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Co-leadership - How Greenpeace UK Do It · Succession and Transition

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: Hi there, my name is Chris Underhill.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_07: I'm Andre Coleman.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Mel Young.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: We've created the Elders Council for Social Entrepreneurs to explore succession, leadership, well-being, and money.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: Navigating the good times and the bad.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_02: A warm welcome to those attending today.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's really interesting to have this conversation on co-leadership at this time.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: My pleasure to welcome you, Andrea, to have the fireside chat with Ariba.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_07: Thank you, and hello to everybody wherever you are.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_07: Thank you for joining us.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_07: I met Ariba, had the great fortune to sit next to her at a dinner, and I was really interested in what she had to say, of course, and the way she says it about her work, which I'll ask her to just explain very briefly in a moment.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_07: But what was fascinating for me was that Ariba is a co-CEO of Greenpeace.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_07: And having co-founded an organization together with my husband Barry 35 years ago, I know the benefits and the challenges that come with co-leadership.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_07: So I was interested for two reasons.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_07: One from a personal perspective and also having seen so many social enterprises that have been set up with co-leadership.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_07: So, Ariba, thank you so much for agreeing to come on with us today and to tell us your experience of co-leadership and of course about your work in general.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_07: One of the other things I'd like to mention is I've noticed during my work just how many women from the Indian subcontinent and other parts of that part of the world are activists and campaigners.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_07: So I'd love you to tell us why you think that that is part of your almost your DNA.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_07: Over to you, Ariba.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_07: A little bit of background of your work and of co-leadership and how you came to find yourself in that place.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_04: Hi everyone.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_04: Really happy to be here and talk to you all about kind of leadership that we do at Greenpeace UK.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_04: And thanks for inviting me, Andrea, to give the chance to do this.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_04: Really briefly to say the role is like any other chief executive of global organization that works on climate and nature.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_04: That's the simplest definition of my role.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_04: In Greenpeace UK, we are based in London.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_04: We are about 200 people, all staffed.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_04: There's only one office in the UK.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_04: We, of course, have supporters all over the UK, and we have volunteers and activists who are spread all over the UK, all over the country.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_04: But in terms of people on our books, who are full employees, there are about 200, and we are based in London and Islington.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_04: I started this role a little more than two years ago now.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_04: However, I'm a bit of a Greenpeace lifer.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_04: I started working for Greenpeace India.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_04: It was my second job as a campaigner ages ago.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_04: It's coming up to probably 18 years.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_04: And I've worked on climate and nature most of my life as an activist, as a campaigner.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_04: I left Greenpeace to work on another climate organization for a couple of years before coming back to this role.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_04: And I've had the pleasure of working in different geopolitical contexts, not just India, but also Indonesia, in the US, other countries in Europe and the UK, of course, now.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_04: So yeah, that's my background.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_04: But I do this, as Andre said, this job together with Will McCallum, and we applied for this role together.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_04: So I can talk about that or pause here if you want to ask a specific question before I go into how we do co-leadership specifically.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_07: It would be really interesting for me to know why you thought it was something that you could do to apply for co-leadership.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_07: Was that yours and Will's idea, or had you seen some model of that before?
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_07: Or were you just making it up as you went along?
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_04: So I think it's worth saying, now I'm feel much more confident saying this, having done this job for a couple of years, is that I didn't think I could do leadership in the traditional model that was presented to me that I grew up with.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_04: I actually didn't think that was for me.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_04: I really love campaigning.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_04: I fell into it by a happy accident by applying for Greenpeace India because I just wanted to be on trips.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_04: I didn't know what campaigning was.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_04: I was in my early 20s, but I fell in love with it.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_04: It is what I'm good at, it is what gives me joy.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_04: But I always resisted leadership positions, even as a campaigner, because I thought, you know what, the leadership model that I'm seeing is not something that I can do.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_04: And by that, specifically, extroverts who take a lot of space, the idea of a lone wolf at the top who has all the answers, who are very confident, I'm none of those things.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_04: And also, let's just say, mostly male and in this country, mostly white.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_04: So I just didn't see myself in that position.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_04: So the idea of co-leadership actually was the only sort of legitimate idea on the table.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_04: And I remember when our predecessor retired after 14 years of doing this job, who I'm still friends with, and I had the pleasure of working with when I moved to the UK a few years ago.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_04: He retired and he gave me a call and said, You should think about applying for my job.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_04: And I was like, You are out of your mind.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_04: I'm not gonna do that.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_04: That's not who I am.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_04: He's complete opposite of me.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_04: So it was when it was the idea of applying together and doing it with Will, who I'd worked with before, and we had a working relationship.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_04: That's when things started to fall in place a little bit and be like, okay, if we were to do this, how would that work?
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_04: That's where it started.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_04: Not even, do you see yourself in a role?
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_04: Are you interested in it?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_04: Do you have ideas?
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_04: I love the organization.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_04: I know it really well.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_04: After having put thoughts to paper, realized there was a vision if I got the job we wanted to do.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_04: But it was the idea of co-leadership that made it possible to even imagine myself in.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_07: Very interesting.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_07: And obviously you and Will designed the model, if you like, before you applied.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_07: And was there any doubt or challenge to your idea that that could or might work?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_07: Lots of doubts.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_04: And before I say that, actually, you did ask me if we had heard of it before.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_04: We had, of course, there were a couple of organizations that had co-leaders, the Green Party does, and Friends of the Earth at that time also had a shared leadership, which is slightly different from co-leadership.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_04: I'll come to that in a minute.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_04: So we weren't first, but those models don't exist that much, especially in the civil society sector.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_04: But when we started to think about it, actually in the legal firms, solicitors, they have partners, they bring partners on, that's a co-leadership model.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_04: In private sector, in advertising firms, they bring on partners.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_04: That's a co-leadership model.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_04: But we don't think of it that way because they're for-profit companies, maybe.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_04: And we experienced the same hurdles when we applied, because the board who was actually interviewing us was not convinced at the first time when they saw the idea on paper because they thought, how are you going to make it work?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_04: What happens when you disagree?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_04: Who's going to make decisions?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_04: Who's going to be responsible for which bit of the organization?
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_04: Who does the accountability lie with?
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_04: These are all very legitimate questions.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_04: But we had done a lot of that thinking about what we will be do when those things happen.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_04: So it wasn't smooth sailing.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_04: It took a lot of convincing.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_04: And I think it's quite easy for a board who are interviewing, who are used to a steady hand at the till, which our predecessor was, to be like, why experiment?
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_04: Let's just go with another safe pair of hands.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_04: Let's go with the same model.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_04: So I think the credit and responsibility also lies with the board to be able to say, okay, my mind is open.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_04: I think I'm going to give this a shot.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_07: I really love your landing on that expression, safe pair of hands, because we often find that with the work that certainly that you do and the work that we all do in social enterprise, that you have to be a risk taker and you have to find ways of mitigating risk.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_07: But I just wonder if you feel that you and Will are, nevertheless, two safe pairs of hands.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I actually think that leaders almost never, if they're doing this job by themselves, which is the traditional model, never have a sounding board.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_04: And when they're faced with big challenges, they actually either rely on somebody from outside the organization because they're like, I'm really working through this problem.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_04: Could you help me?
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_04: But your friend or your mentor who's outside the organization would never really know the entire context.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_04: And in this position, in a co-leadership position, we actually have the benefit of knowing exactly the context, sometimes the people and the issues that we're talking about.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_04: We also benefit from both within Greenpeace.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_04: So he spent more than a decade as a campaigner before this role, and I've spent nearly 15 years.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_04: So we know the organization really well.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_04: And I think risk taking becomes easier in some ways, because sometimes I just say to him, look, I have had this idea.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_04: I think we should do this.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_04: Do you think this is crazy?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_04: Do you think this is gonna fail spectacularly?
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_04: And if there are bigger risks, are there risks that I haven't thought about?
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_04: Can we think about mitigating it?
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_04: And to be able to do that as equals, because very often, as leaders, one of the things, for those of you in such roles, you would know, people don't disagree with you really, not as much as they should.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_04: They don't give you a lot of honest feedback.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_04: And I think this has the added advantage of a trust-based relationship where we'll can say, actually, you've totally lost your marbles.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_04: This is not a good idea.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_04: And I'd be like, okay, fair.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_04: So I think that it makes risk taking easier.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_04: And I think the other bit of this question is, of course, about values.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_04: I think we are aligned on broad, big picture stuff and how we are going to get there.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_04: Very strong value-based leadership is the model that we bring to the table.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_04: We are very conscious about it.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_04: That was one of the first things we talked about when we got this job was about values, how we relate to one another, both Will and me, but also our senior leadership team, but also the organization.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_04: So that gives me a lot of reassurance that even if decisions are made, that I wouldn't have made the exact same decisions, but we are aligned on where we are going and how we are going to do that journey.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_07: It's very much the way that creative people, artists and painters and poets and so on, they always seem as though they work alone and they're the sort of only ones that have produced this great work.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_07: But actually, nobody, as you say, actually creates anything alone.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_07: So, in a way, this is almost admitting to the world that nobody is one great leader.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_07: So, what I love about it is it's a sort of admission that we all depend on each other and we all work together.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_07: And that must have a very nice influence on your colleagues working with you.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_07: So, all the way through the workforce.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_07: Do you think you see signs of that as co-leaders, that it almost enables everyone to have a louder voice, maybe?
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, I'd like to think so.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_04: Like I was saying, I think this goes back to the question of values.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_04: One of the values that Greenpeace UK has embraced more recently is relationships first.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_04: We are very conscious about investing in one-on-one relationships and of relationships as a team to the organization, which is not to say that we all become mates and never disagree with another.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_04: Actually, disagreements are better if you have a good relationship.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_04: Risk taking is better if it's based in trust.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_04: And that's why we really labor the point when Newstaff joins us that we really value putting relationships, work in relationships between colleagues and between the wider movement and with other organizations, other stakeholders, trust is the currency.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_04: We are as strong as the trust we have in each other.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that message is definitely to pull through the organization.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_04: And I think we also have a bit of a what I like to call high trust, low ego model.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_04: And I think again, when you model that kind of leadership, you definitely see that being middle back to you from within the organization.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_04: So yeah.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_07: The Elders Council really focuses on transition and succession and how people move from being founders or CEOs to the next stage and to bring new people along.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_07: And we've often noticed that it's a very lonely place to be a CEO, a leader, a founder, that you really have no one to share those difficulties with, as you were saying, bounce ideas off just to get that comfort.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_07: Do you think that when it comes to the time that you and Will transition, that it's likely to be something easier because you can do things like that together?
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_04: I surely hope so.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_04: I think that one of the things that we want to establish through this model is also that we want to lead a full organization.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_04: We don't want people to pass the buck on or not make difficult decisions or pass on to, oh, this is the decision which is some senior people should take or not lean into difficult conversations or difficult decisions or risk taking for that matter.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_04: Of course, it is within the bounds of reason.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_04: If it is about governance and standards, it should come to the senior leadership team.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_04: But we want people to feel like they are leaders in the field that they're working on.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_04: They have the autonomy, we trust them, we give them all the tools to make the right decision, which instills confidence in people to be able to then say, maybe I can do that job, maybe I can go for a job because I've done this stuff before.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_04: And I think the other point that we are alluding to, and you said in the admission that nobody's doing this alone, is the vulnerability aspect of a leader.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_04: And for those of you who know Brene Brown, who's this American leadership coach and psychoanalyst who I really recommend, she has done an entire body of work about how important the quality of vulnerability is in a leader.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_04: The ability to ask for help, the ability to say, I actually don't have the answers.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that's what makes relationships stronger, that's what makes trust grow, and that's what makes a confidence grow as well.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_07: Those are really helpful.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_07: Everything you said so far is incredibly helpful, but I think those will definitely be back today, those comments just now.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_07: So thank you so much, Aripa.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_07: Does anybody want to come in at the moment with a question or a comment?
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_07: Gabby Arenas is now the co-leader of Catalyst Now.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_07: I don't know, Gabby, if you're ready to make any comments at the moment.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_05: I was resonating with everything.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_05: What to say.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_05: I think in Catalyst, it was very natural to think about whole leadership because we are talking about collaboration and you need to embed what you preach.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_05: But when it came to the practice, it requires a lot of things.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_05: We are used to, and especially social entrepreneurs and leaders, we are used to the focus of attention.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_05: We are the one competing for the grant, competing for the award, competing for the fellowship.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_05: When someone mentions you because a founder or director of an organization is about you, and we are used to that.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_05: But the reality is that model doesn't work anymore in the world that we live because it's a very complex world that requires a lot of skills and a lot of abilities and even availability that we don't have.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_05: So have co-leadership is great, but it requires for you to take that previous perception of yourself as the superhero and change it to someone that is able to collaborate and to understand that it's not about you, it's about the impact that you try to create.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_05: And when you take the role with that conscious, normally it's a very fun and nice road.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_05: In my previous experience, I am co-founder of Catalyst, I'm on with Radic, but we didn't have the opportunity to work together before.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_05: And that is a little bit different than your experience, Arriva.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_05: We met each other and the transition committee say, Hey, you are the chosen one.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_05: So you need to learn how to work together.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_05: But what is great is in the transition process, the Catalysts now, governing council members that were part of the transition committee, they very carefully selected Frederick and me for this role because they choose people that have complementary skills.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_05: So that is also part of the secret sauce.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_05: If you have two leaders that are very strong in the same thing, it's very difficult to make things happen because each one of them will try to impose what he or her believe.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_05: In our case, we are super complementary.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_05: So if I have an idea, Freddie immediately brings ideas that complement and same from me to his ideas.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_05: So that is also an important part.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_05: And I will say the last one is create a flow of communication with the team that allows the team to tell you what is confusing, what is working, what is not working at all, and you need to work on that.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_05: And as Arriva say, when you are in a leadership position, it's difficult to have people that tell you which is not working.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_05: But if you open the door and they saw that in their two leaders, they can find a place to talk.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_05: And it's not just that I'm gonna go with this because it's better to listen than that.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_05: No, it's an open door from both of the leaders.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_05: So that helps.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_05: And also, I have to say that I'm very grateful to have Frederick because we are in a different time zone, so I don't need to attend meetings at my 3 a.m.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_05: in the morning, because our members in Asia need to have the meeting at that time.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_05: And he is happy to not be in meeting at his 11 p.m.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_05: So that also helps when you work with global movement.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_05: But I would say those are the three main highlights of my experience.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_07: So interesting.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_07: Thank you for that.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_07: And of course, when you think about a global organization like Catalyst now and so many organizations developing, that time zone issue is really critical.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_07: So that's certainly something we need to note about co-leadership.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_05: And it's also connected with what you say about how difficult it is to be alone in the position and to take care of your well-being.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_05: We know right now, and Andrea and Chris has been part of the well-being project for years, and I have the pleasure of being part of the community for a few years.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_05: And the well-being of the leader is crucial for the well-being of the initiatives.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_05: Same as the well-being of the team.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_05: And if you have a leader that needs to be in meetings at 3 a.m.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_05: in the morning, 4 a.m., 11 p.m., 3 p.m., and all the time is working, at some point they're gonna collapse.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_05: And we saw that sadly in organizations before.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_05: So having a co-leadership also is very helpful in terms of well-being and practicalities.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, wonderful.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_07: The well-being issue is a major one, as you say.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_07: Gabby, thank you so much for all that.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_07: That's really great.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_07: Mel, I know that you're ready there to speak.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_07: Mel is co-founder of the Elders Council for Social Entrepreneurs, together with Chris and the Hill and me.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_07: So the floor is yours, Mel.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Andrew.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_03: And it's very interesting listening to Gabby there because he's a long-standing member of Catalyst.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_03: It's really great the way Gabby and Frederick, as co-leaders, are leading the organization at the moment.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_03: So full of praise.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_03: But it's a very interesting space.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_03: I have a practical question to you, Ariba, because it's a it's a new concept for us in this sector, I think, this co-leaders, as you say.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_03: So the practical question is with your other leader, do you have different job descriptions?
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_03: In other words, are one of you concentrating the internal or the other one on the external?
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_03: Or do you go to what each of your strengths are?
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_03: Or do you have the same job description if you like, and you just simply replicate what each other's doing, talk to each other about what you're going to do in the week, etc., etc.?
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_03: How does that actually work?
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_03: And then how is that communicated into your wider team about who they might support into or talk to?
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_03: Or are you just interchangeable at any point?
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, the practicalities of it, really good question.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_04: We also spent quite a lot of time thinking about it before we started.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_04: So the way it works is that we have to split the senior leadership team in half, and I manage half of them, and Will manages the other half.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_04: And then, and this is the bit that surprises a lot of people, but actually it has been really useful.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_04: We share an inbox.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_04: So all the emails that come to us, it's the same inbox, and then we sign off with our names if it's coming from one of us specifically.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_04: But when you see an email from us, it'll say Ariba and Will.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_04: So I think for us, efficiency and not doubling up is actually one of the big principles.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_04: We don't need to be in every meeting, both of us.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_04: What's the point of that?
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_04: Like the idea is to actually be able to have two executive directors.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_04: So we have the same job title and we work full-time, but we have split the role in two.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_04: At the time when we started, we also didn't have a finance organizational director.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_04: So we subsumed some of that role into this role as well.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_04: So I think it's worth saying that we have probably made this role now a two-people job by expanding its scope.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_04: And also our predecessor, he was working 18 hours a day and still not able to say, engage with the global organization that much because of time zones or because there was so much on his in tray anyway.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_04: So I think we are engaging much more with the global organization.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_04: We are engaging much more with other stakeholders in the movement.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_04: We did quite little within the movement previously just because we didn't have the time, and I think we've just expanded the scope a little bit.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_04: And then the staff knows this.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_04: The staff knows which areas we are responsible for, and I totally trust Will to make those decisions that he's responsible for, and he trusts me.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_04: The common inbox means that all the information, we see all the information.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_04: We obviously check in regularly.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_04: We sit opposite each other, we work from office every day.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_04: So that helps just in terms of exchanging as much information as you can on a daily basis.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_04: We also have a notes document that we take notes in, which is shared documents, so we're able to track the decisions.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_04: So if one of us is away on holiday, the other person can just carry on, which has been very helpful instead of saying, Oh, actually, Will is not here, we have to wait because I'm in the loop.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_04: I move things along.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_04: The staff knows this, and actually, there were so many questions about how will the staff get used to it, who will they know who to come to.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_04: And that is one of the things that's worked really well.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_04: So it's been really smooth sailing.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_04: And we tell the staff that the executive director in front of you is the executive director who will make the decision if you need the decision on something.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_04: We'll work out the back end, leave that to us.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_04: It's worked quite well.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_04: So, like I said, it's uh second year, and of all the feedback that we've got so far, confusion on who's managing what has never been one of the things.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_03: That's so interesting.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_03: And you get it practically set out.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for sharing that.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_03: I guess my question around this is then so you have the practical side sorted out, but then you actually have to really get on with your co leader when you're talking about trust, etc.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_03: etc.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_03: How important do you think it is for co-leaders to be friends.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_03: You can imagine I've heard sometimes that people be together, they're not necessarily friends, but because they're not actually the dynamic between them actually adds value.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_03: So maybe that's not true.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_03: But do you think it's an important factor as you get the practicalities right, but the co-leaders have to get on well together.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_03: Is that right, Lucy?
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_04: My personal experience is that they have to.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_04: I think that we are talking about one of the most intense relationships you'll probably have in your life, intense professional relationships, and you have to get on.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_04: I think we applied together, which makes a huge difference as well.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_04: A lot of people are put later together by their boat, put together and they make it work.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_04: But I also know a lot of partnerships that haven't worked out because I do think that people just haven't had the chance to sit down and talk about so what is it that you want out of this role?
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_04: And we've had some really to use one of my American friends face so real soror conversations about what triggers you, what makes you angry?
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_04: What will we do when we actually vehemently disagree with one another?
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_04: If something really terrible happens, a deputation risk or an action goes wrong, how are you going to deal with it?
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_04: We've had to actually sit down and have those conversations and be absolutely honest with one another about it.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_04: It helps that we started as friends when I moved to this country and I've worked with him before we have a working relationship and we actually hang out after work as well voluntarily because we have other interests like theater and art, which we are both passionate about.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_04: So I think that is an added advantage.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm not saying that people need to be friends, but they do have to get on and I will bang on about values.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_04: I do think that if you're not aligned on values, it is going to be not smooth sailing.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: Andrea Ivy has come in with a complimentary question to the one that has been debated.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: She says here in the co-leadership approach, how do you manage disagreements in ideas, approaches, etc?
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_02: And Gabby, you're laughing so I'm going to ask you the same in a minute.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_02: Ariva, could you give us a little bit of nitty-gritty about how you do that?
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously the examples they're confidential, but how do you do it in the context of your personality and wills and so on and so forth.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah I suppose the first thing to say is that disagreements are natural.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_04: I'm not going to sit here and say we never disagree, we always agree and there's never been a disagreement on stuff.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_04: We disagree with our close friends, we disagree with our parents this disagreements are not bad.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_04: So one is to accept from the get-go that they are going to happen.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_04: And then you're I think that's half the battle one instead of feeling like affronted about it.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_04: And then I think for me really and I think for both of us really it's the vision is it still taking us where we want to be and that is the guiding principle.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_04: So day-to-day decisions I actually care less about because I know that they're going to be they're taking us where we need to be and big decisions we haven't had massive big vision kind of disagreements because when we started to think about what do we actually want to do in this job we were quite aligned.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that is always the thing that we fall back on to navigate is it getting us closer to where we want to be or is it not?
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_04: And how do we then make this decision?
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_04: I think sometimes it's worth asking be very honest to yourself and say are you really disagreeing with this because of the content or because of your own ego and I think it's good to check that good to be honest about that once in a while not always and I think that we apply that quite regularly to be rigorous about it.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_04: It's always all the other good conflict resolution stuff applies go back sleep over it.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_04: Don't have a knee-jerk reaction write down what you're thinking think through what are the collaborative approaches things you would do in any healthy disagreement is what we end up doing.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_04: But yeah we haven't had knock on wood massive disagreements about values of vision I think day-to-day decision making I'm less worried about Gabi do you want to comment on that?
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_05: Again agree with everything but I was laughing because we didn't have our first disagreement yet at the beginning Frederick said that it was because we were in a honeymoon but it's already nine months in a honeymoon so it's a very long honeymoon.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_05: But I think it's connected with the fact that when you are in a co-leadership role you are more self-aware and as Arriva said you think about talking you are more reflective you take time to see which is the best way to explain this which is the best way to try to get an agreement on something that it takes more time but it's super helpful to avoid conflicts or to have conversations sometimes very difficult conversation but in a way that is constructive and at the end of the day what I found is that it's not only helpful for your co-leadership exercise it's also helpful to change the way that you work with your teams or your board as Andrea and Chris and Mel because you are part of my governing council the governing council of Catholic has 51 members you need to have a lot of self-awareness to manage a governing council like that.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_05: And we are applying everything that we learned in our co-leadership role to work with the team and also in other areas I think it's a very helpful exercise of self-awareness all the time.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_07: I think managing 51 people in general but 51 social entrepreneurs is quite a challenge.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_07: Some funders include it's true that's true.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_07: Thank you for that Gabby so I I think from what you're both saying and Ariba has touched on it several times is that issue of ego really ego and trust seem to be absolutely at the root of this and I think that obviously when you're building any relationship trust and respect are absolutely key.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_07: I'd just like to very briefly say that my husband Barry and I founded our organization Writers for Health in 1996 but it was tiny and of course we had to build it and we built it to quite a big organization.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_07: So one of the things that came to our notice really our attention was that individuals have different times to in their own personal lives to move on to do something different.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_07: You might join an organization or start an organization together but you might want to leave or do something else or have a different path at different times.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_07: And I wonder if Ariba you've considered that aspect of how individuals' life pathways might dictate when that might move along might change.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah so since we applied together the deal is that this is a package deal basically to the board.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_04: And of course if one of us decides to leave then this will have to go back to the board and the board decides whether they run the process again or whether they let the one person I think it depends on the context it depends on who it is.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_04: So we have not really thought that far apart from saying it will have to go back to the board.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_04: And the assumption is that if one person steps down then the it's not guaranteed that the other person carries on.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_04: That's the principle we've agreed on and the board is fine with it.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah I'm sorry Olga has her hand up and I'm going to bring Olga in at this moment rather than hogging the floor.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you everyone for this meeting Ariba very insightful.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Olga from I'm based in Austria and we are now in the situation when we're reconsidering the leadership model for the Austrian team as well and we might go for the shared leadership model too.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore I wanted to ask you two questions.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: First how would you describe in which way you're complementary to each other in terms of experience and qualities that you bring and where do you feel like you have similar experiences or similar type of skills and then second question I wonder whether your co-leader is from the UK and then whether you feel anything connected to that.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: How has it been for you as someone coming from outside of the country co-leading with someone who is from inside the country because this is what might happen here.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: I have not been born here I have been working for this organization for quite a while.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_04: And then the question is if my co-leader is local how does it play out thank you yeah good question so in terms of skill sets yes some of the experience that is similar is that we have both got campaigning experience.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_04: We both started as campaigners in Greenpeace and that obviously helps it's a big complex organization and if you have the issue expertise then that helps.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_04: Where it's slightly different is that Will is a more biodiversity expert in particular he worked on the Oceans campaign for a very long time including running some of the biggest ship tours he ran 17 I think as a part of his ocean leadership role which are big complex more than anything else sort of global logistical exercises but also getting the right people at the right time communicating from remote areas working with scientists working with communities.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_04: So that's his sort of time at Greenpeace and then at the UN processes because the Oceans Treaty came out as a result of the campaign that he ran.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_04: So I think that's complementary to my skill set I have been a climate and energy person through and through I started working on ending coal in India and then worked on rainforests and then worked on air pollution and diesel and oil and BP and shell that's my world.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_04: So I think that's a good complementarity on an organization that works both on land and water and both on biodiversity and climate.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_04: So we tend to fall on our expertise areas and that also determines sort of public appearances or TV interviews where people are trying to get hold of the ED of Greenpeace to talk about something.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_04: So if it's biodiversity he'll usually take the lead and if it's climate I do.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_04: And then we also have I think he has a better head of logistics than me for sure.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_04: I rely on him for some of those skill sets.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_04: And I think there are more similarities I also think that maybe sometimes I have bigger risk appetite and I rely on him to try and mitigate some of those for me because he has a better head for those things but I do think sometimes I don't worry too much about saying what if we did that instead of thinking about what might be the consequences and then it's good that it's out there and then we can talk about it.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_04: So I think those are some of the complementary skills there are lots of things that we also both sort of share like passion for campaigns, passion for good storytelling, passion for big actions, which helps.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_04: Again, I think it would not be useful if one of us really cared about comms and the other didn't I think that'll be very unhelpful.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_04: I think because we're both sort of greenpeace products in some ways there's a lot of common ground and then we try and take turns to say why don't you take this one because I've just done my bit on the same issue.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_04: So yeah I think that's the broad thing.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_04: What was the second question?
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_04: Oh being from the country and outside rather shockingly to me last year was 10 years since I moved to the UK.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_04: So I am actually eligible to give up my citizenship which I'm quite conflicted about, but that's the story for another day.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_04: But I feel like it feels very familiar geopolitics to me.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_04: It doesn't feel like I need to rely on somebody to be able to understand what's happening in the country campaigning by its very definition you need to understand the context and the politics of what's happening.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_04: So I feel like I'm on pretty solid ground so it doesn't feel like an insider outsider.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_04: However I think there have been times it's worth saying when people have in a negative way criticized it to say who is this random brown person telling us what to do on oil and gas.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_04: India is the biggest emitter go sort out your country first you get right wing trolls all the time saying that which I'm not on social media so that helps but also have a bit of a thick skin now about this stuff.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_04: But yeah you hear that sometimes to be like what are you doing?
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_04: You have no business being in this role sort of thing from right wing trolls which is best ignored.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_04: But no I feel like in some ways London feels very much like home and yeah UK politics feels very much like I follow it, I enjoy it very familiar, comfortable deadry.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_02: Appreciate it.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_02: Andrea we have a question from Linda from the Decelerator.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_02: The Decelerator is a really fascinating organization that we've been getting close to over the last few months.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_02: Linda is asking the question how does the relationship with the board work?
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_02: Do they get the in quotation marks the ED in front of you is the one making the decision close the quotes kind of thing.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_02: Or is there a bit more subtlety to it than that I imagine is what Linda is saying.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_02: Ariba?
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah so to the board we both in fact make sure that we are there for board meetings and there to answer their questions and we have a regular check-in with the chair of the board every two weeks.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_04: I think the board is well within their rights to expect both of us to be on all the meetings to talk about risks, to talk about program strategy to talk about fundraising and campaign strategy and we make time for that.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_04: That is probably the only exception to the rule of we don't need to be both in every meeting.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that's the right exception because different boards are involved in a different way and our board is quite good in terms of keeping to the governance and the standards and the big picture and I think it doesn't feel too much of a heavy lift to actually both make time for it because we're trying to present a joint vision.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_04: We're trying to tell them what is succeeding, what is not, we're trying to tell them what the risks are so it's both of us for most of the board stuff.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_07: Thank you.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_07: I know that you and Will took over from an interim CEO.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_07: We've been thinking about interim CEOship because of succession and transition and I don't think in the social enterprise community it's very common in fact I'm not sure I've ever heard of it.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_07: But I just wonder do you feel having taken over from an interim CEO that step between the permanent CEO and UN Will taking over helped take Greenpeace through a transition period?
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_04: I think the interim was as far as I understand so this is also the time when I'd left Greenpeace for a couple of years to work for another climate organization.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_04: And my feeling is that the interim wasn't part of the plan really because our predecessor after 14 years John Servan and when he announced his retirement he retired after doing this role he gave the board one year's notice.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_04: You think that one year is a long time but then actually it's not for somebody who has done the role for so long.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_04: So the recruitment took longer than they were expecting and as a result of which there was an internal person he was a program director at that time who stepped into that role for another year or less than a year.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_04: So we took over from him.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_04: But I suppose the key thing to note here is of course that John couldn't have stayed longer because he was already doing one year notice period.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_04: So it's good to think about a backup plan because best laid plans etc and also it was an internal person so it helped somebody who could just step up and take that role on from the senior management team.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_04: It did have a knock-on effect though because he was the program director every single role then got there was a domino effect.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_04: So the deputy then became interim PD there was interim deputy became somebody so when we came back when we came into this role there's a series of interim roles that we had to go and basically rehire.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_04: So I think it has benefits and costs I know that some people do just interim CEO roles now but obviously then there are outsiders.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_04: So I think there are benefits and drawbacks to every situation.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_07: We've become quite interested in that interim role to hear more about it.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_07: So thank you for your perspective on that.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_07: That's really helpful thank you.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_07: In a few moments I'll be handing over to Mel to wrap up at the end but I just wonder if anybody wants to come in at this point.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_06: Linda has put her hand up your answer to my earlier question.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_06: I've got a follow-up really which is about your line management as individuals if you're speaking to your chair as a team if you like I would hope that you'd have some sort of line management review as individuals.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_06: How does that work?
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_04: Yes so the chair of the board line manages us both and we have performance reviews individually and then together.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_04: So that's what's happened the last couple of years.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_04: So we get 360 degree feedback from our direct reports and anybody in the organization actually that goes to the board chair and last year he took out time to actually do one hour individually with each of us and then about 45 minutes together.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_04: So yeah it's a little bit of more time investment on either side but I think that is the right thing to do.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_06: Thank you.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_06: That's really helpful because my experience of managing co-rolls is that it is more time and I think that people don't recognise that and I think that's really quite important.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_06: It's not seamless for certain people in the organization like the people who are doing the line management.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_06: So it's really helpful just to always acknowledge that rather than sweep it under the carpet.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_06: Thank you very much, Linda.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_07: I have to say Ariba that I almost think this is a great advert for co-leadership that we're sort of marketing it now as a great thing.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_07: Are you ready Mel to take a wrap up on everything we've learned?
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_03: Always ready Andrea but the challenge always is trying to sum up in two minutes what everybody said here.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_03: We had some excellent insights into this whole area.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_03: So Ariba thank you very much for sharing your insights your journey and also to Gabby seeing what her experience is with Catalyst now.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_03: Really there were two words that kind of came up to me all the time throughout the past hour were this word trust and this word values.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_03: So you talk about co-leadership and in the organization it's about everyone identifying with the values seems to be absolutely key in this running through and if you have that identified in the shared values then you can progress well and secondly that of course there's trust so trust between the co-leaders and then trust within the organization of those co-leaders is absolutely key.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_03: Those two things are key to making this work but as Ariba said at the beginning it's a relatively new space there so co-leadership which is why the insights are really helpful here at this point.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_03: And Ariba told her story about how she started and actually worked with Will and presented themselves together from the outset.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_03: So it wasn't the board necessarily saying hey we want to do co-leaders it was them coming and then the board taking a risk on that because the idea of co-leadership in our sector is very new actually and quite unusual.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_03: So that was fascinating.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_03: I think Gabby coming in and talking about what we've talked a lot about in terms of the elders about burnout from social entrepreneurs, burnout from founders issues with founders around exit strategy and succession and having to change so the co-leadership model might be really effective and useful for us as we continue this discussion about the sustainability of social organizations going forward.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_03: Gabby also said she'd been in this funny room for nine months was it and we still haven't had an argument which was great.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_03: And Ariba also saying that actually the relationship with Will our co-leader was very strong and that's so important.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_03: And then we talked about some of the practicalities and then the issue around ego putting that aside and so on and so forth.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_03: This whole area is to me absolutely fascinating we talked a bit about high trust models and then interesting Ariba again talking about the vulnerability of leadership which as we've talked about often before in these webinars in this world whether we like it or not the media whoever want the leader and the leader of the organization is it rather than the organization as a whole and that puts pressure additional pressure on that founder so that vulnerability of leadership and how that can be overcome but through co-leadership is another whole really interesting case.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_03: We had a lot of good questions and some really great takeaways from this to what was an excellent session.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you again Ariba thank you also Gabby for your insights and I do know what it must be like having 50 odd members in the governing council at you all the time with the same values but very determined people and so managing all that is a challenge.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_03: So thank you also for that and thank you for some great insights for all of you who asked some really good questions.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_03: And of course thanks to Andrew for chairing and Chris for his insights.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_03: So thank you all very much and onward to more co leadership.