You are about to enter the partnership (s)election path. Congratulations! This means that a couple of months from now, you will be probably invited to interviews and put forward to (s)election. Partner (s)election is not only about legal competencies; it is about demonstrating one’s potential in becoming a major contributor and shaper of a firm, making a difference in business, for clients and for the people in the firms. It is about recruiting and relating how your past achievements and your personality traits will lead you to success in your new assignment and roles. NBO has extensive experience in recruiting top talent at the highest level. She understands what is required to be successful at the top and how to present oneself authentically.

It’s time for you to check:

• Are you aware of the true criteria for partnership beyond what is circulated?
• What are the common elements of success?
• What activities do you need to undertake beyond billings to increase your visibility— speaking at more events? Writing more often?
• What are the expectations of self-generated work?
• How visible and close are you to your stakeholders?
• How much do you know about the firm as a whole?

It’s time for you to define

• Who is the partner you want to become?
• What contribution can you deliver to the partnership, to your firm and to your clients beyond business?
• How will you drive your agenda?
• What will change once (s)elected and how can you be best prepared?
• Is your time and self-management performance enough to prevent loss of energy and focus?

It’s time for you to grow and shift your mindset

Into a partner mindset and into the partner “shoes”. Putting partner glasses on, what decisions would you make, what would you do differently, which opportunities would you grasp to make your firm a better place to live and work and to design a purposeful, successful future?

Leadership needs & challenges

• Understand the Partnership Election Committee expectations and partner role expectations
• Define the partner leader you want to become
• Grow personally towards the partner and leader role, i.e. have an opinion and learn to take a stake in partner(ship) topics
• Navigate the (s)election process
• Build stakeholders and grow your visibility purposefully
• Manage present demands with thinking and reading time for preparation
• Stay authentic while learning to talk with confidence about yourself, your achievements, your aspirations

What you get from working with NBO as your Executive Coach

Nathalie will be the supporter & challenger on your side to organise your time in getting prepared for (s)election. She is your executive sounding and sparring partner supporting you in building your success plan and offering you candid executive feedback so that you can shine authentically at your best.
Stepping into the partnership is entering a new journey. We will gather all that you bring from your career so far—your personal attributes, your competencies and achievements—and order them so that you feel at ease in sharing them in a genuine manner.

Now you are in, the party is over…and it may feel like you are starting from the bottom of the ladder again.
To what extent can you rely on what made you successful yesterday in helping you tomorrow?

The leadership needs & challenges

You know what is expected of an associate; you have learned to play a great supporting role. Now you are a business owner, you will need to think and act differently.

Business….

The most obvious change is your responsibility for bringing in new business—lots of it. You are expected to run a business and pro-actively pursue new business opportunities.

…Needs relationships…

You will need to increasingly shift your focus from task-orientation to building relationships. And your relationships must and will change.
How do you interact with partners as colleagues when you used to work for them? Has anyone taught you how to lead and manage lawyers who used to be your peers?
How do you build client relationships at a higher, business-decisive level?
What will it take for you to build or strengthen a reputation in the outside world but also internally?

…Resources…

You need to get the very best out of teams and individuals, some of whom are your former peers.
While continuing to achieve meaningful results yourself, you need to learn to rely on others and potentially to negotiate access to resources. Managing your personal resources and energy by prioritising demands will also be key.

…And you will make the difference!


You are on the front-line facing clients. You feel an increasing pressure to generate business and need to maintain resilient performance under heavy pressure in the long run. You may tend to over-commit and struggle to deal with the paradox of having freedom to act on your own but be constrained by new demands and relationships. So what will your leadership style be and your self-management while clearly feeling under pressure to deliver?

What you get from working with NBO as your Executive Coach

 

• A safe place to stop, think, plan and review
• Support in effectively and successfully designing and implementing your personal and business transition agenda
• Enhanced awareness of yourself and your impact on others
• Greater confidence through a focus on action
• Definition and implementation of strategies to manage your energy balance for the long run
• Learning to “navigate” the partnership as a young partner
• Enlarged options for responding to different situations (rather than one’s own default)
• Strengthened executive partner presence and influencing skills

You have established yourself as a partner, you have gained external and internal visibility and have built clients relationships, leading complex matters.

What’s on your agenda?
Are you living up to the partner you wanted to be?
What’s next?

The leadership needs & challenges

It’s about you…

• Dealing with the pressure of bringing in work and generating work for others while offering enough face-time internally
• Leading by example and behaving according to your and you firm’s values
• Taking an active role in shaping the future of the firm

…Leading others….

• Communicating a clear vision of how product and client portfolios will develop
• Keeping your team engaged, high-performing and efficient
• Facing retention issues and career aspirations
• Developing high-potential associates to fulfil their potential and in transition towards partnership candidates
• Ensuring work is carried out at an appropriate level
• Taking a pro-active and positive approach to gender imbalance

…and handling leadership tensions

• DIY or delegate?
• Taking time to assign tasks appropriately so that you transfer your skills and experience and support individual development and aspirations
• Dealing with poor performance
• Holding critical and strategic conversations, with peers, associates and clients
• Challenging ineffectiveness, processes and inappropriate behaviors

What you get from working with NBO as your Executive Coach

• A safe place to stop, think, plan and review
• A sparring-partner holding you accountable to your vision and goals
• A sounding-partner to prepare yourself in conducting successful high-stake and critical conversations
• An opportunity to grow your personal leadership agility (self-awareness, self-management, setting goals and clarity in priorities)
• An enhanced agility in leading and developing individual associates and/or a team of associates
• A sound and realistic personal and practice Business Planning
• An ally in preparing your transition into a firm- or practice-wide leadership position

In stepping into a broader leadership role, you are dedicated to shaping a better future for the firm and in making a sustainable difference for the people and for your business partners around you.

Are there still 24 hours in a day?
How much will you have to sacrifice to client and business development and how will you feel about it when you consider what others will think about it?
How will you deal with this ambiguous authority?

The leadership needs & challenges

It starts with clarity on…

• your personal vision in your new, broader leadership role
• your business and organizational vision for your practice
• the profitability drivers in your practice
• what you expect from each partner, associate and staff member
• what you want and will change and what needs to be preserved to be further built upon
• the behaviors expected by the firm and how you will be a role-model in displaying those to be seen as exhibiting the highest levels of integrity and trustworthiness

…and your determination…

• in impacting the strategies that will lead to a successful implementation of your business vision
• in assuring that new policies, procedures or processes are in the service of the practice’s mission, goals and objectives
• in staying on track and monitoring
• in managing your time, yourself and the demands put upon you
• in promoting values and a cooperative culture by being a role-model

…as well as your leadership agility…

• primus inter Paris, to engage your peers and partners who can’t be “managed” in a corporate sense
• to win allies instead of making enemies among partners
• to listen, ask questions and act upon it
• to choose where to make a difference…and let go of the rest
• to focus and deal with the struggle of trying to maintain some balance between the time needed to manage the firm and the time required to maintain a personal practice
• to consistently make difficult decisions without procrastinating

…and your ability

• to communicate your vision for the practice and engage others around it
• to listen to gain significant information that may refine your strategic agenda going forward
• to lead change in a dynamic marketplace, when necessary against internal resistance, specifically how we serve clients, gain client loyalty and lead internal teams and groups
• to hold critical, high-stake conversations successfully, whether on partner evaluation or on client development
• to influence
• to manage conflicts
• to promote best-practice sharings and effective information flow across your network and the practice
• to lead through others

What you get from working with NBO as your Executive Coach

• A safe place to stop, think, plan and review
• A sparring-partner holding you accountable to your vision and goals
• A sounding-partner to prepare yourself in conducting successful high-stake and critical conversations
• A strategic partner to support you in enlarging your options to exercise your best judgement
• An opportunity to grow your personal leadership agility (self-awareness, self-management, setting goals and clarity in priorities)
• An enhanced agility in leading and developing individual associates and/or a team of associates
• A sound and realistic personal and practice-wide business planning, addressing matrix opportunities and issues

Stepping out of a leadership function, back to fee earning

Your turn is coming to an end and you are about to go back to a more fee earning focus, stepping out of your broader leadership function. Depending on how much you have been able to impact your organization and how much of your time and energy you invested in your more global role, you may need to make a significant shift.

 

The leadership needs & challenges

It’s about you personally…

• acknowledging what leaving a powerful leadership position means to you
• facing your inner personal expectations of farewell dinners, expressed gratitude and leadership legacy

Preparing for passing the baton…

• dealing with uncomfortable outstandings so that your successor can focus on strategic opportunities
• ensuring the engagement of those potentially disappointed by not having been considered
• letting go
• making room for your successor’s changes, being sensitive to the influence you will still have

Envisioning the new-old you…

• redesigning your personal business plan with a focus on investing back in your practice and identifying key relationships and your blue chip actions
• dealing with the pressure of billable hours

What you get from working with NBO as your Executive Coach:

• A safe place to stop, think, plan and review
• An unconditional ally supporting you in the entire transitioning-out process
• A sounding-partner to prepare yourself in conducting successful high-stake and critical conversations
• A sparring-partner holding you accountable to your vision and goals
• A strategic partner to support you in enlarging your options to exercise your best judgement

Now the time has come. Really?

Leaving the partnership isn’t simple. You may have spent a significant part of your professional life in this firm. You have built meaningful relationships, made friends and booked successes.

So just walking away, closing the books, giving up current compensation, handing over clients relationships?
And then what’s next?

You may feel you are too young to end your professional life, you have been too hard-working, you also may have neglected part of your private life over all these years, which all makes it difficult to envision your life after the partnership that would consist of doing…yes, doing what?

Some partners are looking forward to finally dedicating time to projects and aspirations which have suffered in the past from too little time and attention; for some others, it will be really about refining their identity and creating a new future.

Transitioning out implicitly suggests there is a transitioning in and therefore implies that you are leaving for new opportunities. It also feels smooth, with a lead-in time often occurring between the old end and the new beginning. Transitioning out may also mean that you can potentially have an arrangement that would allow you to slow down your active involvement while remaining in the game, if this is what you want.

The leadership needs & challenges

The very personal inner self

• Taking stock of your career and private life
• Dealing with possibly difficult and controversial emotions
• Balancing feelings of closure with packing your suitcase, in a metaphoric sense, gathering all your contributions and achievements
• Facing your personal, imagined farewell expectations

Finally giving yourself permission

• To deal with the unspoken potential fear of losing your identity, defined thus far as the one of a successful lawyer
• To listen to your aspirations
• To envision a new, yes, enjoyable and fulfilling future

The sensitive, practical side

• Handing over and smoothly your client portfolio and passing on key relationships: it’s hard!
• Preparing your elevator speech about leaving the firm and your farewell talks, internally and towards your clients

What are YOUR very personal challenges and needs when it comes to preparing your transition out?

What you get from working with NBO as your Executive Coach:

• A personal, safe and trusting place to deal with your very personal challenges
• A strategic partner to support you in enlarging your options in designing a purposeful future
• An unconditional ally supporting you in the entire transitioning-out process