Embracing Shared Leadership
My childhood, amongst all of ours, has its ripples. One of those rippling effects was the reinforcement of hyper-individuality: growing up in an environment where it often felt unsafe to lean on my parent, while also feeling isolated as the only Black person raised in a predominantly white community.
It takes bitter work to recover from these ripples, ripples that can shape our perceptions of what other people are capable of giving us. I still struggle with suppressing the automatic response that assumes people cannot support me. And when people do let me down, I can find myself questioning them, almost stripping them of their humanity: Why can’t so-and-so operate like me?
This hyper-individuality creates distortions of perfectionism, rooted in a fear of being out of control and an avoidance of potential abandonment. In many ways, it recreates exactly what I experienced as a young person all those years ago: if I can do everything myself, I never have to risk depending on someone who might not be there.
Ironically, as an “adult,” many of my professional ventures have been founded upon collaboration. I’d like to think this is because of an inner belief, one I have increasingly pulled into my exterior, that doing things in community can reap larger returns.These experiences also teach me more about myself and others, breaking down narratives that, if left unchallenged, can become harmful.
Two experiences I’m particularly grateful for are the co-director positions I held at Make Music Pittsburgh and Three Rivers Chamber Ensemble.
The reality is that not every person, collaboration, or situation will serve you. This reinforces that trial and error is one of the best ways to learn what success looks like for you. In both of these experiences, I had the privilege of knowing my fellow co-directors as peers and friends before furthering those relationships professionally. Funny enough, I still hold onto this belief when it comes to dating: that having the opportunity to really know someone as a friend first allows for more authentic progressions in relationships.
Because of our established trust and mutual drive, beautiful collaborations were possible, the kind where you felt understood and heard. A reminder that genuine collaboration requires accepting that everyone brings knowledge to the table, regardless of their status within the equation.
In listening to Jova Lynne, Co-Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, speak on Aaron Dworkin’s ArtsEngines series, she sparked an important ingredient in this “new” way of leading: experimentation. As a younger institution, a willingness to lean into what’s possible was refreshing, almost a rarity within nonprofit organizations where risk can feel taboo. Perhaps this makes sense when legacy institutions can become bound to the past, much like those ripples that have eroded the ability to easily access alternative pathways forward.
I’d like to assume there is a correlation between younger institutions and smaller staff sizes. Fewer employees can mean less reliance on hierarchical management. Yet this structure seems increasingly relevant for modern organizations because it can create greater equity and transparency while limiting bureaucracy. Fewer levels of management can simplify internal communication and enable faster decision-making. When layers of middle management are removed, power and responsibility can be distributed more evenly throughout an organization.
A sentiment Jova and I share is that co-directorship enables a holistic model rooted in collective voice. When leadership, or power, sits at the top with one individual, blind spots can materialize. Co-directorship creates opportunities for decisions to be informed by multiple perspectives, or, as Jova suggests, through entanglement.
What co-directorship amplifies is the benefit of specialization, both independently and when brought together to form something whole. As a co-director, I’ve been able to activate my focuses in community engagement, communications, and social justice, while leaning on my partners for support with fundraising, strategizing, and musical direction.
There is an understanding that our differences are just as important as our similarities, and that the work will solidify the overlaps. There is also the ability to simply lean on someone: to brainstorm, share responsibility, or be held accountable as we continue expanding our understanding of what success can look like.
When I think of successful collaborative efforts, I often transport myself back to 2021, at the height of COVID-19, when the Kelly Strayhorn Theater, in collaboration with 1Hood Media, BOOM Concepts, Braddock Carnegie Library Association, Dreams of Hope, The Legacy Arts Project, and PearlArts, implemented a collective virtual fundraiser, Hotline Ring.
What I found exciting about this effort was its rejection of competition, the very thing philanthropy can often bring out of nonprofits. These organizations recognized that working with community could reap larger rewards. And perhaps those rewards are not always immediately quantifiable. Sometimes they are people like me, still remembering those actions several years later. Coincidentally, that same organization has also implemented a co-directorship model.
It’s important to acknowledge that while horizontal structures have many benefits, power can still be contentious. Leadership within a flatter orientation can evoke murky definitions: Who do you turn to when you need support? How do you hold people accountable? How do you assign tasks when power differentials still exist?
Overall, I believe the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages. But this model requires trusting yourself while also learning to rely on others. And for those accustomed to traditional hierarchies and power structures, it requires leaning into the uncomfortable and embracing a collective voice that gives everyone the opportunity to shine.
Implementing more flattened hierarchies, such as co-directorships, requires rejecting commonly rewarded frameworks. This work isn’t necessarily new. There are countless efforts throughout history that have activated similar models. Yet we have to acknowledge that, within today’s mainstream organizational culture, this way of working can still feel foreign.
Perhaps that is why experimentation matters.
This type of engagement is part of a work-in-progress movement gaining momentum, one that requires both willingness and risk. It asks us to uncover how elements of complacency, even when something does not look overtly “anti-justice,” can still harm us.
I think back to those childhood ripples.
The instinct to do everything myself once protected me. But what protected me then does not necessarily have to govern how I move through the world now.
Maybe collaboration is not simply a professional practice. Maybe it is a form of unlearning. A willingness to trust that someone else can carry something. To recognize that their way of doing something does not have to look like mine to be valuable. To understand that our differences can strengthen what we build together.
As Gangulu activist Lilla Watson reminds us, our liberations are bound together.
