“The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born — that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.”
                 — Warren G. Bennis



“ . . . leaders are people who are able to express themselves fully . . . they know who they are, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and how to fully deploy their strengths and compensate for their weaknesses. They also know what they want, why they want it, and how to communicate what they want to others, in order to gain compensation and support. Finally, they know how to achieve their goals. They key to full self-expression is understanding one’s self and the world, and the key to understanding is learning — from one’s own life and experience.”
                     — Warren G. Bennis
               On Becoming A Leader
Executive Coaching: Leadership Development

Study after study illustrates the point: The differences between executives and lawyers who are outstanding performers in their respective fields and those who are just average lie not in their cognitive abilities or technical skills, but in their ability to achieve results through a broad range of leadership skills. In other words, the intellect and analytic ability that we, as lawyers, have so carefully cultivated through years of education and practice will only take us so far. If we want to excel in our careers, we must also develop our capacity to lead — to lead our firms and organizations, to lead our practice groups, to lead our cases, projects and transactions, to lead our clients, and to lead our communities.

The development of leadership skills is not something that we can learn overnight, or even by attending a short leadership development training program. It requires sustained effort, creativity, feedback and the help of other people — and it takes time.

At The Executive Lawyer LLC, we take a multi-pronged approach to the cultivation of leadership talent within the context of the business strategy and commercial objectives of our clients and their firms or organizations.
  • We begin by assessing our clients’ strengths and weaknesses in a broad range of leadership attributes.


  • We educate them on the wide range of abilities that are called on by the world’s most effective leaders, focusing in particular on those attributes that drive success at our client’s firm or corporation.


  • We work with our clients to develop their own dynamic leadership development action plan.


  • Finally, we serve as coach and mentor by working with our clients to explore their own potential for leadership, by helping them to develop various styles of leadership, and by identifying when the use of a particular style can best be used to drive their performance and the performance of their teams.
Lawyers at all levels of practice can benefit from focusing on the development of their leadership skills. Lawyers who focus on leadership early in their careers are far more likely than those who do not to manage and achieve their goals and objectives and effectively face the inevitable hurdles that they will face as they progress through their careers.

Lawyers who suddenly find themselves thrust into a leadership role will benefit by developing new skills, identifying their own leadership blueprint, and by learning new leadership styles to be called upon for maximum effectiveness.

The Executive Lawyer LLC offers leadership development coaching on both an individual and group basis.

For an example of our work with clients in the area of leadership development, see our
Case Studies.