Splitting a leadership role between two executives is an increasingly popular practice in companies, often at the divisional and departmental level — and sometimes by naming two people as co-CEOs. Success has been mixed, and failures are often blamed on a bad fit or lack of preparation. A suitable fit and preparation do matter, but boards and leaders often act as though the challenge is mostly in setting up the arrangement.

I’ve worked with leaders for 20 years, including many co-CEOs and other leadership partnerships, in Europe, Asia, and the United States. From this work, I’ve found that initial preparation is not enough — co-leaders need to keep working on this unusual structure over time. When the process works well, the partner-leaders can create extraordinary value for the organization. But without sustained focus, co-heads often fall into the worst aspects of power-sharing, with conflicts and hesitations that undermine the business.

The best way to understand why co-leadership arrangements can devolve in this way is to describe the wrong ways companies approach this challenge — and why setting up the structure alone isn’t enough. Here are eight mistakes I see all too frequently when companies opt for a shared leadership approach:

Companies choose co-leaders to solve a talent problem, not to drive sustained results.

Too often, companies decide to appoint co-heads for the wrong reasons. At levels below the C-suite, companies will appoint dual leaders for succession planning as a way to test multiple people in a role and gather data on how each high-potential shapes up. Or they want to retain a star producer who’s actually not so interested in management, so they pair them up with a co-leader who will handle the main managerial duties. In the case of a lateral hire, leaders might pair the newbie with an old hand to better integrate a talented executive.

Those are all understandable reasons, but they’re more about the organization’s talent needs than the actual business to be done.

There’s another subtle way companies use co-leaders to solve a talent problem: to hedge risks. Choosing co-leaders reduces dependence on a single person. There can be a strategic benefit in this, but it’s also more focused on the mentality that the setup is what matters, not the process of co-heads actually working together.

Co-leaders don’t continue building credibility over time.

Conventional wisdom says that the organization needs to establish the authority of and rationale for co-leaders at the beginning of their appointment, based on their experience and how their skills complement each other. There’s nothing wrong with that — but it’s not enough.

In the six to 12 months after the joint appointment, each co-leader needs to actively establish credibility in the new role, internally and externally — and coordinate with the other co-head. In practice, that means continuing to articulate what each co-leader will do and how they will do it, recognizing that this will evolve as the business changes and unexpected leadership needs arise. The co-heads need not only to understand their positions, but also to explain them and back each other up. Beyond the messaging, colleagues and subordinates will read into how the leadership partners jointly show up — even small things such as who speaks first or who gets more time at important company events. This is all the more reason to coordinate. A great way to facilitate this process is a joint roadshow to communicate their vision of success and engage their teams. The co-heads can explain what they’re aiming for and how that will advance the organization.

Delivering joint quick wins in the first few months will also help. These can be external, such as generating impact with a key client, or internal, such as appointing key people or even changing the whole leadership team smoothly. Simplifying decision-making around a key issue can also help with credibility here, as it shows the co-heads’ effectiveness in improving how the organization works toward creating value.

They fail to identify synergies.

The next mistake happens when the two co-heads plan their work.  They often seek to “divide and conquer”: each co-head picks a few topics or challenges as their area of responsibility. The idea is to separate out the different areas, giving each partner leverage because each has less to do and has the full backing of the other co-head in any disputes. But “divide and conquer” is only the result, not the plan; and too often the co-heads divide work according to their preferences, not the needs of the business.

Instead of focusing on what they want, or where they have experience, the co-leaders should address the opportunities and threats for each area and lay out responsibilities according to the potential value to be created. Some areas indeed can be safely divided up, but others will benefit from working collaboratively, to achieve a “1+1=3” result.

That’s what happened in a financial services firm I worked with. The co-CEOs had different client and product backgrounds. Rather than simply divide up the areas in predictable ways, they approached their responsibilities and the current strategy in an open way. While they maintained the overall strategy, when each spent time observing inside the businesses the other CEO ran, they discovered new opportunities to share best practices and drive growth. Their openness and collaboration made those new ventures much easier to pull off.

They don’t create sufficient creative tension.

The fourth mistake involves conflict. Too often, the co-leaders are so concerned with avoiding disagreements that each shies away from sensitive issues. They retreat not just to their own areas but to their own opinions about the business. Boards or CEOs can reinforce this dynamic when they stress the need for collaboration and harmony. Certainly the two leaders should not air conflict publicly; they must always present a unified front. But in one-on-one conversations and in select meetings, creative tension will actually help the business. This is a kind of productive conflict that discourages groupthink and prevents issues from falling through the cracks.

For many big business decisions, there’s no simple answer. Co-leaders enable companies to apply different strengths and points of view to situations at hand. One leader might come from an analytical perspective (what does the data say?), while another offers a qualitative perspective (how will this make people feel?). By challenging each other, co-heads foster diversity of thought, which not only reduces risk but promotes innovation in the business. Actual debates, or contentious discussions, may seem risky, but these can bring about robust decisions where everyone feels heard. Disagreements can actually be an advantage of co-heads, unlike unitary leadership that tends to stifle alternative points of view.

They don’t contribute in a comparable manner.

Over time, co-leaders may neglect joint priorities in favor of individual interests. As long as each partner is working equally hard, no one sees a problem. But too often, one of the co-leaders does the lion’s share of work on shared priorities and resents the partner for concentrating on their favored initiatives. Without ongoing coordination and alignment with the board chair, the co-leaders lose track of who’s doing what on those priorities. Or one of them has more charisma and grabs the external limelight, sidelining the other co-head.

Ongoing coordination and alignment around the time investment in work and the public credit given are essential. The co-heads don’t need to articulate to others how they will manage this, but they must continually satisfy each other that the important parts of the job are getting done in a fair way.

They don’t close communication gaps.

Co-leaders sometimes over-weight the importance of leadership qualities such as presence, gravitas, presentation skills, and overall speaking. Those are certainly important, but that’s rarely what determines the success of a co-leadership arrangement.

Instead, they need to focus on the efficiency of their communication. Partly to keep presenting a united front, they must stay current with each other at least every other day. These exchanges need to be both informative and quick, at least most days. A shared chief of staff can help with these exchanges. Listening becomes a vital efficiency multiplier, to help the co-leaders get to the real message (cutting through noise), as it’s essential to have a shared understanding.

It helps when co-leaders develop rituals and shortcuts that are widely understood within the ecosystem. If one co-head replies to a query, will that leader inform the other, or do people still need to reach out to the other? Co-leadership introduces complexity, so the two leaders need behavior patterns to keep that complexity from bogging down the organization.

I’ve worked with co-leaders to try to improve their active listening, using techniques such as paraphrasing what the other said to confirm understanding. Doing so helped them cut down the length of meetings and speed of decisions. Active listening enabled the co-heads to be unified and avoid “arbitrage,” where subordinates would go to one co-head they thought more likely to accept the outcome they wanted, similar to the way children sometimes navigate between parents.

They fail to regularly review plans for improvement.

Co-leaders often resist explicit conversations on how they are getting the work done. Fearful of stirring up trouble, and disparaging what they see as “couples therapy,” they tend to keep conversations short and focused on what’s happening — not how they’re working together. The trouble is, that just makes most of the mistakes described here more likely.

A better approach is what I’ve seen with work with one client. There, the co-leaders take half a day per quarter to step back and look at how they are working. During this session, they work to revise an explicit “rules of engagement,” a live list of working principles against which co-heads self-assess and review their impact. Co-heads with extra confidence can share this list with other executives to get their feedback. The partners need to engage not just the “what” of the business, but the “how” of getting that business done.

They neglect to make the partnership arrangement a growth experience.

Too many boards and CEOs pay scant attention to how each co-leader will benefit from the experience. They assume the position is its own reward, and each co-head should be grateful for the opportunity. But co-leadership arrangements, done well, can still be tough on the individuals. To prevent burnout, co-heads need their own individual motivation and interest in the arrangement. It helps for board chairs or CEOs to have discussions with each co-head, separately, on what that individual will get from the experience. Often these discussions lead to insights that partnering to run a unit or division can be a developmental growth experience, re-energizing for a career, and even create a welcome sense of solidarity. Leading solo is lonely, and co-heads can make the ordeal more rewarding personally.

. . .

Co-leadership arrangements aren’t for everyone, and boards or CEOs need to make sure their proposed leaders are willing, able, and ready to complement each other. This isn’t something that happens only at the beginning; effective co-heads need an ongoing process to keep from settling into separate fiefdoms that destroy value in the business. By avoiding eight common mistakes, companies can create new kinds of value impossible under unitary leaders.

Link to the Article: 8 Reasons Why Co-Leaders Fail (hbr.org)