Leadership in Action: Learning to Share: How to Meet the Demands of Joint Leadership

STARTING FROM SCRATCH

In the beginning we weren't quite sure how we would go about sharing leadership responsibility. We didn't have any experience of our own to draw from, nor did we have any role models. We had to experiment and make joint learning intentional. We quickly learned that working in this way is demanding.

First, as with any kind of partnership, we learned that unilateral decisions and actions would be rare. Instead the norm became engaging in dialogue, surfacing assumptions, seeking agreement, and compromising. We found that this way of working together not only took time and focused attention but also required developing a greater awareness of our own beliefs and practices and the ability to articulate them and examine them with ...