The real work of leading in pairs
Frank & Eddy Quarterly, Q2 2025
Lessons from two years of co-founding.
The partnership is the product
Two years ago, we launched Frank & Eddy Leadership to do meaningful work. But what’s been more powerful, and much more difficult, is building the partnership behind it. How do you handle one co-founder with ADHD and another who craves structure? Or balance optimism with skepticism? Or keep resentment from sneaking in?
Most leadership pairs we coach – co-founders, product/engineering duos, or other leadership teams – don’t think about these things until it’s too late or the conflict has boiled over. We didn’t want to be that pair. So we treated our relationship like product development: designed, tested, iterated; built systems, rituals, and a ton of trust. We don’t always get it right, but we’re stronger for trying.
This post is a field note. If you’re trying to build something ambitious with someone else, we hope our learned lessons might save you time, tension, and a few sleepless nights.
1. Don't just build the business. Build the relationship.
Most leadership pairs rightly focus their early energy on the work itself and assume the rest will come. But if you're not also investing in partnership fit, you're building on shaky ground.
What we've found works:
Individually brainstorm your values, then share with each other and discuss: Where are we similar? Where do we differ? Where might the differences lead to potential conflict and where might the differences be superpowers?
Talk about stress and what support looks like. Tell each other: “If I’m stressed, you’ll notice ______. The best way to support me in these moments is ______.”
Discuss your hopes and fears. Not just about the product or business, but about the relationship. What do you want it to feel like? What are you afraid might happen? Use a facilitator if you can (yes, we’re biased, but yes, we did!). You need someone who won’t let you move on too fast.
How this played out for us: When we founded Frank & Eddy, we already had trust from working together at Spotify. But we didn't know how we'd handle the friction that inevitably comes when two people try to build something ambitious together.
From the start, we were clear that we wanted to be intentional. So we treated the partnership like a product. We did what we’d advise any leadership team to do: define who you’re serving, debate your value prop, clarify how you’ll know you’re succeeding. We spent a full uninterrupted week together doing everything we do when kicking off a new product team: talked hopes and fears, set a mission & vision, built a cadence for weekly, monthly, and quarterly planning and reflection, and defined values, not just for our work with clients but for how we’d work with each other. Some favorites? “This too shall pass: We approach problems by knowing there is a path through. We don’t get stuck in pessimism and cynical negativity.” and “We give each other freedom and flexibility. We make decisions that enable our freedom.” When setting up, we borrowed from what we’d seen work elsewhere, and asked others in the field what they wished they’d done differently. We set up rituals to help our relationship grow: Monday check-ins, Wednesday learning blocks, monthly planning sessions, quarterly reflections.
2. Design for your differences.
Put any two people in a room and they’ll be on the opposite ends of a spectrum, no matter how small that spectrum is. And that means potential tension points: structure vs. spontaneity, talker vs. listener, fast vs. thorough. Many pairs try to smooth those over or minimize them. But that's a trap. The goal isn't to match each other; it's to design the system so that you get the most out of both styles.
What we've found works:
Get explicit about where you're different and you might be inadvertently defaulting to “both of us should do this.”
Assign roles in key moments so you can each play to strength. What do you each want to lead? What do you want to let go of?
Create a simple structure for how you handle friction in differences. Something like: “If bringing it up in the moment can move us along more positively, we bring it up. Otherwise, we make sure to debrief afterwards to discuss both perspectives (not assign blame), think creatively, and adjust how we work.”
How this played out for us: From Alia: “In client calls I tend to jump in, move fast, and extract a lot of information. Fiona listens more, reflects longer, and adds depth. I sometimes feel guilty for taking up too much space. And Fiona has told me she feels bad that she thinks she’s not contributing as much. At first, I tried hanging back, and she tried jumping in more, and it drained both of us. Now, we assign who’s leading the call, and we back each other’s style. I keep us on track. She catches what I’d miss. We’re more effective, and more ourselves.”
Fiona says: “I bring optimism, gut feel, and a drive to surprise people with the value they didn’t know they needed. Alia brings healthy skepticism, data, and precision about what it actually takes to do the thing. She is the string to my balloon. And I’ve stopped trying to do things she’s better at. Not because I can’t, but because she does it with a calm clarity that I admire (and sometimes envy). We didn’t write out our roles. But over time, we’ve learned to trust what the other person brings, and to step aside when it’s not ours to lead.”
3. Put your tension somewhere.
Avoiding hard conversations doesn't make them go away. And waiting for the tension to blow up wastes time, erodes trust, and can quickly lead to resentment. Strong partnerships build in ways to release that tension early and often.
What we've found works:
Build lightweight rituals to keep small annoyances from accumulating. If you have a regular time that you’ve defined as the time to discuss frustrations, you’re more likely to bring them up and not let them fester.
Venting to a spouse or a friend? Use it as a trigger to talk it out together. Or define some other early-warning signal to identify when something’s off about your relationship.
How this plays out for us: We let tensions out regularly. We have a simple practice at the end of our planning meeting where we name "strainers" – small things that bug us – alongside appreciations for each other. It felt awkward at first. But it's kept tension from calcifying into resentment. Alia reflects: “One early friction point was our first time facilitating together. I like to prepare well in advance; Fiona gets energy closer to the moment. I got snippy. She got defensive. We both talked in ways we weren’t proud of. But because we had strainers & appreciations set up, it felt easy to bring up the frustration and talk it out.”
We also abide by “the bitching rule.” When either of us starts complaining about the other to our partner (hi Alan! hi Igor!), that's our cue for a conversation. That little rule has saved us from letting resentment build, and often makes the partnership stronger. As Fiona says, “Beneath the friction there is always gold.” We’ve built some of our strongest practices from mining the friction in those moments.
4. Adapt the system, not the person.
People change. Life changes. What worked last quarter might not work this one. The key is to keep adjusting your system so you don't waste energy trying to force your partner or yourself to stay the same.
What we've found works:
Create a standing agenda item at your quarterly meeting to revisit your ways of working as things evolve. Challenge your assumptions about how things have to work. Ask each other: “Are we holding onto this because we need it? Or because we’ve always done it this way?”
Build in a periodic explicit check in about whether things feel “fair”
Retrospect at some regular cadence, like quarterly: “What’s working great that we can build on? What could work better that needs a tweak or redesign?”
How this played out for us: Our partnership is 50/50 so we both contribute to our mutual success. But what does equal contribution look like? We knew this was risky, so we built a way to inspect it. It’s on our quarterly agenda to check in: does either of us feel like the arrangement isn’t fair? Has either of our intent, or our life situations changed that would necessitate a partnership ownership or structural change? Building in a mechanism to periodically re-evaluate this has made it completely a non-issue.
And of course, we hold retrospectives to discuss what’s working and not. An early friction point was regularly missing our weekly goals. Alia says: “I felt terrible when we were setting OKRs and kept missing them. But I realized it was more about falling short of what we’d aimed for than me thinking we should’ve done more or different. So we reframed. Now we define a few “commitments” — the things we’re 100% doing – and many more “possibilities” – things we’re excited about, and we know are valuable, but we’re not holding too tightly. This was a tiny shift in language, but resulted in a big release of pressure.”
Fiona adds: "Alia offering not to plan in the time-honored way was huge for me. I knew it didn’t work for my interest-based brain, but I'd never thought to ask her to let it go. I just assumed I’d have to keep trying harder.”
5. It’s about more than just the work.
A strong partnership doesn't just fuel better work, it is the work. And you can't maintain it on autopilot. Making space for reflection, appreciation, and even inspiration keeps the relationship resilient and drives necessary personal growth.
What we've found works:
Build in time for reflection, spontaneity, and fun, not just delivery. How do you celebrate? How do you inspire each other?
Expect and be open to personal growth
Acknowledge how you’re building trust – it pays off when life gets serious!
How this plays out for us: We help each other recharge. Alia says: “Recently when co-working at the NY Public Library right before a huge deadline, we were stuck and felt drained. My instinct was to stay and grind through. But Fiona encouraged us to instead head to a nearby exhibit on artistic duos. (Was it fate?) We went, we reflected, we re-energized. I was reminded that inspiration and productivity aren't opposites, and that we work best when we create space for both.”
And fun fact: Every quarterly planning session involves a tarot reading, but not to predict the future. Flipping over a random card and posing a question helps us think about what we’re facing in new and creative ways.
We’ve also taken the time to notice and acknowledge the moments that have helped us build trust in one another. Fiona says: “One day, Alia quoted the Trust Equation back at me (something we use often with clients). Until that moment, I hadn’t truly appreciated how my need to spontaneously adapt to what was happening in the moment, and energizing me, was also me reducing my reliability, and thus trustworthiness.”
Our partnership was tested when Alia had to suddenly step away for a family emergency. As Alia recalls: "Fiona didn't just step in. She made it easy for me to leave. No guilt. No drama. Just calm clarity. I told her that I was feeling guilty, and I asked her to tell me if she was feeling like she was taking on too much. She promised she'd tell me if she was getting frustrated, and also reassured me that it was all totally fine. It deepened my trust in her, and in us."
Invest in the thing that makes everything else possible
A strong partnership isn't something that happens automatically because you like or respect each other. It's something you design, maintain, and adapt over time. And when you do, it becomes the thing that makes everything else – growth, resilience, great work – possible.
We don't have a playbook. But we do have a commitment: to tell the truth, to stay curious, and to keep making room for each other. And we know that by doing that, we’re building something together that neither of us could have built alone.
What’s excited us this q
🎂 We can hardly believe it, but Frank & Eddy turned 2 this month. We are so grateful for all our clients, and appreciate everyone who has lent a hand, guided us, or given us feedback along the way.
🥼 We’re halfway through two cohorts of our popular Leadership Learning Lab within the same company: one with managers, one with aspiring managers. Facilitating both simultaneously has helped us learn and iterate quickly, and it’s been so much fun to notice the differences in group dynamics, even with very similar content!
🐨 Feedback Animals! Umm, what? Fiona has been collaborating with Australian-based coaches & consultants Unfold Labs & 52 Conversations on a different approach to feedback. If you check it out, let her know what you think.
What’s pushed our thinking this q
🤖 We’ve had so many fruitful conversations about AI in product development with some former colleagues this month. These chats have helped us see beyond the “AI is the one true future” / “AI is the devil” discourse (can we call it discourse??) that has flooded the zeitgeist. Some takeaways:
If a leader wants your product to “use AI” but they don’t know why or have clear problems they’re trying to solve or metrics they’re wanting it to drive, it could be useful to leave room for open exploration with some time-boxing or “number of experiments” kinds of metrics.
AI isn’t (yet?) capable of helping us think better, it’s mostly capable of helping us type faster, especially when it comes to coding. While it buys time, it also might stagnate innovative thinking. Worth being clear about what you’re trying to use it for when you use it internally.
🧑🧑🧒🧒 Fiona started The Symphony of Self and is excited to be learning from Internal Family Systems creator Richard Schwartz. It is cracking open her brain to new and wonderful ways of coaching, and she’s excited to bring some of what she’s learning to her clients.