In Transition 3: CAN YOU ENGINEER CO-LEADERS?
Photo by Mitul Shah from Rising’s 9th birthday party at Strangebrew with people sat around chatting and the screen showing the words “Young People Are Leaders Now”
Oh hey, remember that whole recruiting Co-Directors thing?
We’ve been head down in the weeds with it since March and we’re excited now, to take some time and look up to share some of our immediate reflections from the other side of the process.
Installing our 2025 Space to Dream exhibition at KIT FORM, photo by Josh O’Connor
In total, six people were part of the recruitment process at various stages with Euella taking part in the first half and Jess in the second. Each panellist was part of three phases with at least one ‘baton passer’ who was present for the previous phases and could share the key themes from that phase. For example, Euella was able to talk about the shortlisting decision-making considerations in the context of the first stage interviews, our Non-Exec, Emily, was able to share the key themes of first stage interviews in the matchmaking process and so on and so forth up to the final decision.
Overall, this worked really well and helped with capacity crunches, though there was definitely a fluctuation in pace throughout the process. From the date applications closed to shortlisting, went by quickly. We received 31 applications and the first stage interviews were quite intense as we interviewed 13 people across two long days and had to fight the urge to shortlist then and there to ensure we had more people to make potential matches from in the next stage.
Inversely, the time between the matchmaking meetings and second stage interview felt overly spacious. We had designed in this slack for potential rematching and for the new Co-Director pairs to meet outside of the process but maybe on reflection, it could have been shorter and the decision made sooner. All recruitment processes are a bit like that though, the balance between giving candidates the time to prepare with not wanting to waste people’s time.
Photo of our Co-Making lab hosted by Carlo Hornilla creating a ‘Rising island’ collaboratively
THE MATCH-MAKING PROCESS
In a lot of the conversations we’ve had about the process, the thing everyone wants to know about is the matchmaking. How did we go from 12 individuals to 4 potential Co-Director pairs? The matchmaking stage has always been the most untested part.
In the initial applications we asked “What do you look for in a collaborator, and what do you bring to a successful collaboration?” This was helpful but it’s hard to be specific when there’s not an actual person in mind. Most candidates talked about good communication and honesty. Some talked about energy (e.g. wanting someone more grounded) or particular lived experience (e.g. preferring to lead with someone else from a working class background). But as shortlisters and interviewers, how much we knew about people’s energy or lived experience could only be based on how they’d shown up on the day or what they’d told us - which was a tension that we carried.
trying to find a match of vibes whilst also having clear justifications for those vibes
We talked a lot as a Matchmaking Panel about how it was sort of like blind-dating, although when you set up your mate with someone, you usually know them well enough to know they might get on. And of course, as this was a recruitment process, we were aiming to do all of this as objectively as possible, trying to find a match of vibes whilst also having clear justifications for those vibes based on what candidates had said so far.
In our 2-hour match-making meeting, we came back from a break and it felt like everything suddenly came together. We had 3 pairs that made sense and one that came into the process only wanting to lead with each other. We had 4 people unmatched but it didn’t feel fair to match people for the sake of it and we were conscious of only progressing pairs that we could genuinely see leading the Agency together. This led to some tough decisions about really strong candidates that we simply didn’t have a good match for.
Photo of our collage & chill where potential Co-Director candidates could come and ask questions and meet the community whilst making together
We talked a little bit about what happens next, how to hold the initial introductions and what might be useful. In the end we came up with a list of questions to help the pairs get under the surface of small talk and polite introductions to ask some deeper questions and figure out if they could lead together for the next 5 years, as much as you can figure that out in an hour or two anyway!
The questions FOR NEWLY MATCHED PAIRS:
Why have you applied for this role?
What’s your relationship to young people, art and Bristol?
What does honesty or transparency look like for you?
What’s something you think I should know about you?
What do you want to know about me?
What’s the best way to tell you no?
What are your fears about co-leadership?
What’s something you’ve learnt about yourself recently?
What practical things do you need to do your best work?
What do you need to know that would make the difference to knowing if we can do this together?
We shared their answers to that collaboration question beforehand and started the introduction with some of the feedback in the process so far about why they were each strong candidates, what we’d like to understand more of and most importantly, why they’d been matched. For the pair that knew each other we also sent them feedback from the interview panel about what they might like to think about whilst the matchmaking was going on.
Photo of Jess from our Space Lab in 2024 taken by Olumedia
After each meeting I introduced them and then left them to chat. I followed up in the days after to check in individually how it felt, if they wanted to proceed and if they had any particular areas of concern that it would be good to address in the process. All of the matchmade pairs were happy to proceed together and could see why they’d been matched, there were some interesting concerns around how different people set boundaries, and how different lived experiences might feed into their working relationships.
Rising is a unique beast and so the things we were looking for were nuanced and specific
After the matches were all confirmed we hosted a planning session, partly to give everyone a shared opportunity to work on their presentation for the second stage interview, but also to observe how they worked together. Two weeks later we held the second stage interviews which was our first time to see all of the pairs together, how they interacted and what their ideas were for the future of Rising.
It’s been an incredible, complicated and delicate process throughout. Spending two and a half months, living with the uncertainty of whether you’ll get a job or not is a big big ask of people and we’re committed to supporting everyone who was shortlisted in some form or another as they all have the potential to be incredible leaders. Rising is a unique beast and so the things we were looking for were nuanced and specific, but the successful candidates have a really exciting vision for what the next era of Rising will look like.
Jess and Euella on stage at Rising’s 9th birthday party, photo by Mitul Shah
Want to come and ask us more questions about the process, meet the new Co-Directors and celebrate the end of mine and Euella’s term at Rising?
We’re hosting an exhibition at KIT FORM in Bristol from 10-13th June, including multiple events and most importantly a 10th birthday party to close it all out.
