How can you benefit from a Role Model Partner?

If you have ambitions to make Partner in an accountancy firm, could you benefit from a role model to track and learn from?

Everyone has someone they admire and look up to in their personal and professional lives. It could be beneficial to identify an individual that you could have access to and learn from as part of your career planning.

First and foremost, what should you be looking for in a Partner and what do you want to learn from them?

What do you need to look for?

Begin with reviewing a Partner’s career journey to provide you with an insight into how they have made their way to make to partner. This will provide you with a feel for the experience they have gained through their career, how they have plotted a route and progressed up the career ladder, and the timescales and pace of progressing to the next step.

There is no set pathway to making Partner but what is important to note is the experience and exposure that you need to gain to be considered for such a senior opportunity. It may open your eyes to making Partner at different tiers of accountancy firms.

Assessing a Partner’s leadership style and qualities is paramount to ascertain how you would like to inspire and lead colleagues, the office, and firm. There are many different styles to how people lead which have different impacts on teams.

A Partner’s role is akin to a business owner or entrepreneur, which requires strong business acumen and commercial awareness. This leads to the make-up of a client portfolio. Do you want to be more of a specialist or carve a niche portfolio of clients? What are you most interested in? How has your role model built their niche client base?

How can you learn from them?

To learn from an individual, you need to gain access to them and seize every opportunity when you are around them. It is important to take note of how they conduct themselves externally with clients and internally with the team.

Take note of how they operate and carry themselves in meetings and around the office, how does your role model engage with the team on a project, and what language do they use with clients?

Make sure that you seize informal opportunities to have a conversation with your role model, show a keen interest in the work and projects you are both working on. Don’t be afraid to ask questions about how or why they have done something, or for advice on how to progress your career.

Explore more formal learning and development opportunities that your firm may offer. There may be the opportunity to be mentored by a senior member of the firm, providing you with structured 1-2-1 sessions to help you develop your career.

If you have the opportunity to arrange a meeting or coffee with your role model, ensure that you are open about your aspirations, why you want to speak with them, and what you want to learn.

Making yourself known is fundamental, you can do this by volunteering to take on additional responsibilities with a client or project, increasing visibility within the team, and opportunities to work alongside and have conversations with a Partner. 

What will you take from this?

You will begin to gain a clearer understanding of different leadership styles and how you may want to lead a team. It will help you to decide how formal or informal you want to lead, how to inspire people, and why it is important to bring your team along the journey with you.

Identifying the areas, you need to work on to build the skills and experience required to achieve your goals will provide you with practical takeaways.

You will have a greater understanding and appreciation of how to plot and plan your career journey, spotting steppingstones you previously didn’t know existed and opening your eyes to opportunities you hadn’t considered.

A role model will help you to avoid the pitfalls of building a career focused on achieving your ultimate career goals. It will help you reduce the risk of taking the wrong next role, encourage you to gain experience that you hadn’t considered and provide you with a template to follow (tailored to your personal circumstances).