All highly successful business owners have one core trait that makes them as successful as they are: their ability to see what isn’t being done well across their firm, call it out and lead others to implement a solution.

One of my clients, who’s just completed a one-year program with me, initially struggled with several of his seven department heads as they were not effectively leading the associates in their teams.

This was highly stressful for my client because he never felt like the work his associates were supposed to do was being done well.

This meant he had to constantly micromanage his head of department and even override their authority and speak directly to several associates. Given that there were 68 members in his team when we started working together, this absolutely exhausted him.

Fundamentally, each head of department wasn’t fulfilling their role effectively and wasn’t doing what was needed to get their team members operating well and reliably hit their billing targets.

I am also often approached by law firm partners who feel frustrated by their fellow partners’ and firm owners’ lack of action. They often ask me what to do about the other partners’ failure to do what had been agreed upon in previous board meetings.

These partners then told me how, in each board meeting, the lack of participation from the pad-performing partners wasn’t addressed. At the same time, new commitments are made, which continue to be unfulfilled, so the firm’s growth is badly impacted, which continues to be very frustrating for the more ambitious law firm owners and partners.

Are you a law firm owner like my client who had heads of department that continually let you down?

Or are you like one of these ambitious law firm owners or partners who is frustrated with the lack of participation from your fellow equity colleagues?

If so, then it’s likely that you are not making a stand against ineffective performance and behaviour.

Of course, it is much easier to ignore your colleague’s lack of performance, not to hold them accountable for not doing what they said they’d do, and carry on as usual.

However, doing so has a terrible impact on your firm’s growth and culture.

When you don’t hold others to account, you are saying to them. “I don’t care about you and your growth. I’m happy to let you and us all stagnate and continue being mediocre like most other law firms.”

Am I right, or am I right?

A true leader does not ignore anything they see as ineffective towards achieving a business’s objectives or that goes against the firm’s core values.

A true leader will not tolerate people operating at anything less than high performance.

Why? Because they care about their vision?

They also care about the success of their colleagues, clients and everyone else your firm engages with.

I’m not saying here that you are to become a dictator, but I am saying that if you truly want to build a highly successful law firm, you need to boldly stand to close every gap in performance that’s stopping you all from collectively getting where you’d all love to be.

If you want to build something truly great, don’t wait for your colleagues to handle this leadership and accountability role; it will often never happen.

As they say. ’The cavalry isn’t coming.’ Which means that no one is coming to save you.

Make that dream future you see for yourself and all your colleagues your responsibility, and make a stand against any low-level behaviour that gets in its way.

If you practice boldly calling out the white elephants and do so with compassion and a bit of fun, you’ll be surprised at how you can lead your entire firm in a new and inspiring direction rather quickly.