“I won’t have a part-time leader in my company.”
That’s what a CEO told me.
At first, it sounds backward. Not like New Work. Not like progress. Like a boomer in the corner office.
His reasoning, however, was clear: leadership means responsibility. For people. For decisions. For direction. If the team works full-time but the leader is only there half the time, gaps emerge. And leadership doesn’t tolerate gaps.
I see both sides.
In highly experienced, stable teams, part-time leadership can work. Clear processes, defined roles, high autonomy. Then less operational presence is needed. Then a leader can achieve more in three days than some do in five.
But in young, growing, or strained teams, it gets tricky. These are precisely the teams I work with. Scaleups in their growth phase. Structures that are rethought every six months. Team members who joined three weeks ago. Conflicts nobody anticipated.
When orientation is missing, when conflicts arise, when quick decisions are required, “unavailable” simply won’t cut it. An “out of office” Slack status is no substitute for leadership. A Thursday appointment two weeks from now doesn’t solve an acute problem today.
Leadership is more than delegation. Leadership means being available when fires need putting out.
At the fire department, nobody works halfway. When the pager goes off, the pager goes off. There is no “Not really today.” Obviously, this logic can’t be mapped one-to-one onto every company. But the core truth holds: responsibility cannot be carried by halves.
This applies just as much to part-time leadership as it does to overburdened full-time leadership. In many scaleups, I see managing directors who formally work 100 percent, but effectively do nothing but sit in meetings. That, too, is a leadership void. Just one that nobody openly talks about.
A personal example
My wife is a chief inspector with the Munich police. After our children were born, she consciously decided against taking on a leadership role part-time. Not to abandon her career, but out of a sense of responsibility.
She wanted to do justice to her team. She wanted to be there when something happens. On patrol duty, a single second can decide everything. You can’t just say: “Call me back on Wednesday.”
This clarity impressed me. She could have taken the title, but instead she asked herself what she could genuinely deliver for her team. The honest answer was: not what she wanted to deliver.
What does this mean for founders and scaleups?
Part-time leadership is not a symbol of modern work. It is a structural decision. And it only works if the system supports it.
Three questions you should ask yourself before taking on any part-time leadership role:
First: Is the team mature enough to handle extended periods without direct access to the leader? Well-established senior teams: yes. Freshly assembled crew post-Series A: usually not.
Second: Who takes over when the leader isn’t there? Deputies are not a matter of goodwill, but an obligation. Without a clear stand-in, you don’t get part-time—you get chaos.
Third: What does an unmade decision cost you on a Friday when no one is reachable? If the answer is “not much,” part-time works. If the answer is “a major problem,” it doesn’t.
New Work Doesn’t Mean Less Responsibility
I have respect for anyone juggling family and leadership. I’m a father of two sons myself and know what it takes. But we’re doing no one any favors by pretending there’s an elegant solution for this in every situation.
What also doesn’t hold up, by the way: the argument that leadership can be handled “through tools.” Asana, Slack, Notion, smart routines. All valid, all helpful. None of it replaces a person who makes decisions when it matters. Anyone on a team knows: in critical moments, nobody wants a workflow diagram. They want someone who takes ownership.
Some leadership roles are doable part-time. Others are not. This distinction needs to be put on the table before someone takes the job. Not afterwards, when the team burns out and the role holder wonders why it isn’t working.
Part-time can work. But only if the system is strong enough to carry the leadership gap. Otherwise, it isn’t a modern solution. It’s a risk that overwhelms both the team and the leader.
Tough on the issues. Honest with your people. And honest with yourself.
What do you think?
Nico Reis is an entrepreneur, investor, and senior coach at Scale Up. As part of our Munich Startup Experts, he regularly cuts right to the heart of practical know-how from the Munich startup ecosystem, shares his insights in exclusive expert articles, and derives concrete learnings and actionable advice for founders.
