It’s hard being a leader of a practice group. Usually they have no more actual power or authority than the other partners – often they are not even the most senior partners.

Then they often get what they see as a paltry budget of around 50-100 hours a year to carry out their leadership role.

Many firms don’t even offer them any effective training in leadership and only in a few firms are they offered an executive coach to support them in their role.

Yet, in my experience having an effective practice group leader probably makes the biggest difference to the performance of a team.

So here’s my suggestion – to organise the teams to offer their practice leaders some constructive feedback. Why don’t you tell them what they’re doing well and what you’d like them to do more of and less of?

The feedback can be compiled by someone in HR so it can be anonymised. Several firms are doing this now and the results can be very positive.

To help you on your way, I offer a questionnaire as a starting point. It is available to download below.