to managing up and across. Without working as regularly with them as you do with your team, adapting to the new co-leadership model will take more time.

Don’t expect that they’ll have the same commitment as your team to, for example, adhere to your rules. Instead, be proactive and seek feedback. Give them time to get comfortable with actually giving feedback, and show them how you value their insights by adapting to better address their needs.

1 Decide if Co-leadership Is for You

Co-leading demands a different mindset where you take your partner into account in every decision you make. Intense communication and trust are key to making the partnership work – and this may not be for everyone. Before worrying about other factors, be honest: are you ready to go all in?

2 Create Systems To Stay Aligned

Build systems to help you and your co-leader honor the values and rules you’ve defined. Schedule regular check-ins to review and make ongoing adjustments. Make a plan for managing disagreements between yourselves so that you consistently present a united front to all stakeholders.

3 Actively Seek Feedback

Whether it’s from your co-leader, your team, or other stakeholders, be proactive about getting feedback. Use their feedback to make adjustments so that you may better serve them as leaders. As you develop your co-leadership style, be mindful that others need time to adapt to the partnership.