Only 29% of professionals on the partnership track have a wide fan base in the partnership, with many partners actively pushing for them to be made up.
Most are relying on their sponsoring partner and their mentor to carry a room they will never sit in.
This episode covers the tenth of the 12 key indicators of partnership readiness: Member of the Club. This is the emotional part of your Personal Case, and it is the reason a candidate with a strong Business Case can still be turned down. It covers what your partners are really deciding, how trust gets built in small interactions rather than big gestures, and how to grow your fan base across the partnership before the formal process starts.
In this episode you will learn:
- Why the best candidate on paper does not always get to partner, and what your partners are weighing up instead
- Why Harrison was out-winning the newer partners in his department and was still told he would never progress beyond director
- How Theo’s timesheets cost him a partnership his work had already earned
- The difference between advocating for your career and lobbying, and why your partners can always tell
- How to build your fan base across the partnership, and when a damaged reputation is a signal about the firm rather than about you
Take the Partnership Readiness Assessment
Free to complete, 10 to 15 minutes, and gives you a personalised report across all 12 key indicators. 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 indicator. If Member of the Club is where you need to focus, you’ll find everything in one place.
You’ll find resources to help you become a Member of the Club, including:
- How to Get Clients to Treat You Like a Partner
- How to Build Authority and Gravitas
- How to Build Your Profile Across the Partnership
- How to Be Seen as the Next Partner
- How to Build Trusted Relationships With Your Partners
- How to Be on Your A-Game Every Day
- How to Find Out What Is Expected of a Future Partner
- How to Take Responsibility for Your Career
These resources will help you:
- Build genuine trust and rapport with the partners who decide your future
- Show up as your authentic self, so partners want you in the room
- Develop the authority, presence and gravitas partners recognise as “one of us”
- Raise your profile with the people involved in partnership decisions
- Be seen as a business partner, not just a technically strong senior
- Demonstrate you already belong in the partnership before the title is given
If Member of the Club is where you need to focus, this section of Progress to Partner will help you build the trust, likeability and standing that make your partners want you in their club — well before the vote.
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!
Harrison was a director in a large firm, specialising in transfer pricing and international tax. He was the kind of tax expert who was always in demand from his client base. The amount of work he personally won each year was often higher than the newer partners in his own department.
The junior members of that department hated working for him. He knew, and he did something about it. He worked with an executive coach on his communication and his working style. Sadly it made no difference to how the juniors felt about being staffed on his affairs. His reputation had become too entrenched.
When his partners discussed him, they agreed that admitting him to the partnership would send the wrong message to the rest of the firm. They needed partners that the junior professionals could aspire to become. Harrison was told that he was a valued member of the department, and that he would never progress beyond director.
His ability to win work wasn’t enough to help him make partner. He needed to be a good role model as well.
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.
This is episode ten in our series on the 12 key indicators of partnership readiness. Today we are talking about being seen as a Member of the Club.
New episodes are released weekly, so press subscribe so you never miss one.
Right. Let’s talk about the part of your Personal Case that never appears in a competency framework. It may never get talked about openly in your firm. Because after all, this key indicator will help you realise that sometimes there isn’t a level playing field in your firm for who gets made up to partner.
Last week we covered the rational part. Are you doing what a partner does? This week is the emotional part. Do your partners trust you, and like you, enough to let you buy equity in their business?
Because that is what is being decided. You are not being promoted. You are asking a group of people to admit you to a club that some of them founded, or have grown over the last twenty to twenty five years, and to sell you a slice of it. If you get it wrong, it is their capital at risk.
Now, shouldn’t the best candidate for partnership always get to partner? It sounds reasonable. It is not what happens. It is fairly common to hear about partners sitting around a table, openly acknowledging that a candidate has a strong Business Case, will credibly lead their part of the firm, and is very likely to make the firm a lot of money. And then turning that candidate down. Something did not connect. No partner wants to introduce someone into the club who will upset the natural order of the club.
Only 29% of the professionals who have completed our Partnership Readiness Assessment have a large and wide fan base in the partnership, with many partners actively pushing for them to be made up. Just under a third. So most people on partner track are relying on their sponsoring partner and their mentor to carry the room for them. That is two voices, in a room that might hold 100s of partners, most of whom have never worked with you and could not tell you what you do.
And here is the part that feels unfair, because it is. If one partner decides that they do not like you, your partnership prospects reduce a long way. You do not need every partner to be an advocate. You do need none of them to be an objector.
So how do you get your partners to think of you as one of them?
Start with the conversations you are having. Your partners need to see you as an equal, or very nearly an equal, before they will let you in. Do you consider the firm’s agenda alongside your own agenda? Are you thinking beyond your own caseload or assignments or projects to what actually matters to the firm? Can you generate new business for other partners, not only for yourself?
Take Hans. He was the sole specialist in his field in his office, which meant he worked with partners in other offices on large infrastructure projects, over and over again. By the time the promotions committee sat down to draw up a long list for the partnership, Hans was at the top of it. His colleagues said he needed to be made a partner because he was already being treated and trusted like one. Plus he had the best track record among the senior associates for winning work.
Notice what Hans did not do. He did not run a campaign. Neither was he lobbying senior partners regularly to make him up to partner. And by the way senior partners hate being lobbied by senior managers or associates that they are ‘ready for partner’. The visibility was a by-product of how he chose to do the work. He was already working with partners and seen as “one of them”
The second thing is to make your partners’ lives easier. Trust between you and your partners is rarely built on big gestures. It is built in the small interactions. So think about what information your partners need weekly and monthly, who is chasing them for it, and whether you could get it to them without them having to ask.
Which brings me to Theo. Theo started in the banking team of his law firm, moved into industry, made it to Vice President in a global bank, and was poached back into the firm as partner designate. His ability to open new accounts and generate new work was prized across the firm. But his partners had serious doubts about his personal organisation. He was the one they had to chase for his timesheet, and for what he was going to bill that month. That started them questioning whether he could be trusted as a team player around the partnership table. Theo failed to make partner and went back into industry.
This was a man who could win work worth millions for the firm. But it was his uncompleted timesheets that stopped him making it to partner. Which sounds absurd, until you remember what your partners are actually assessing. They are looking at how you will behave when it is their money.
Now let’s talk about your internal PR campaign, because that is what this is.
When your partners sit around the partnership table and discuss who they would like to make up, how many of them are pitching you and fighting your corner? You will not be in the room. It is like a panel interview where the panel meets without you, informally, over several months, and reaches a view long before anyone tells you the process has started.
So you build your fan base well before the formal Partnership Admissions Process begins. Practically, that means a few things.
Take part in cross-firm initiatives, committees and steering groups. Choose them carefully. Choose them for the influential partners you will get in front of, not for how interesting the terms of reference look.
Spend time with partners outside your department. Ask them what the practice needs in its new partners. Ask how they could see you fitting into the partnership, and what they think you would need to develop. Ask them for their views on your Business Case. There is no stronger advocate than a partner who feels that they have had a say in it.
Choose an influential mentor. A good clue to who is influential in your firm is how the firm refers to them. If most people know them by their first name or their initials, that tells you something.
And find referrals for them. Partners love work winners, and they particularly love work winners who bring in work for them personally.
Then there is the line between advocating and lobbying. Partners hate being lobbied. The difference is in your intent. Advocating is highlighting your achievements in your performance review, asking for opportunities to broaden your skillset, consulting on your Business Case. Lobbying is pressing people to back your ambitions without ever naming what the firm gets out of it. It can be the same conversation. The words really do matter here.
While we are here: do not tell partners you will be a partner by a fixed date. Have an ideal timescale in your head by all means. Equity partners get incredibly cheesed off hearing that so-and-so has to be a partner by next year.
One more thing
Susan was an ambitious director in a Big 4 firm with two young children. Her results and her performance grades were always excellent, and her peers were openly questioning her commitment to the job. It came to a head when a senior female corporate finance partner suggested she take the photo of her two children off her desk, because it was giving the impression she was not committed enough to be taken seriously as a corporate finance partner. Within eighteen months, Susan had joined a different Big 4 firm with a more inclusive culture. She made partner within two years of joining.
Not every reputation problem is yours to fix. Before you spend two years mending one, get feedback and then ask yourself whether the way you want to work is counter-cultural for the firm you are in. If more than a couple of partners are telling you it is unlikely to happen, they are giving you information about the firm, not only about you.
That’s all for this episode. Your action for this week: write down the partners who would need to say something positive about you in that room. Then be honest about how many of them could say anything about you at all. Pick one, and get in front of them this month.
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 will be covering the eleventh key indicator: Business Case.
If you want to understand how you score on Member of the Club, and where you sit across all 12 key indicators, the Partnership Readiness Assessment is the place to begin. It takes 10 to 15 minutes and gives you a personalised report. The link is in the show notes.
Inside our Progress to Partner Academy, the resources are curated by key indicator. If Member of the Club is where you need to focus, everything relevant is in one place.
The Progress to Partner Academy is curated by key indicator. If Member of the Club is where you need to focus, you’ll find everything in one place.
You’ll find resources to help you become a Member of the Club, including:
- How to Get Clients to Treat You Like a Partner
- How to Build Authority and Gravitas
- How to Build Your Profile Across the Partnership
- How to Be Seen as the Next Partner
- How to Build Trusted Relationships With Your Partners
- How to Be on Your A-Game Every Day
- How to Find Out What Is Expected of a Future Partner
- How to Take Responsibility for Your Career
These resources will help you:
- Build genuine trust and rapport with the partners who decide your future
- Show up as your authentic self, so partners want you in the room
- Develop the authority, presence and gravitas partners recognise as “one of us”
- Raise your profile with the people involved in partnership decisions
- Be seen as a business partner, not just a technically strong senior
- Demonstrate you already belong in the partnership before the title is given
If Member of the Club is where you need to focus, this section of Progress to Partner will help you build the trust, likeability and standing that make your partners want you in their club, well before the vote.
Use code PODCAST10 for 10% off annual membership: https://www.howtomakepartner.com/get-progress-to-partner/
Thanks for listening!
I’m Heather Townsend, author of Poised for Partnership and co-author of How to Make Partner & Still Have a Life. I’m the leading global expert in what it takes to move from senior fee earner to partner – and when you get there, stay there. Here are 5 ways to work with me.
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