I’m not sure how to describe 2023.

In January, I’d already started thinking that this might not be my year. Having lost a family member and then a pet shortly after, the year began with being asked to do a eulogy and a series of emergency vet trips.

There were plenty of successes alongside the challenges, but I identified a need for some change early on and didn’t like that change often felt just out of reach. Despite this, I embraced that there were challenges and was glad to have some direction from them.

With some end-of-year reflection, I realised the extent of co-lead roles I’d undertaken in 2023. Co-convenor, co-manager, co-chair, co-founder, and co-facilitator roles, across a range of settings, meant I struggled to think of a role that didn’t have co- in front of it or that I wasn’t sharing leadership of.

For some positions, co-leadership was part of a formal organisational structure or leadership model I stepped into. In others, it was me (or someone else) who decided to invite co-leadership, recognising the strengths, shared values, and different perspectives or experiences that another person brought.

Yet, there was a surprising amount of variation in how each co- role worked. I noticed this the most between library team and lived experience type leadership.

2022 set the scene

In 2022, my roles involved being the sole lead for teams and working groups that I had responsibility for, and sole instigator of a few projects. This afforded me the time and space to reflect on my decision-making independently. Since I didn’t want to risk projects being siloed and I value collaboration, I often sought out others to come alongside this work.

For one group I led, I recommended that similar initiatives in future might be co-led. This was unique to that specific project as I reflected on its personal impact.

Much of the impact was positive: I built confidence, found new opportunities, collaborated, and reported on areas for future impact. Yet, I felt the emotional labour greater than I had previously.

While I was confident in my ability to lead any outputs, I did find myself asking:

• Am I the right person at this time?
• Will the value I bring outweigh any personal cost?
• Would a co-lead help to mitigate this and support others leading in the future?

As I established terms of reference, I was conscious about this potential emotional labour for other people involved, including the convenor role that would have facilitative responsibilities and required building trust.

Taking care in how I defined the scope and roles meant there was potential to mitigate this risk for those leading this work after me while still ensuring the work was meaningful, fulfilling, and impactful.

Ultimately, I recommended bringing a co-lead on board, and that set the trend for my 2023.

Opportunities

I had wanted more people, conversation, and collaboration in 2023, so I welcomed (and sometimes created) opportunities to co-lead. This presented unique learning opportunities. I was able to:

• work closely and collaboratively with new people,
• observe/model the leadership of people I admire,
• observe/reflect on responses to other people’s leadership styles, and
• develop, define, and refine my values and approaches.

I also found that co-lead roles gave me more perspective on the pace that I set for myself and provided a sounding board for ideas and expectations.

Seeing how someone else manages their work, paces themselves, interprets expectations, and communicates is incredibly useful. This isn’t only in matching pace and expectations together as co-leads but in learning from one another and trying new things individually.

Differences

At the end of this year, I realised some unexpected differences in co-leading lived experience committees compared to co-leadership in library teams, all in a variety of contexts. While both saw shared accountability, the decision-making and collaboration sometimes looked different.

For team-based co-lead roles, responsibilities were distinct. Each person had an independent lead on projects but could draw on each other for input, be proxies for each other in meetings, and undertake team-wide decisions and planning together. Pre-determined responsibilities, however, meant that shared collaboration and decision-making on specific projects was more sparing. It was still there, but there was an acknowledgement of and respect for who had ‘the lead’ on what.

By comparison, the lived experience initiatives relied more heavily on shared responsibilities and decision-making. My experiences here were probably unique to the small and community-oriented nature and specific individuals involved. With an openness about strengths, capacity, and needs, our roles evolved and alternated. Even when someone took ‘the lead,’ we still gravitated towards shared decision-making and problem-solving, looking to each other for perspective and understanding beyond our own experience, personal and professional.

In these initiatives, it felt like new ideas were actioned quickly, with deliberation as needed and formalities being co-created. Yet, while existing and created structures allowed this flexibility and initiative, they often required reporting and funding arrangements to be established almost from scratch.

And then there were the co-lead and co-facilitation roles that didn’t fit these boxes. They were hybrids of my experience above or didn’t neatly fit into these categories. Here, organisational structures, motivations, leadership styles, values, time, and individual pace played into differences.

The year’s end

I stepped into many of these roles aware of my individual work style, pace, and expectations. I was curious about what it would be like to match these with someone else.

Across all roles, I found that reciprocated openness and trust made the most difference. This was likely made easier by having values that aligned with my co-leads and that these values were consistently reflected in their actions. It helped to establish a mutual understanding of how each other worked, communicated, and led, and made it part of an ongoing conversation.

Co-leading gave 2023 the ‘people, conversation, and collaboration’ energy I needed. I suspect 2024 will be a mix of different models, and I hope to bring some of the co- energy from this year to it.

I’m choosing to see 2023 as an eclectic mix of everything. It was rewarding, challenging, exciting, exhausting, and engaging. After how the year started, there were times it felt like it might be easier (or warranted) to ‘just not.’ Unfortunately for me (or perhaps fortunately) I’m not good at ‘just not.’

At least for now, I’ll be stepping into 2024 with more beach and sun hats that refuse to stay straight.