Leadership for Co-Design vs Leadership of Co-Design: Creating the conditions for collaboration
I had a fascinating conversation with a client that got me reflecting on what kind of leadership is actually needed when you want to bring co-design into an organisation. They observed that our conversation about building capabilities for co-design had turned into more of a discussion about management strategies, and asked me a deceptively simple question: “Do you have resources on co-design and management or leadership?”
As we talked through their specific situation, something important crystallised. The kind of leadership approach needed to create the conditions for co-design isn’t always—perhaps counterintuitively—a collaborative one.
The challenge: when teams don’t want to co-design
My client is managing a team that doesn’t really want to embrace co-design. The team thinks what they currently do is good enough. They don’t see the value in involving others in their work.
The biggest challenge is that this team doesn’t have a learning mindset. They’re not interested in getting feedback. They don’t have a history of safe spaces for sharing and growing together. They’ve adopted this attitude where it seems like they know what’s best and don’t need help from anyone else.
Sound familiar?
My client had been stuck in this loop of trying to convince and persuade the team to do more co-design, to get curious about it, to build their skills. Then we started talking about something different: the importance of learning by doing. Finding ways for the team to work in more co-designerly ways and build the foundational skills—the building blocks of co-design—without necessarily calling it ‘co-design’ or making it a big formal thing. Being a bit more subtle, perhaps even a bit surreptitious about it.
Two distinct types of leadership
This conversation illuminated something I hadn’t seen so clearly before: the difference between leadership of co-design and leadership for co-design.
Leadership of co-design
This is probably what most of us think about when we talk about co-design leadership. When you’re facilitating, leading and guiding an actual co-design process, you need to embody co-design mindsets and principles. You take a collaborative approach. You’re facilitating other people’s participation, holding space, managing power dynamics, and ensuring diverse voices are heard.
This is the work you do when the conditions for co-design already exist—when people are ready, willing and able to collaborate meaningfully.
Leadership for co-design
But what about when those conditions don’t exist? When you can’t actually do any genuine co-design yet, but you want to see more of it in your environment?
This is where leadership for co-design comes in.
This is the harder, slower, more strategic work of shifting culture and creating the conditions that would make co-design possible in the first place. You might have colleagues who are actively hostile to collaboration and/or to design thinking and/or creative practice. There’s no point wasting your time trying to convince them through argument alone, just having dialogues about the benefits while nothing changes on the ground.
Instead, leadership for co-design is about working deliberately—sometimes slowly, often strategically—to shift the culture and build the foundational capabilities.
Starting with mindsets and culture
This kind of leadership starts with mindsets and habits. It’s about cultivating the kinds of behaviours, attitudes and team culture that would enable co-design to be possible in that environment.
That might mean:
Creating small opportunities for the team to experience the benefits of others’ input without calling it ‘co-design’
Building feedback loops into existing processes
Modelling curiosity, humility, and a learning mindset yourself
Celebrating (gently, not going over the top) when team members admit they don’t know something or ask for help
Creating genuinely safe spaces for people to share work-in-progress and grow together
Recognising and rewarding collaboration, not just individual expertise and personal achievements.
It’s not about forcing co-design on people who don't want it. That’s not in keeping with the principle of self-determination. It’s about creating an environment where co-design becomes not just possible, but actually attractive—where people start to see the value because they’ve experienced it, not because someone told them about it.
A different kind of leadership challenge
Leadership for co-design requires different skills than leadership of co-design. You need even more patience. Strategic thinking. The ability to read your organisational culture and find the leverage points for change. Sometimes you need to be comfortable with being indirect, perhaps even a bit sneaky, in how you introduce new ways of working.
This is management work as much as it is leadership work. It’s about creating structures, systems and expectations that support collaborative practice. It’s about performance conversations that emphasise learning over knowing. It’s about resource allocation that allows time for iteration and involvement.
What this means in practice
If you’re trying to bring more co-design into your organisation and meeting resistance, perhaps the question isn’t, “How do I become a better co-designer?” but rather, “What kind of leadership does this situation need right now?”
If your team isn’t ready for co-design, maybe you don’t need to be leading co-design yet. You may need to be leading for it instead—patiently, strategically, building the culture and capabilities that will one day make meaningful co-design possible.
It’s playing the long game. Sometimes the long game is the only game that will actually get you where you want to go.
I’ll let my client have the final words. When I shared the draft of this blog with them, they offered this feedback for others in a similar situation:
It takes patience and a lot of time in the grey. The only real constant in this process is the back and forth, trying things, iterating, and never quite knowing how the team will respond. Out of ten things I try, maybe one works, and sometimes only for a few people.
It takes resilience and a long-term mindset. Building the foundations of a house may take longer than building the house itself, but that’s what will make it strong and safe in the end.
Interested in learning more about co-design leadership?
Our short course Leading Co-Design in Complex Systems is for purpose-driven professionals who want to co-create better outcomes with their colleagues, clients and communities.
