How Do I Co-Lead with a Challenging Partner?

Coaching Real Leaders

Harvard Business Review / Muriel Wilkins

Executive, Business/careers, Leadership, Careers, Business/management, Sessions, Hbr, Coaching, Review, Society & Culture, C-suite, Leaders, Harvard, Business, Management

4.8 • 660 Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

His leadership role requires him to co-lead a project with someone he finds challenging to work with. With clashing styles and unclear roles, their partnership feels anything but collaborative. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches him through the root of the power struggle, and guides him toward a more intentional co-leadership path.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Imagine a state where you can get from big cities to big nature in less than half an hour, with some of the best quality of life in the nation.
0:09.0	Welcome to Minnesota, America's least stressed state.
0:12.7	Learn more at exploreminnesota.com slash live.
0:31.2	Thank you. I'm Muriel Wilkins, and this is Coaching Real Leaders, part of the HBR podcast network.
0:36.4	I'm a longtime executive coach who works with highly successful leaders who've hit a bump in the road. My job is to help them
0:38.3	get over that bump by clarifying their goals and figuring out a way to reach them so that hopefully
0:43.1	they can lead with a little more ease. I typically work with clients over the course of several months,
0:48.6	but on this show, we have a one-time coaching meeting focusing on a specific leadership challenge
0:53.7	they're facing.
1:00.1	Today's guest is someone will call Stefan to protect his confidentiality.
1:04.9	He's in a leadership role that he finds both interesting and challenging.
1:09.5	It's dealing with people ultimately. It's resolving challenging. It's dealing with people ultimately.
1:12.7	It's resolving problems.
1:14.4	It's making impact on completely different area, not solving clients' internal or external
1:23.2	problems with whatever kind of design, but with dealing with people with emotions, with
1:29.7	conflicts and trying to resolve it, trying to find common grounds.
1:34.5	So contributing in a really different way.
1:37.9	This is my, I would say, first serious.
1:41.6	Not that previous leading roles were not serious, but this one is like most serious. Not that previous leading roles were not serious, but this one is like most serious,
1:48.1	like more serious. Let's say the team is bigger and the challenges are bigger.
1:53.1	Stefan reached out because while he likes many aspects of his position, he's having trouble
1:58.3	co-leading a project with a partner who happens to be external
	...

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