What We Are Looking for in Our New Co-Executive Director
All three of our new Co-Executive Directors will need to hold a core belief in collaborative work, and to see themselves as supporters and connectors with the rest of the TCG team. While each will bring specific ideas, vision, and energy to their roles, they will embrace collective responsibility for TCG’s service to the field and for the care and investment in TCG’s people. They will all prioritize the ‘communications’ part of the name of the organization as an essential daily priority, both internally and externally.
For the Co-Executive Director: National Operations and Business Development, their primary super-strength will be as a brilliant systems designer for both technical and human parts of the organization. They will have a highly detail-oriented mind and the ability to make clear and efficient decisions around priorities and allocation of resources. They will be an expert planner who can also adapt to new circumstances and situations quickly and orchestrate complicated shifts in process with a diverse and largely remote team. They will also be creative in their approach, able to envision and execute on new opportunities for earned revenue at TCG. Their experience with operational and business systems will also provide the opportunity to strengthen TCG’s day-to-day, and re-invent TCG in various areas to model anti-oppressive business practices.
Human Expectations and Personal Values
We expect our Co-Executive Directors to be very different from one another, but we do expect them to unify around the present and aspirational values of the TCG team.
In a Co-Executive Director structure, where the three individuals have equal shares of power and authority in the organization, each Co-Executive Director needs an appreciation for the benefits of co-leadership and an eagerness to support one another while feeling confident and clear in their responsibilities on the team. A spirit of humility and grace to know when to lean into their perspective and when to make space for others’ expertise is the bedrock of how we hope TCG will function going forward.
They will operate from a joyful place of optimism about a better future (for tomorrow or ten years from now), while appreciating that they are responsible for one moment in a much longer story. This appreciation will mesh well with their passion for training and mentoring others. They will see their work in building TCG to include building the knowledge, relationships, confidence, and enthusiasm of members of the team (or others in the field) who will be at TCG even after their term(s) complete.
Their team orientation and emphasis on listening will allow them to design and develop better operations or opportunities for TCG, and will provide a fertile space for input and challenges to the status quo from staff, board, or other TCG constituents. They will not see these challenges as threatening, but instead as a healthy and integral part of growth and progress. Paired with this, they will remain deeply aware that holding hierarchical authority and power can lead to diminished empathy, and so they will make efforts with the other Co-Executive Directors, staff, and board, to regularly re-ground themselves in compassion, and how their actions impact the realities and vulnerabilities of the people who make up TCG and the theatre ecology.
Co-Executive Director Roles and Structures
TCG has spent extensive time discussing and exploring the structure for three Co-Executive Directors. Since two of the three Co-Executive Director's are internal promotions, the third Co-Executive Director will complement and enhance the capabilities of the existing leaders. Because TCG will be collectively led by three individuals, no single person needs to be outstanding in all areas, as long as the team of three collectively are exceptional in all the capabilities TCG needs to fulfill its purpose and support its people. While this opportunity statement includes a draft of how responsibilities will be shared at the outset, TCG anticipates that the three leaders will continue to evolve and refine their roles during the first year of their collaboration, and in an ongoing way through their entire terms of service.
The following responsibilities will be shared among all three Co-Executive Directors:
Strategy and Vision
All three Co-Executive Directors will be responsible for collaborating on a unified, cross-functional, and adaptive strategy and vision for TCG in partnership with staff and Board.
Staff Culture and Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
All three Co-Executive Directors will commit collectively to following and supporting a set of core cultural behaviors for TCG as set out in TCG’s values. Together the three Co-Executive Director's will ensure that all of TCG’s communications and programming align with these values. All three should be people who have deeply examined their own biases, learned and lived anti-racist practices, and are able to both lead and learn in this area. (Note that EDI-specific programming for the field will be held as a specific programming responsibility.)
Public Engagement
All three Co-Executive Directors will be great communicators, comfortable speaking publicly as well as engaging one-on-one with TCG’s many community members. They will also be excellent listeners, able to engage deeply with TCG’s constituents by listening fully, building trust, and working to heal past harm. Specific opportunities to represent TCG at conferences and other engagements will be shared strategically among the three Co-Executive Director's as well as with other appropriate staff and board representatives.
Managing a Budget that Enacts TCG’s Values
Believing that budgets are moral documents that express an organization’s values, the three Co-Executive Directors will work together to develop an annual budget that enacts TCG’s values while reflecting fiscal realities.
The three Co-Executive Directors will also all:
Report to and participate in annual collective evaluations with each other and the board
Collaborate deeply with the Board and other staff leadership at twice yearly full-day strategy sessions, and in between as appropriate
Bring a diverse set of empowered perspectives into leadership, giving more weight and strength to TCG initiatives by removing the ‘one voice’ structure.
Embrace having great strengths in some areas, and supporting other Co-Executive Directors with strengths in other areas
Operate in a way where they can step in for one another on short-term basis when life happens
Specific responsibilities for the Co-Executive Director: National Operations and Business Development include:
Primary leadership around TCG's overall business model, including envisioning and exploring new approaches to supporting the mission of a national service organization.
Design, oversee and improve TCG systems for People & Culture/Human Resources, Information Technology, Financial Management, and general operations.
Develop approaches to understanding and illuminating organizational capacity (human, financial, temporal, and relational) to aid in prioritization and decision making.
Lead internal communications and coordination between functional areas, including between the board and staff.
Manage the annual budgeting process and oversee day-to-day finances in partnership with ArtsFMS and the other two Co-Executive Directors
Support TCG’s publishing arms (AT Magazine, TCG Books, and Advertising) jointly with the other Co-Executive Directors, with a particular orientation towards effective operations in the current environment and developing new earned revenue opportunities
Design and improve current and potential earned revenue systems and opportunities
Lead and coordinate the work of TCG’s operations departments, including specifically:
Finance and Administration
People & Culture
Information Technology
Contracts and Legal Oversight
