Dismantling the Executive Director Role, Moving Toward Collective Leadership

When the Chinook Fund and the Colorado Anti-Violence Program (CAVP) found that they were both moving away from having a traditional leadership structure, they decided to put their heads together and help each other develop a collective leadership model. At a time when both organizations had an empty executive director position, they saw how they were being so focused on how to change the outside and not taking time to reflect on how they were treating each other inside their organizations.

In Chinook’s case, they had hired a woman of color to lead the foundation, however it didn’t work out. The position wasn’t resourced correctly, bad power dynamic between ED and staff as well as ED and board. And no one wanted to step into those shoes. The traditional role of an ED certainly didn’t resonate with Neha Mahajana at Chinook – her culture values stepping back and humility, and those values are beautiful. She didn’t want to sacrifice them.

CAVP wanted to switch from having an executive director to having a shared leadership structure. They had tried before, but found that hadn’t worked out because they just jumped right in and not taken a lot of time to think about it through a real process.

Both organizations ended up with a shared directorship held by three co-executive directors.

Shared Leadership Roles

Both organizations didn’t want it to be about one person moving them into the heartland, but about all the staff moving the organization in the same direction. With three co-directors, 50 percent of their time is divided among their particular program/leadership area (for instance, fundraising, finance, advocacy) and the rest of time is divided up so that everyone is equally responsible for administrative activities. They seek to take advantage of everyone’s individual strengths and their models are fluid enough that they can switch leadership priorities based on where the organization is in its life cycle.

They make their roles clear to everyone on the board and staff with a very detailed organizational chart describing who has what power. As co-directors, they take on the responsibility of consensus-based decisionmaking, even when it comes to board issues. For instance, CAVP staff are not board members, but everyone has a vote at the board meetings. Even part-time staff attend both board and staff meetings to ensure that those decisions work for everyone. Both organizations are also working to transform their boards because they understand that real collective leadership can’t stop at the staff level.

Shared Supervision

Both Chinook and CAVP’s staff are responsible for supervising each other. They utilize peer supervision to help each other become better leaders. They recognize that kust as there are certain qualities needed to be a good executive director, there are certain skills that people need to be a good co-director. Chinook employs a “team coach” - a former board member who facilitates the peer supervision and helps them give each other tough feedback that comes from a place of respect and love. They do this on a monthly basis depending on capacity. The board is ultimately responsible for supervising all three co-directors.

Challenges

They had to figure out how they were going to manage conflict among the three co-executive directors
Having three leaders requires extensive communication
Had to explain to the other staff how the organization was changing and get buy-in
They had to cultivate an incredible amount of trust amongst themselves as co-executive directors
The organizations had to become more transparent about finances with a shared leadership model

Opportunities

They got to build shared ownership of leadership responsibility so that no one gets to “check out” of leadership
This model doesn’t set up one leader for an isolating/unsupported position or unchecked power/control
It challenges the old 1950s business model of running a nonprofit

Two burning questions from the audience were on my mind as well.

Both organizations had opportunities where there was an open ED position, which presented an opportunity to talk about changing the leadership structure. How can we bring up these conversations even without being in that situation?
Both Chinook and CAVP are very small organizations (under 10 staff). Can this model or a similar model work in larger organizations?

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Tags: 2010 EPIP National Conference, collective leadership, Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy, EPIP

Mazarine

Dear Rosetta,

This post reminds me of the book "The Starfish and the Spider," have you read it? This book is about how if you have centralized command, it takes a lot longer to get things done, (and if you cut off one leg, you're crippled, like a spider) and if you have decentralized command, things can happen independently, and you can be more nimble as an organization (And if one leg gets cut off, it can regenerate, like a starfish). I've often felt that people don't recognize how powerful development is, and how fundraising staff need to be on par with executive directors to have a better effect on the organization as a whole, instead of the traditional, top down leadership chain which leaves fundraising staff feeling powerless.

Would love to continue the conversation here on my post about leaderless organizations:

http://www.wildwomanfundraising.com/fundraising-downturn-power-leaderless-organizations/
Executive Branding

Hi,
This is awesome post. A number of years ago I had the opportunity to participate in a shared leadership model. It was intense and the learning was incredible. One of the features of their organization was a rotating CEO-ship managing performances, licensing, recording contracts, archives, and the philanthropic foundation. Thanks for sharing such a nice post.
bsaunders

There's been a new wave of articles about the business practices of the Grateful Dead. One of the features of their organization was a rotating CEO-ship managing performances, licensing, recording contracts, archives, and the philanthropic foundation.
anneperschelakabizshrink

Thanks Rosetta for putting up some new ideas about leadership. A number of years ago I had the opportunity to participate in a shared leadership model. It was intense and the learning was incredible. I've never since been in a set of work relationships (there were 4 of us) with such helpful feedback and opportunity to learn from my co-workers. To this day one of these colleagues and I still collaborate, supervise and support each other's work even though we are on opposite coasts. One danger we ran into - we enjoyed each others company so much we spent a little too much time facing inward. Once we saw this, however, it was easy to correct.

Intel uses a two in the box management structure at times, but I didn't see examples of both parties working the relationship to reap the benefits.

Hope others read this piece and consider the model.