By the time someone makes Partner, they’ve built a formidable skillset. What they might not have or be aware of is the mindset shift needed for leadership excellence. This is where vertical development comes in – the process of expanding how you think, not just what you know.
Nick Petrie’s Vertical Leadership Development White Paper for the Center for Creative Leadership outlines three stages of vertical development that can be applied to the career development of a lawyer in private practice.
- Dependent-conformer: A team player and faithful follower who aligns with others but seeks direction e.g. a junior to mid-level associate.
- Independent-achiever: Self-directed, independent thinker, drives an agenda, confident in taking a stand e.g. senior associates, counsel and legal directors.
- Interdependent-collaborator: The level required for complex, uncertain environments. Leaders here think systemically, embrace ambiguity, value diverse perspectives, and create shared visions.
Petrie observes that that the 'Independent-achiever' level may be perfectly adequate for a leader in a simple and orderly world. But in the increasingly VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) environments in which we are living, the key to effective leadership is to move beyond this to Interdependent-collaborator.
In my experience, this stage is not reached by default. Without awareness and reflection, many new Partners remain in the Independent-achiever mindset – highly capable, but ultimately limited in their ability to navigate the complexity, ambiguity, and interconnectedness of law firm leadership.
Moving to Interdependent-collaborator requires intentional effort, openness to new perspectives, and a willingness to reassess one’s identity and approach. Excelling as a Partner takes more than technical mastery – that is taken as read – rather it calls for expanded thinking and evolved leadership.
Richard Boston and Karen Ellis, in their book 'Upgrade', provide a practical framework for building those capabilities, setting out four capacities as differentiators in our ability to survive and thrive:
- Sense making: observing, understanding and processing the complexity of situations.
- Perspective shifting: consciously and deliberately viewing situations from multiple, diverse viewpoints.
- Self-relating: understanding and managing one’s own reactions and mindset.
- Opposable thinking: managing and responding to polarised thinking, fostering innovative solutions and creative problem-solving.
The benefits to the organisation of leaders who are developed in this way are also clear: deeper collaboration and leadership that takes account of systems-wide perspectives and is fully inclusive of different thinking.
