“Let’s just apply together.”
Elizabeth said it over lunch, tearing a piece of bread from her sandwich. I almost spat out my tea.
Two women. Applying to replace one highly respected male CEO. Together. My first reaction was: absolutely not. I could already hear what people might say. It would look like two women were needed to do one man’s job. Weak. Incapable.
We both had small children and were working part-time. We were ready to lead, but neither of us thought it was the right moment to take on such a demanding role alone.
By the time I walked back to my desk, curiosity had overtaken scepticism. I googled “Co-CEO”. An hour after that conversation, I was convinced.
Nearly six years on, as we mark International Women’s Day and reflect on how we “balance the scales” in leadership, I see that moment differently.
We began the role in the depths of Melbourne lockdown. Elizabeth had a six-month-old baby and a kinder kid. I had two primary school children who hated homeschooling. Most of our staff were remote.
It was intense from day one.
Doing it alone would have been overwhelming. Doing it together made it sustainable.
Just 21 per cent of CEOs in Australia are women. Women are twice as likely to work part time as men, and part-time work remains a promotion barrier.
Some of that gap reflects organisational resistance to promoting part-timers. But some of it happens earlier. Many women self-select out before they even have a chance at the top job.
That can stem from not feeling fully qualified; anticipating sharper scrutiny as a woman CEO; not seeing themselves reflected in the traditional solo CEO archetype; lacking sponsorship earlier in their careers; or carrying the “double burden” of leading at work and at home.
These pressures are often stronger for women from marginalised groups.
Choosing not to step forward can feel personal. In reality, it is shaped by structural signals about who belongs at the top and whose leadership looks legitimate.
For me, co-leadership changed the equation. It meant I could be present for my children without defaulting to full-time childcare. It meant the inevitable overtime of a CEO role could be shared. It quietened doubts about perceived gaps in my CV. And it allowed me to lead in a way that felt authentic and genuinely collaborative.
Leading a public interest legal organisation running complex litigation against governments and well-resourced multinational corporations is not simple.
Fortunately, Elizabeth and I had worked together before. We shared values, respected each other’s strengths and brought complementary skills. Most importantly, we trusted each other.
There are many ways to co-lead. Ours is a genuine job share. We share all aspects of the role but divide the workdays, so whoever is CEO that day handles whatever needs doing.
Recently, during an online staff meeting, my internet cut out mid-sentence. Before the silence could settle, Elizabeth finished the sentence word for word and kept going. The team burst out laughing.
That moment captured something important. Strategy, context and instinct flow so freely between us that it often does not matter who has done what.
Good co-leadership means fully sharing responsibility. It means disagreeing in private but backing decisions publicly. It means sharing power even when your ego would prefer otherwise. It means never undermining each other.
It is not always seamless.
In a true job share, there is nowhere to hide. If you make a mistake, you own it together. If you avoid a task and it becomes the other person’s problem, you fix it. If tension arises, you address it directly.
The benefits have been significant.
We make hard decisions more confidently because they are tested from two perspectives. We maintain more external relationships because the workload is shared. We can genuinely switch off on leave, knowing the other is fully across the detail. Our day-to-day collaboration models trust and respect, shaping culture in practical ways.
Since we stepped into the role, Environmental Justice Australia has tripled in size. We have increased revenue, strengthened partnerships and expanded our capacity to support community clients taking on powerful interests.
That growth has not happened in spite of shared leadership. It has happened because of it.
It also required a board willing to back a different model. As Workplace Gender Equality Agency CEO Mary Wooldridge has said, “Enabling more management roles to be undertaken part-time and/or flexibly will expand employers’ access to a greater talent pool and support reducing their gender pay gap.”
Is co-leadership the answer to the glass ceiling? It is part of the answer.
Many women are fully capable of leading alone. But if senior roles remain structured around constant availability and singular authority, we will continue to narrow the pipeline. Redesigning leadership does not lower standards. It broadens access.
Six years ago, at that lunch table, I worried it would look like weakness.
I was wrong.
Shared leadership is not a compromise. It is a deliberate choice about how power is exercised.
If we are serious about balancing the scales, we cannot just encourage women to step up. We need to rethink the structures at the top.
This International Women’s Day, it is time to let go of outdated ideas about what a CEO should look like and actively support leadership models that allow women – and the missions they serve – to thrive.
Our top tips for co-CEOs
- Work out most of the important elements before you start the role. The big things – your vision for the organisation, your priorities for year one, your leadership values; right down to the nuts and bolts – will you co-manage your direct reports, how will you make decisions, who attends which meetings?
- Get ‘marriage counselling’ as soon as you start the job – sessions with a coach on communication, and working through differences, and giving and receiving feedback.
- This will be the only time in your working life when you can observe another person doing your exact role in real time. Take this gift for what it is and learn as much as you can from the other person’s experience and approach.
- If it is a true job share – you are sharing all aspects of the role – strongly consider having a shared email address. Much less can fall through the cracks when you can see every email the other person has sent and received on your day off.
- Compromise or remove yourself entirely on the little things, make the time and effort to thrash out the big things.
- When you feel strongly on an important issue advocate hard, but when you can see the other person’s arguments are better, and their conviction is stronger, put your views aside and back them in. Once the decision is made, jointly own it and move on.
- Shift your ‘ego bubble’ from self to shared. All successes are both of yours and all failures are too.
- Don’t hold things over to the other person’s day to avoid making a decision – if you’re authorised to do it just do it. But conversely don’t race through your to-do list to clear the decks for your job share partner the next day. You end up muddling your priorities and actioning things that weren’t urgent or didn’t need your input at all.
Accept that although you must essentially be same person for many aspects of your role, you are not actually the same person and your job share buddy will do things a little differently on their day than you would have. Sometimes their approach might even lead to a sub-optimal outcome that you think could have been avoided. That’s still ok – you are not automatons and you will have different skills and different comfort levels. Regardless, discuss it in private and back each other in in public.