Sometimes, especially in non-profit organizations, I see that teams decide to have two leaders or that leaders choose to have a co-leadership.

What’s often causing such decisions is the desire to split the work and to reduce the time spent on projects. However, that idea is based on a sense that one is investing too much time. And whenever such a sense exists there is an, at least, unconscious desire to avoid doing too much. It’s how splitting the work among two leaders seems to make sense.

But, very often, the result is that more time is spent managing the cooperation and project. It is as if there was an assumption that having reduced the amount of time spent there wasn’t a need to think further about the time spent. Consequently, instead of doing a more meta-analysis of the different projects and their organization allowing to develop a vision or strategy for the project, the two leaders shift into an operational role. The latter eases the coordination of the project, and the responsibilities involved. Instead of developing the leadership aspects of their role, the chosen focus is on the management aspects of the project. Instead of figuring out how to delegate and coordinate tasks, the desire is to organize the tasks and make sure they are executed well.

What often is out of their awareness in such a situation, is that they decided to avoid a potential conflict between them. The one that is needed to align their vision of the project as well as the reason why it exists. That is the essence of what their leadership could have been.

This is not to say that it isn’t possible to have successful leadership duos. What it invites to think about, is the conversations such duos need to have and cannot avoid should they want to be successful.