Co-Directors Sophie and Hrishabh interviewed each other for Philea, reflecting on highs and lows, and what it takes to make the model work. To them co-leadership is a mutually reinforcing growth loop that enhances both personal and organisational capacities, with transformative potential in philanthropy. It has significantly bolstered EPIM’s credibility and innovative capacity, particularly through their shared personal and profession experiences of migration in Europe. They emphasise the importance of open communication, a shared vision, and the need for implicit trust in navigating differences and making decisions. Overall, co-leadership has fostered a collaborative culture, continuous learning, and a supportive environment, making leadership less isolating and more effective. An excerpt is published below.
Sophie: A year into EPIM’s co-leadership model, what has been your experience so far?
Hrishabh: For the lack of a better word, I think it has been brilliant. A rewarding experience, in which I’ve learned a lot, grown a fair bit, and supported someone else grow into their own power and come into their own. This is what leadership should be about – a reinforcing mutual growth loop, unlike most of the other models out there.
Sophie, Hrishabh and Michela Bramardi at EPIM’s Summer 2024 Executive Committee Meeting in Brussels, July 2024. Photo: Raphaela Schweiger
Sophie: What have been the benefits for EPIM and for you personally?
Hrishabh: Purely from a capacity and capability, standpoint, I think dual leadership has provided a huge boost to EPIM, especially at the dawn of this period of organisational reinvention. And I think the fact that both of us have personal and professional experience of migration in Europe, gives EPIM real credibility – a duality it has rarely had before at the helm. All this results in better decisions, more innovation and a culture at EPIM that values collaboration across the board – ultimately, that is a huge win.
Leadership can be a terribly lonely affair. Personally, the sense of comfort knowing that someone else out there is dealing with the same sets of issues you are, makes a huge difference in terms of feeling supported. And then there is the constant learning of new skills, emergence of new ideas and even the adoption of new tech, that one of us discovers. As someone who is perpetually in search of novelty, co-leadership has been great for my brain.
Hrishabh: What is your approach to differences in opinion, conflict (if-ever) and feedback?
Sophie: Let’s start with what we have in common. Hrishabh and I are fundamentally aligned in our vision for EPIM and the deeper purpose behind it, even if we might at times differ on the path.
We’ve navigated disagreements and exchanged feedback long before stepping into this co-leadership model. We have learned to communicate openly, listen deeply to each other, provide feedback, and apologise. We know when to agree to disagree and try to laugh things off before they become frustrations. Our feedback loops are constant, and we understand when and where to express differences. This reflects our ongoing work with our egos and on balancing personal and shared ambitions.
Sophie: What have been some of the challenges?
Hrishabh: I’ve honestly been far more surprised by (and grateful for) how well this has worked out. There have been no major challenges in that sense.
Some context: As senior programme managers, both Sophie and I initially tiptoed around each other and then had a full year to figure out working styles, areas of competence and how to prototype collaboration before taking on this role. That initiation period allowed us to build this implicit trust.
A more practical issue though is how much work we’re taking on and how ambitious we both are for EPIM and where we want it to go with us at the helm (and for the years beyond), making full use of the dual capacities this structure creates. I think this often translates into us setting some pretty lofty goals and sacrificing down-time and a work-life balance, and that too is a challenge.
Hrishabh: How do you/we address the division of power and responsibility between two co-leaders, both in terms in practical delivery of work and public positioning?
Sophie: Things have been happening organically. Besides defined roles in communications and finance, everything else happens with fluidity, based on our capacity and energy. It is like reaching a state of flow. With our vision and goals clear, we’ve freed ourselves from rigid structures and pre-assigned responsibilities, allowing for creativity and growth. We share power by co-designing, feeding each other’s work, and coaching one another. When it comes to public positioning, Hrishabh and I speak to different audiences. While our ideas may be the same, the way we convey them may differ, resonating differently with different people. We leverage our strengths and complementarity to share responsibility.
Sophie: What recommendation would you offer to organisations considering a shift to a co-leadership model?
Hrishabh: There are two questions here, the first, do you as an institution considering this model, have the organisational culture and environment in place to foster a shared leadership structure. By this I mean, is there already some sort of shared, distributed and decentralised leadership structure and collaborative culture in place, where this will not be a novelty or seen as too much of a gimmick and be actually implementable?
And second, are you going to be able to find the right combination of two or three individuals to do this together. It’s not impossible, but if you bring in folks from more traditional hierarchical structures and schools of leadership, it is probably not going to work out.
So, ideally, what you want is a distributed leadership environment already in place, and second, leaders who are familiar with it, or have worked in co-leadership before (or are willing to view leadership differently).
