opinion

Leadership is complex and demanding

Leadership is a complex and demanding matter at the best of times. It’s particularly complex and demanding in professional service firms such as law and accountancy.

Ambiguous authority and hidden hierarchy

In such firms not only is profit generated through each individual fee-earner’s billable hours, but the distribution and clarity of power is less clear, more diffuse and less demarcated than in other organisations. Leadership in professional service firms rests on what the Cass Business School report ‘Who’s in charge? Exploring Leadership Dynamics in Professional Service Firms’ (Initial Report for Practitioners by Laura Empson, Professor in the Management of Professional Service Firms, Cass Business School – June, 2013) refers to as ambiguous authority and hidden hierarchy: a combination, as Professor Empson says, ‘of extensive individual autonomy and contingent authority’.

This autonomy and authority are intertwined with the trust and decision-making via consensus that often come from partners working together over many years without formal or structured decision-making processes, or clearly-defined roles for senior and managing partners.

At the same time autonomy and influence dance together in a very particular way.

Reluctant leaders and limited innovation

In my experience, in such firms established territory may be fiercely protected, there may be a lack of delegation because fee-earners like to do things themselves, individuals may be reluctant to take on leadership responsibilities because the latter eat into their fee-earning time, and non-billable activities such as personal development and business services may be implicitly or explicitly under-valued by comparison with a focus on client satisfaction at all costs. Long-established working relationships amongst fee-earners, and partners in particular, can lead to the collusion that comes from seeking harmony and from the preservation of long-established working methods and traditions, and can inhibit innovation or the introduction of new perspectives on, for example, the concepts of management and leadership.

Equal and opposite, the strong bonds can enable effective collaboration which enables productive engagement with difficult issues.

Significant change through embracing learning

One of the most energetic learners amongst clients I have worked with in professional service firms was long-established, enacting equally long-established behaviours that he recognised – with considerable courage – were common in his group and were inhibiting the performance of the group. His thirst for learning, and his readiness to change, particularly in relation to competences which were unfamiliar to him – such as the areas covered by the coaching programme – meant that he embraced the learning and the new experiences he encountered in coaching, took them into his working context, delegated in a way he had never done before, demonstrated his trust in the competences of his team, had more honest and constructively supportive conversations than previously – and found completely new meaning in his work, to the benefit of his firm.

He became a much more inspiring and engaging leader.

Systemic constellations and the bonds of belonging

I know from my work in the area of systemic constellations that the bonds of belonging in a system such as a professional service firm are immensely powerful. At the same time, the autonomy and the flex that ambiguity makes possible can allow change – and equally, can inhibit it if it is just too threatening to the established order.

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Leadership in professional service firms

Leadership is particularly complex and demanding in professional service firms such as law and accountancy. In such firms not only is profit generated through each fee-earner's billable hours, but the distribution and clarity of power is less clear, more diffuse and less demarcated than in other organisations. Leadership is an ambiguous matter of high autonomy and yet often high consensus.

A Bigger Conversation

Relationships - between people, and between people and events, behaviours, beliefs, cultures and outputs - are the key to organisational health. Sometimes skilled, capable and experienced leaders don't seem fully able to occupy their authority, sometimes the same challenge seems to recur repeatedly. Such challenges may require a Bigger Conversation: a conversation that addresses not just individuals or individual issues, but which sees them as an ecosystem.

Influence, impact and culture change: a systemic view

When a new broom comes in to a senior role with high expectations, but is inexplicably unable to occupy their authority, the situation can benefit from a systemic constellations perspective. This means looking at what might have been ignored in the organisation’s remembering, what or who might have been excluded or unacknowledged - and especially what might not have been acknowledged about the contribution of a previous occupant of the role. Energy is then released and the leader is freed up to do what they do best.

Compassionate leadership

Compassion at work increases our willingness to trust: our brains respond more positively to bosses who have shown us empathy – and compassion increases the health and wellbeing not only of employees but also of the bottom line. When compassion is low, engagement and levels of discretionary effort are low, retention and recruitment are more difficult, stress and absenteeism are high, and success becomes more elusive.

Self-leadership

Unless we know how to lead ourselves, we can’t expect to be effective leaders of others - and self-coaching engenders a capacity for self-leadership as a pre-condition for leading others. High-quality leadership isn’t a check-list: it’s a question of how the leader brings the essence of themselves to their role, and for this, leaders need to courageously examine their own practices and thinking, and to build their self-awareness, self-understanding, and awareness of how the systems of relationships and influences around them work, and how they impact on each other.

Making an impact - through self- and system-awareness

Creating an impact that is authentic - and therefore compelling and lasting - means going beyond the tools and techniques for managing body language, creating rapport and getting 'in the zone' for a presentation. The individual needs to be at ease with themselves through a high level of self-awareness and centredness, and a comprehensive clarity about their relationship to the systems they move within.

Post-truth leadership

We are witnessing the rise of post-truth politics: a culture in which statements are framed largely by appeals to emotion, completely disconnected from the political facts, and in which factual rebuttals in discussion are ignored. Are we also seeing the rise of post-truth leadership?

Wilful blindness, belonging and exclusion

Wilful blindness - the blinding of oneself to uncomfortable facts - comes from fear of conflict and fear of change. A powerful, unconscious impulse to obey, conform, and preserve our sense of belonging, means that we favour information that makes us feel good about ourselves, and that makes us feel comfortable and more certain. However, it actually leaves us crippled, vulnerable and powerless. Without challenging our belonging, the chances of growth, progress and anchored, sustained change are diminished.

Coaching qualifications and accreditations: a new angle

Knowledge and experience alone may have little or nothing to do with what makes for an excellent coach – and yet until now many of the principles underlying coach assessment have been about competencies. Tatiana Bachkirova and Carmelina Lawton-Smith (2015), of Oxford Brookes University, argue that the complexity and unpredictability of coaching may need a new model, and they propose a capabilities approach rather than a competencies approach.

#hellomynameis: Courage, passion and pioneering

Consultant geriatrician Kate Granger, who set up, and became the force behind, the campaign #hellomynameis, has died of terminal cancer aged 34. Passionate about person-centred, compassionate care, she was a leader by virtue of her passion, commitment, courage and determination to reach as many people as she could in service of a message which she believed would create a better quality of medical professional by releasing more of their inherent humanity.

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