This past year, more schools than ever had trouble filling leadership positions, choosing instead to leave these slots open and extend their search for another year. 

Both of us have firsthand experience with schools’ attempts to deal with this phenomenon: When the Ramaz Upper School in New York City found itself in a longer-than-expected search for a principal, Miriam acted as co-principal with another colleague; and Maury had a parallel experience of participating team-style leadership in response to a leadership gap earlier in his career. In both cases, leadership positions that were historically filled by one person were filled by more than one leader who was already in the school — and in both cases, even though the solution was considered an non-ideal stopgap measure, the new leadership structure ended up being very successful and continuing past the initially-planned period.

A broader leadership structure creates an opportunity to give talented teachers some leadership responsibility, a possible incentive for employee retention in a competitive market. It can also spread the workload and emotional toll of leadership among more than one person. Day school leadership will be more sustainable if we can envision a leadership structure conducive to longer tenures and careers. Shared leadership can benefit the school, the leaders themselves and ultimately the field of education as a whole.

Benefits of shared leadership

Benefits for the school

On a very practical level, multiple leaders mean more aggregate attention to be divided. Often when both co-principals are in a meeting, one can jump out to deal with a crisis or immediate concern and the meeting can continue with the other. Access to leadership is literally doubled, a boon according to parents who have experienced co-leadership. The additional check of a second leader is also a check on rash or myopic decisionmaking.

Benefits for the leaders

This responsibility-sharing structure benefits the leaders as well by allowing people who do not yet have expertise in some areas to lead as they learn. 

A co-leadership model also allows for a built-in partnership coaching model between two (or more) experienced educators without top-down supervision. This model of partner/collaborator supports brainstorming and calculations of risks, generating improved ideas.

Finally, leadership teams share the emotional burden of leadership, fostering a mutual support system — a solution to the truism that it is lonely at the top.

Benefits for the field

We are in the middle of an administrator pipeline crisis where there is not enough willing talent to fill the current leadership needs. Allowing aspiring leaders the chance to experience what James P. Spillane and Rebecca Lowenhaupt refer to as “an apprenticeship of leadership” gives them experiences and skills that new principals often refer back to when they begin to lead in earnest. In both his professional work as well as his dissertation research on new principals in Jewish day schools, Maury has found that the ability to create this type of incubator for nascent leaders is immensely beneficial toward acquiring the skills of leadership in a sustainable way. Sharing leadership roles allows more leaders to be given status and responsibility in a way that may lead to retaining more talent in the school and in the field at large. 

In addition to helping prepare aspiring leaders, this model may increase the pool of individuals interested in leadership positions. For many, the time commitment and “always on” reality of school leadership is not compatible with their life. Such positions are seen by some as increasingly intimidating and overwhelming in their scope and requirements. A shared-leadership structure may allow these rising stars to take on key positions in our schools in a way that truly adds value but that allows for a balance in responsibility and time commitment.

In particular, this structure may allow women with younger children to consider roles they might otherwise find incompatible with being the mothers they would like to be. With young children at home, Miriam was able to act as co-principal, impact school vision, lead major projects and in general oversee school culture and functionality as a genuine school leader; but since these responsibilities were shared, she had the time and space to leave the management of certain meetings, calls and projects in the domain of her co-principal, allowing for a better balance with her family life.

Challenges of shared leadership

Co-leadership is not without its challenges. Any type of shared leadership can create confusion about who is ultimately responsible for different areas of the school and how decisions are made. From the perspective of stakeholders as well as internal management, co-leadership can also lead to needless double effort or things falling through the cracks. Students, teachers and parents may feel they need to keep multiple people in the loop or have the same conversation more than once with each leader. In her article “Are Two Heads Better Than One?” Claudia Daggett reported that parents were visibly disappointed when sent to the other co-head due to division of responsibilities, an experience that can lead to feelings that the leadership is slow to respond or unresponsive. 

On a deeper level, there is a risk that one member of the leadership team will make a decision that isn’t based on the comprehensive knowledge that a single leader might have accumulated in the absence of anyone with whom to share their responsibilities. Additionally, the fact that more than one leader is setting the tone means that the running of the school will significantly depend on their ability to work together. Although a functioning leadership team is always an important concern for a school, having shared leadership at the top makes this need more critical. Daggett points specifically to the need for strong relationships and a lack of ego on the part of co-heads.

Minimizing the challenges

There are ways to minimize the challenges of co-leadership so schools can get the most out of the leadership potential of co-leadership. Through the four C’s of clarity, communication, agreement about consensus and proper centering, co-leadership can be part of the answer to our leadership crisis.

Communication is always critical, but issues in communication between co-leaders will quickly expand into uninformed or contradictory decisions and areas where inertia takes over when they fall between spheres of oversight. With two leaders there is actually more collective time to weigh in and check in but it requires excellent communication between the leaders to make sure this happens with fidelity. Good communication will also prevent people going to the second leader to try and get a different answer than they received from the first one.

At Ramaz, the two co-principals had been working together for close to 20 years before stepping into the interim roles. They had a strong partnership, and most importantly, an aligned vision for the school and its goals. Touching base with each other consistently was a must. It is inevitable that there will be needed background regarding history, context or policy before getting on a call with a parent, attending a board meeting, or a student meeting. In Miriam’s case, connected offices was a key support. “Can you pop in here for a minute?” or “I have a student here who I think it’s better if you talk to,” was a consistent refrain.

While role clarity is critical in all leadership positions, this also becomes even more important with shared leadership. How the job is divided up between the leaders must be very clear and continually reevaluated. A running Venn diagram capturing the aspects that are jointly decided and handled and those that each leader takes ownership for is very helpful. Leaders need to come to a clear shared-understanding with common language about what “responsibility” means and exactly what keeping the other person informed looks like.

Clarity is key and all stakeholders should expect a learning period. For Miriam, there was certainly an initial confusion on the part of faculty as well as parents, on the question of “who is in charge” or to whom specific questions should be addressed. Consistent, transparent and structured communication, especially to the parent body, lends clarity and builds confidence over time when things are handled appropriately. It is important that these communicated roles are consistently followed since exceptions for the sake of ease or to expedite things will cause confusion when it is not repeated with the next person.

Co-leaders will need to decide what issues require consensus, either between the co-leaders or even within the leadership team, and what protocol or process will be used to achieve consensus. Daggett recommends that leaders avoid the solution of the board deciding when the leaders can’t come to consensus and we would add that this is also true for principals or other roles. When the leaders need to appeal to a higher up to provide clarity paints them in a poor light. Pushing disagreements downwards by coalition building or putting it to a vote is also not the answer to disagreements. There is a need for direct discussion and an agreed upon way to settle points of conflict.

Co-leaders should see themselves as their own team, research on effective teams can inform their practices. In Google’s Aristotle research project, they found that critical elements for teams included: psychological safety, dependability and structure/clarity. The co-leaders need to feel safe and trust one another, be able to depend on each other and delineate clear structures for how they will accomplish all the many leadership tasks.

Harris and Hitchcock highlight that for both leaders, ego needs to be checked at the door to foster a sense of real shared leadership. There must be a methodology, along with a sense of real agreement and respect, that allow for the resolution of major disagreements before they are communicated outside of the main team. Co-leaders must consistently remind themselves to center the conversation around the school, the students and other stakeholders rather than their own egos. A genuine united front (not just the illusion of one) is essential.

Although co-leadership models are becoming more prevalent, they are rarely implemented for long term or seen as ideal. School and lay leadership seem ill at ease with this model, seeing it as an interim solution.

In a recent podcast, Stephen Dubner suggested that the discomfort with a co-CEO model is rooted in Thomas Carlyle’s “great man theory” of history. Thomas Carlyle, a 19th-century Scottish philosopher, proposed that large movements of success and change are often driven by “one great, divinely-inspired, hero.” Despite the fact that this theory has been largely abandoned, it stubbornly informs our paradigm of leadership. 

In both of our experiences, the partnership model was a successful endeavor that brought advantages and added value both in their personal educational roles and to the school and community that they led. As a field, we should consider this model not just as an interim necessity but as a potential strategy for better leadership and stronger schools.  

Maury Grebenau is the director of the Jewish New Teacher Project’s Administrator Support Program. 

Miriam Krupka is the assistant principal of the Ramaz Upper School in New York City.