Six in ten professionals actively pursuing partnership are doing so without the active backing of the key people who could open doors for them. They are relying on their work to speak for itself. On partner track, that is rarely enough.
This episode covers the fourth of the 12 key indicators of partnership readiness: Support Team. This episode explores who needs to be in your corner, why most people’s support teams have significant gaps, and how to start building yours to support you going forward.
In this episode you will learn:
- Who the six types of people in an effective support team are, and why most people focus only on the first two
- Why your mentor needs to be outside your practice area, and how to choose your mentor
- How to have the one conversation with your sponsoring partner that most people avoid
- Why the support around you outside of work matters just as much as the advocates inside the firm
Take the Partnership Readiness Assessment
Free to complete, 15–20 minutes, and gives you a personalised report across all 12 key indicators, including exactly where to focus your first ONE BIG FOCUS. Take the assessment here.
Buy Poised for Partnership
To buy a copy of Poised for Partnership, click here.
What help is out there for you to progress your career in the professions?
The Progress to Partner Academy is curated by key indicators. If Support Team is where you need to focus, you’ll find everything in one place:
Inside the Support Team indicator, you’ll find practical support to help you build the relationships, confidence and backing you need around you as you progress towards partnership.
You’ll find resources to help you strengthen how you work with others, including:
- How to Say No to Partners, Clients and Friends
- A Deep Dive into Giving Feedback
- How a Mentor Can Accelerate Your Career
- Guide for Mentees
These resources will help you:
- Set clearer boundaries without damaging important relationships
- Give feedback in a way that builds trust and improves performance
- Understand how to get more value from mentoring
- Identify the people who can support your development
- Build stronger working relationships with partners, peers, clients and your wider team
If Support Team is where you need to focus, this section of the Academy will help you stop trying to progress on your own and start building the support, relationships and confidence you need for the next stage of your career.
Use code **PODCAST10** for 10% off annual membership. Click here to join.
Books mentioned
Poised for Partnership by Heather Townsend – https://amzn.to/3ETEYk3
How to Make Partner and Still Have a Life by Heather Townsend and Jo Larbie – https://amzn.to/4iLxugM
You can also listen to this episode on Substack and on Apple Podcasts
Hello, and welcome!
She had everything on paper. Strong billings. A growing client base. Partners who rated her work. And yet, when the partnership vote came around, she didn’t make it through.
When she asked her Sponsoring Partner what had gone wrong, the answer was blunt: too many partners didn’t know who she was. She had spent five years with her head down, doing excellent work, and almost none of it in front of the people who would decide her future.
She had built a brilliant practice. She had built almost no support team.
This is the How to Make Partner podcast with me, Heather Townsend, author of Poised for Partnership and co-author of How to Make Partner and Still Have a Life. We are working through the 12 key indicators of partnership readiness, and today we are on indicator four: Support Team. New episodes are released weekly, so press subscribe so you never miss one.
Only 40% of the 1000s of professionals who have completed our Partnership Readiness Assessment have a partner, mentor and head of department who completely supports and endorses their career plan. Six in ten people actively pursuing partnership are doing so without the active backing of the people most able to open doors for them.
That is not usually because those relationships are difficult. It is because building a support team has never been made a deliberate priority. People rely on their work to speak for itself. And on partner track, that is rarely enough.
Making partner is a marathon. No elite endurance athlete reaches the finish line without a support team around them. Your journey to partnership works the same way.
So let’s look at who actually needs to be in yours.
There are six types of people who matter, and most people focus on the first two and miss the rest entirely.
The first is your Mentor. Someone inside your firm, more experienced, who can act as a sounding board and give you honest guidance. The right mentor will grow your profile within the partnership group, particularly with partners you have had little contact with. They will give you the insider knowledge on who you need to spend time with. And when the partners meet to discuss who should be made up, your mentor will be one of the voices in that room fighting your corner.
That last point is key. Those conversations happen behind closed doors, often informally, over months. You are not in the room. Your mentor is.
The second is your Sponsoring Partner. Usually the head of your department, and in most firms, the person who decides whether you are ready to go on partner track at all. Without their blessing, making partner in your firm is very difficult. In some firms, they will write and pitch your business case on your behalf.
Here is something I see regularly. People who have a technically fine relationship with their sponsoring partner but have never had an open conversation about their partnership ambitions. They make the mistake of thinking that their partner is thinking about their career and their progress 24/7. But lets be honest, your partner isn’t putting your career progression as their top priority.
So you assume you sponsoring partner knows about your career ambitions. The partner assumes you are content where you are. Nothing happens. So have the conversation. Tell them what you want. Ask them what they need to see from you. That one conversation, however uncomfortable it feels, is often the one that changes things.
Beyond those two, there are four more members of your support team that rarely get the attention they deserve.
Your External Coach. Someone independent of your firm who you can be completely honest with. Partner track is lonely in a particular way. You are no longer one of the team, but you are not yet a partner either. There are things you cannot say to colleagues, things you cannot say to your mentor without it affecting how you are seen, and things you cannot say to family because they are already carrying enough.
A good external coach is often the only person in the whole ecosystem you can genuinely confide in. It’s an investment in you and your career.
Your family. If the people at home are not on board with what partner track actually requires, it will create pressure that eventually affects your performance. The professionals who make partner and are glad they made it have almost always done the work of bringing their family with them on the journey.
Friends inside the firm. You are committing the next five-plus years of your life to this organisation. If you have very few people inside it you genuinely like and trust, that is worth paying attention to now.
And your life partner or significant other, if you have one. Someone who supports your ambition and understands the sacrifices involved is one of the most important factors in whether you arrive at partnership in one piece.
I want to spend a moment on the mentor relationship specifically, because choosing the right person is a decision most people underinvest in.
The best mentor for you on partner track will be external to your practice area. Someone in a different part of the firm, seen as highly influential within the partnership, who you respect and like. The feeling needs to be mutual.
Why external to your practice area? Because the value of a mentor is partly about access. A mentor from a different practice area gets you visibility in rooms you would never otherwise enter.
Take Faye, a litigator whose firm had recently merged. She had strong relationships in her own sector team but was largely unknown to partners from the other side of the merged firm. She chose a mentor from the commercial property team, someone known for building referral networks. She did this for three reasons: it built her profile in property, it got her in front of partners she didn’t know, and she got to learn from someone who had actually done what she was trying to do.
That decision was a strategic one. After all, its easy to pick a mentor who you get on with. But when you find someone whose position in the firm and whose strengths actively address your gaps, it takes your relationship with your mentor to another level.
And once you have that mentor, it is your job to drive the relationship. Prepare for your sessions. Do your action points. Get dates in the diary in advance. The professionals who get the most from their mentors treat the relationship with the same discipline they bring to client work.
So where are the gaps in your support team right now?
Most people, when they actually map this out, find they have a reasonable relationship with their sponsoring partner, perhaps a loose mentoring arrangement that has never been formalised, and not much else. No external coach. Family who are supportive but not fully briefed. A thin bench of allies within the partnership.
The good news is that a support team is built, not found. You do not need to wait for it to appear. You can start this week.
If you want to understand how you score on Support Team alongside all 11 other indicators, the Partnership Readiness Assessment is the place to start. It takes 10 – 15 mins and gives you a personalised report. The link is in the show notes.
Inside the Progress to Partner Academy, the resources are curated by key indicator.
Under Support Team, you will find everything in one place.
In our game plans, where we have curated our resources by the challenges you face, you’ll find advice on how to improve your visibility via your relationship with your mentor.
Inside the Support Team indicator, you’ll find practical support to help you build the relationships, confidence and backing you need around you as you progress towards partnership.
You’ll find resources to help you strengthen how you work with others, including:
- How to Say No to Partners, Clients and Friends
- A Deep Dive into Giving Feedback
- How a Mentor Can Accelerate Your Career
- Guide for Mentees
These resources will help you:
- Set clearer boundaries without damaging important relationships
- Give feedback in a way that builds trust and improves performance
- Understand how to get more value from mentoring
- Identify the people who can support your development
- Build stronger working relationships with partners, peers, clients and your wider team
If Support Team is where you need to focus, this section of the Academy will help you stop trying to progress on your own and start building the support, relationships and confidence you need for the next stage of your career.
That’s all for this episode. Your action for this week: draw out your support team as it stands today. Be honest about the gaps. Then identify one specific person you are going to approach to fill one of those gaps.
If you have enjoyed this episode please leave us a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or give us a comment on Substack. It helps us reach more people who need this. Remember to hit subscribe so you don’t miss next week’s episode, where we’ll be covering the fifth key indicator: Delegation.
Thanks for listening!
Links
Complete my FREE Partnership Readiness Assessment – to see where you have gaps in your own development – you’ll get a personalised report with actions for what progress your career forward
Connect with me on LinkedIn
Join Progress To Partner Academy and use the code PODCAST10 to get 10% off 12 months of premium annual membership.
Buy your hard copy of Poised for Partnership or buy the Ebook here
Buy your copy of How To Make Partner And Still Have A Life
Buy your copy of The Go To Expert
Buy your copy of The Financial Times Guide To Business Networking
Join my Progress To Partner Academy and access all my courses and use the code PODCASTBP10 to get 10% off 12 months of premium annual membership.
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