Taking root: Develop effective tools for partner development

Professional services is an execution game. This simple statement should make developing the firm's professionals one of the most important activities in any firm. Sadly, that isn't always the case.

Too many firms seem to believe that any learning and development beyond the technical occurs through osmosis. It's the 'when you're dealing with bright people, they just get it' approach. And, in some cases, they do. The problem is that the majority do not. They need help and, when they look for it, it's typically not there or it just doesn't do the job.

Take, for example, the response of the majority of accounting and law firms to the need to enhance their partners' ability to win business in the increasingly competitive environment they were facing. Some firms followed the 'if they're smart, they'll get it' approach and did nothing, while others offered their partners a two or three-day training programme in business development. Naturally, the osmosis approach didn't work, but neither did the training programme. The question is, why not?

The 3C model

A good way of understanding the likely response to any initiative is through the '3C' model, which was developed by David Thomas and Jack Gabarro in their seminal book Breaking Through. The three Cs are capability, confidence and credibility, and they operate in a linear relationship, although there are feedback loops between them. Figure 1 illustrates the model in action.

Let's apply the model to an average partner being asked to go out and win business for the first time. Imagine you have been a partner for ten years and everything about who you are (your expertise, reputation, standing among your peers and in your community) is tied to the picture you have of yourself as a successful partner. It's a reputation that has taken you 20-plus years to develop and mould. Quite simply, it defines you in your eyes and in the eyes of the people who matter to you.

When you go out to talk to clients about your own subject, you have, in your and their minds, a high degree of credibility that stems from your many years of expertise. You have all three of the Cs in abundance. But, in addition to demonstrating your technical expertise, you now have to win business. To help you do that you are given a two or three-day training programme ?and then sent out to put the knowledge ?and skills you learned during the ?programme into action.

But, here's the issue: what are two or three days compared with 20 years? And, what will failure do to your carefully-honed reputation? Armed with little confidence because of your perceived lack of capability, when you rapidly demonstrate that you can't win business as successfully as every thing else you do, you take the only sensible action: you stop trying. And, inevitably, you postpone any attempts at a rerun for as long as possible because of your fear of continued failure. This is an action that enables you to remain in your comfort zone and retain your much-needed credibility and self-image.

This is what has happened and is still happening in many law firms today.

The interrelationship between capability, confidence and credibility is crucial to developing partners and highlights that it is the integration of knowledge into the person's daily work that is key. Knowledge (like the BD programme) is never enough on its own.

Best practice in learning

So, what does best practice in developing the capabilities needed to deliver the necessary confidence look like? It embraces everything an individual needs to know and do to operate effectively at any level within a firm and covers both technical and non-technical learning. The key elements are as follows.

Approach/underpinnings

• Role and activity-based

• Capabilities defined for each role

• Explicit career paths linked with increasing seniority

• Individually paced (although with expectations of timing)

• Self managed (but with joint responsibility)

• Focused on application

Content

• Off-the-job learning based on capabilities required for successful delivery at a specific level of seniority

• Continuous on-the-job coaching and feedback

• Assignment process tied to development needs

• Transition programmes to speed effectiveness at the new level of seniority

• Development centres to focus learning and development

• Additional learning experiences, like secondments, included as necessary

• Off-the-job coaching offered as appropriate

• Partners acting as mentors

• Specific programmes for high potentials and emerging leaders

How it works

How does it all work? Let's take a typical partner in a medium-sized accounting firm, where the partners engage in four distinct roles:

1. technical expert;

2. client relationship manager;

3. business generator; and

4. leader of the lawyers working on the assignments they are responsible for.

The capabilities for each of these roles should be clearly defined, initially at partner level and then at each of the levels below partner (see Figure 2). With the capabilities defined at each level, the core learning for each role and level can be determined. In each case, everyone at each level goes through the core learning; however, additional learning experiences are available subject to individual needs.

In most cases, technical content, whether it's associated with the profession's body of knowledge or, for example, the knowledge required to analyse an industry sector for subsequent use in client conversations, is taught off-the-job. However, and this is key, all off-the-job learning only becomes applied through on-the-job coaching.

So, one of the key capabilities for all professionals teaching others is for them to be effective coaches. For partners, this is especially critical. Personalities with a high need for achievement crave feedback in order to calibrate their own performance, making how to give constructive and actionable feedback another of the core capabilities for people developing others.

On-the-job learning

Given that learning only becomes applied on the job, firms must take individual development needs into account when assigning people to jobs. This ought to be one of the classic 'no-brainers' in the legal world but, for most firms, it isn't.

There is a very strong body of evidence that supports the use, particularly by partners, of off-the-job coaches. Partners in a lot of firms have had very beneficial relationships with coaches. However, the most productive coaching relationships occur when the coach has in-depth knowledge of professional service firms and uses that knowledge to enhance the quality of his interactions and support.

The transitions between levels, especially from partner to senior manager, can be lengthy and distracting. On the basis that 'forewarned is forearmed', programmes designed to help partners understand the issues they will be facing and provide guidance on how to overcome them should be used to shorten the transitions and enable them to be effective sooner.

Development centres should also be used for the same purpose. In a development centre, each person's skills and knowledge are profiled against the capabilities required to operate at the next level. An individual learning programme is then created which speeds up the individual's development.

The best firms have programmes for high potentials. This is an emotive issue in a lot of firms but, given that high achievers calibrate their performance against their peers, they will ?already know who the stars are. What is critical, though, is ?that everyone believes that they are getting a fair crack of the whip and, if their performance merits, they can join the high potential programme.

 

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Creating a successful partner development programme

Structure

• Tailor the content to the audience.Using examples from the corporate world works to a degree, but partners prefer examples from their own world. They believe that law firms are different, so any inference that they are not will not go down well.

• Position all interventions as making partners even more effective.Any initiatives that start from the premise of improving weaknesses ignore the psychological make-up of partners.

• Ensure the faculty is ‘best in class’.Partners expect to learn from the best and are intolerant of people they don’t believe have the right to be in front of them.

• Focus on the intellectual argument first. You have to win the intellectual argument before you can win the emotional one. Partners are highly intelligent people, with great critical ability, who engage their brains first. One of the reasons case-based programmes are so successful is because cases engage the brain first and play to the strengths of the participants’ analytical skill sets and are an enjoyable intellectual challenge. Case learning is also evidence-based and concrete – two key factors in persuading partners to discuss the concepts and ideas. Only when partners are persuaded that there are different ways of looking at things will they consider switching from their heads to their hearts.

• Persuade partners to be flexible.Only when the partners are willing to experiment with different ways of doing things will it be possible to persuade them that the things that made them successful in the past will not necessarily be the ones that will make them successful in the future.

• Deal specifically with the ‘how to’.Despite their outstanding analytical ability, most partners struggle with the application of abstract concepts to their everyday activities; this applies particularly to the concept of leadership (partners typically think of technical leadership). Given the importance of leadership in practice, especially by the partners, in ensuring firm success, this is a particular challenge. A lot of lawyers also struggle with transferring ideas from one domain to another. These realities place an even greater burden on the faculty; not only do they have to be subject matter experts, but they have to be experts in how to make things work in practice – and, therefore, in how law firms operate.

• Set clear expectations and assessments. As well as a clear set of expectations surrounding the role, there should also be a clear assessment process that incorporates a discussion on progress against the individual’s development plan.

• Create a clear process. The sponsoring partner should discuss the development interventions with the individual, debrief him afterwards and set in place the next steps. This could include, for example, how to transfer any off-the-job learning to the individual’s existing and, when appropriate, future role.

Approach

• Create a safe space. Despite their intelligence and technical mastery, partners often lack self confidence and do not like to be shown up in any sphere. Judging when to challenge them – and when not to – can be a skill in its own right.

• Make partners feel valued. Any activities need to make partners feel valued – hence the need for best-in-class content and faculty.

• Show it is worthwhile. Lawyers join a law firm to practice, so the individuals must believe that taking time away from practice is relevant to their task.

• Manage internal power bases. Even within a partnership, there is a distinct hierarchy whose influence needs to be recognised, but not allowed to dominate to the detriment of others.

• Ask the partners to be role models. Partners are the culture in a professional service firm, so if they aren’t actively committed or don’t have the capability to develop their people and the firm, then it doesn’t matter how good the learning model is because it won’t work.

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A no-brainer

Creating a learning process that enables the firm's people to operate effectively more quickly than its competitors is a clear competitive advantage. It enables lawyers to do more challenging work earlier in their careers, enhances the firm's reputation with its clients and, critically, enables the firm to charge its people out at a higher rate than its competitors.

It also has the added benefit of telling a great story in the other market all firms compete in - the market for truly talented people. If you are a really smart person trying to decide between firms, which one would you choose? The answer is unsurprising - the one that develops you better and enables you to do more interesting work sooner. In the legal market, truly effective learning unlocks the doors to the top clients and the top talent. It really is a no-brainer.

 

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Knowing yourself

There is one piece of ‘learning’ that is critical, regardless of both role and level, and that is knowing yourself.

The most effective leaders know themselves. They know:

• what drives them;

• what they are good at (and what they are not good at);

• how they are likely to be perceived by others; and

• how to adjust their style to engage others effectively.

Because of this knowledge, they come across as authentic in their dealings with others. Put simply, they know who they are and are comfortable with that understanding. They continuously ask themselves how they are doing and how their leadership is impacting on others.

This knowledge of who you are is the foundation of all development, whether you are a leader or just starting off on your career. This knowledge, together with an understanding of what you need to do to become even more effective, enables you to grow and develop in ways that add to both your own and the firm’s effectiveness.

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Rob Lees, Derek Klyhn and Liz Baltesz are founding partners of Møller PSF Group (www.mollerpsfgcambridge.com)