The days of the lonely hero at the top of the company are over. On many leadership levels, dual leadership and leadership teams increasingly work side by side. I wrote this piece in April 2020. It still describes what I see in C-level mandates today.
Splitting leadership across several top executives brings challenges and potential for success in equal measure. The topics at the highest level are diverse, the questions complex, and the number of top management decisions keeps rising. That is why it helps to organise the leadership of a company as a team.
To use the full potential of a leadership tandem or team, you need leaders who work well together, who deliberately use their differences and who want to cross departmental lines. Beyond that you need clear alignment: A shared vision that everyone follows.
A further factor for shaping shared responsibility in leadership teams and creating that alignment is a clear awareness of your own role. If the leadership duo has role clarity, the collaboration is more effective and more profitable.
Leaders who are aligned and have decided to form a leadership team are more successful, and they are calmer. The workload drops, and so does the pressure of sole responsibility. When decisions are then aligned with the clear, shared vision, successful leadership comes considerably easier to top teams than to leaders on their own.
Top leadership duos and leadership teams are also personally more satisfied than a group of managers who merely see themselves as a leadership circle. A forward-looking leadership team, in which everyone lives their role fully, is aware of their effect and aligns decisions with a shared vision, has more security and a stronger reputation.
Alignment is rarely a one-off. The tandems I coach renew it every quarter, in a short session with three questions: What do we both still want? Where have our roles drifted? Which decision did we make alone that we should have made together? Whether that takes two hours or two days, I don't know in advance. It depends on how long the drift went unspoken.
Further reading on hofmann.coach: Shared leadership · Shared leadership: 15 tactful ways to challenge your boss · Leadership Coaching
Cristian Hofmann is an executive coach in Zurich and Schaffhausen (MAS Coaching & Supervision BSO, Forbes contributor). Over more than 20 years he has coached more than 1,500 leaders: CEOs, executive boards and leadership teams in Switzerland, with measurably agreed goals and, on request, pay-for-results. More about Cristian Hofmann.
This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Learn more
