Leadership 360

Professional service firms need partners who can create and execute successful strategies that respond to the many challenges that firms face both today and will do in the future. Ensuring that their partners are effective leaders capable of executing winning strategies gives firms a distinct competitive advantage. Given this reality, understanding every partner’s leadership capability is critical – as is knowing how to deal with the results. Getting that initial understanding of capability is the start point – and clearly demands a 360 survey that focuses solely on leadership.

Investing in Partners as leaders

The survey is based on the leadership model developed by Tom Delong, Jack Gabarro and Rob Lees in their best-selling book, ‘When Professionals Have to Lead: A New Model for High Performance’.

Setting strategic direction – articulating where their practice is going and why, as well as clarifying how associates’ work relates to the firm’s objectives
Securing commitment to this direction – making everyone in the firm feel included and heard. Professionals who feel included typically work more creatively and want to play a part in making their project, practice and firm best in class
Facilitating execution of strategy – establishing follow-through and accountability rather than leaving these to chance
Setting a personal example of desired behaviour – embodying the firm’s stated values and goals, displaying personal integrity, giving associates credit, and taking responsibility for one’s own actions, including mistakes

PSFI have worked closely with the authors in developing the survey and have led its use in coaching assignments, leadership programmes and other interventions designed to improve firm performance. The survey has been used over 10,000 times, giving it an established track record and a database from which performance comparisons and legitimate conclusions can be drawn.

The completed survey gives each partner:

Structured feedback on their leadership from their team and colleagues
A clear understanding of how their leadership compares with partners in the survey’s database
Ideas of how to respond to the data
A means of tracking their development over time
The ability to retake the instrument also provides partners with accurate feedback on the success or failure of any changes they have made.

The survey data also provides the firm’s senior/managing partners with:

An assessment of the strengths and development needs across the partner pool
A way of strengthening the leadership pool
A basis for developing their partners’ leadership, of improving their impact and boosting the performance of the firm
Support for succession planning, talent management and career transition planning
Feedback which can be benchmarked across teams within the firm and partners within the survey database

"The survey is the first one designed especially for partners, as the leaders of professional service firms, and, by focusing solely on leadership, provides deep feedback on the essence of leadership in professional service firms." Henry Marsden, Managing Partner, PSFI