New Year, New Leadership Models

As we entered 2026 my LinkedIn was full, not of New Year’s Resolutions, but New Year’s Resignations. It seems that more and more people I am connected to are leaving their jobs – in many cases with nothing to move to. 

Some are leaving their jobs as a result of the redundancies sweeping our sector, but most are leaving through choice and many are choosing to leave full-time work altogether. And what is happening is wider than my own network. ACEVO’s annual report to March 2025 showed their membership in decline for the first time in years. Meanwhile, demand for their support services has increased1. A survey from Blume in November 2025 revealed that, while the most common reason people become freelance consultants is flexibility and lifestyle, 22% are ‘pushed into’ it as a result of redundancy and another 8% are ‘pushed out’ of the permanent roles they held due to burn out, toxic workplaces and other difficult issues in the workplace.2 

I have written previously about the systemic challenges that are undermining too many of our leaders. For charity leaders, a poly-crisis of falling income, rising costs and increased demand are the normal. These can result in a vicious cycle staff sickness and burn-out, high turnover and increasing pressure. Leaders will often hold themselves accountable for all of this, thinking they have failed or lack resilience when the real question isn’t why they aren’t tough enough; it is why the environment is so tough that it requires superhuman resilience to survive. 

Whilst the freelance lifestyle is an amazing alternative for some (myself included), our sector needs leaders and many of those I have spoken to want to lead – if there is a way to do it sustainably.  

And so I began to look at some of the ways in which leaders are surviving and, in some cases, thriving. What became clear is that new models of leadership are emerging across the sector. 

Chief Extra Officer / Co-Pilot 

The role of co-pilot or ‘Chief Extra Officer’ is one I have played myself several times since becoming freelance. Engaging a ‘co-pilot’ alongside your CEO has emerged recently as a way to add senior level expertise and capacity for a time-limited period.  

The co-pilot role is neither a coach or a consultant, although it can include elements of both. First and foremost, it is an active role, implementing alongside or on behalf of the CEO. This model is suitable when a charity is facing a crisis and the CEO has far too many priorities to manage, all of which are urgent and serious.  

As more and more former CEOs move to working freelance, the potential to find a co-pilot to support you grows. And engaging someone with the skills and experience to support your CEO and charity through a crisis can be a good short-term solution. It is definitely better to support a valued CEO through a crisis than to lose them to burn out when your organisation is already stretched. But this is an expensive and short-term fix. To address the longer-term challenges, more permanent solutions are needed. 

Co-CEOs and distributed leadership models 

The model of co-CEO is growing in popularity. As a former Board member of Greenpeace, I was particularly interested when this organisation – so known for its ‘hero narrative’ chose to appoint co-CEOs to jointly lead.  

It feels exciting that job sharing at such senior levels is becoming more common as it has the potential to enable more candidates to work flexibly, whilst continuing to lead. But it may also be a way to drive wider systemic change; Womankind Worldwide recently appointed co-CEOs. In their advertising they explicitly stated that this leadership model, rooted feminist principles, was chosen in order to dismantle the patriarchal and colonial power structures that dominate the sector. 

More exciting to consider is what leadership could look like if charities appointed co-leaders who were tasked with sharing their power and their accountability not just with each other, but with the wider staff body.  

Several charities, driven by a desire to dismantle traditional hierarchies, improve staff wellbeing, or better align internal structures with social justice values, have adopted other models of distributed leadership. 

One of Scotland’s largest charities, Cornerstone, replaced their traditional hierarchy with a “Local Care Branch” model. Teams of social care workers are self-managing, recruiting their own colleagues and managing their own rotas without a manager. And the Mayday Trust have moved toward a highly personalized, asset-based coaching model for working with their homeless clients, which required flattening their internal hierarchy to give frontline “coaches” autonomy rather than following strict management directives. 

These moves have the potential, I think, to go a long way to tackling the loneliness so many CEOs describe, at the same time as creating stronger staff teams, focused on collective action.

The Unitary Board 

The model that I think has the potential to drive the most radical change is the creation of unitary Boards. Whereas in almost all UK charities, the Board of (voluntary) Trustees and the (paid) staff team are two separate bodies, some charities have begun to merge them with the CEO and possibly other members of the Executive Team sitting on the Board as full, voting Trustees.  

This model is closer to the private sector and NHS than to traditional UK charity governance but has huge potential to remove one of the biggest ‘us’ and ‘them’ dynamics in the sector, ensuring that decision making combines the helicopter perspective of volunteer Board members with the detailed knowledge of paid staff.   

In the UK, St Andrew’s Healthcare, a major mental health charity has adopted a Unitary Board structure specifically to become more agile and business-like in its decision-making, while retaining charitable status. They describe the model as one that creates ‘collective accountability’, as the Board and Executive share equal responsibility for both governance and operations.  

For me, this feels like a breaking of a sacred taboo. It is controversial to blur the boundaries between leadership and governance. The Charity Commission insist on a volunteer majority on any Board and any charity seeking to adopt this model will have to specifically adjust their Articles of Association to allow them to pay their staff-Trustees. But the opportunity to share the privilege and responsibility of leadership not just with colleagues but also with Trustees feels exciting and like a conversation that is long overdue. Bates Wells have designed a specific model of ‘Assured Unitary Governance’ that complies with Charity Law and that, in their view, is ‘fairer’ on both staff and Trustees. For the sake of charities and leaders alike, as we enter a new year, I hope that this might be a new model more organisations consider exploring.