Anchoring coaching to the business, building relationships, being tenacious and having a strong sense of humour have all helped Sophie Turner embed a coaching culture within a global law firm. Liz Hall reports

 

Aligning coaching to law firm Pinsent Masons’ business strategy and highlighting its value in business development have been vital to its initial acceptance and to its embedding in the organisation’s culture, says head of coaching, Sophie Turner.

“Anchoring coaching to the business and being really clear in conversations that coaching is about helping partners get to and stay close to the client, have been important factors that have enabled us to embed coaching into the culture and the organisation, for it to be recognised and valued by the business, and by a group of clients – as in the lawyers – who historically have not been known for being interested in anything like coaching,” says Turner.

“It’s been about having conversations with partners about how they or those in their team can realise their business strategy, develop the business and get value out of people,” she says.

Also key to success has been Turner’s determination, and her sense of humour. “ I can be very tenacious. If I’m sorted on something and want to do it because I can see what’s possible, I’ll push through being knocked back.

“You also have to have a sense of humour. I sometimes feel like Blackadder (from the BBC comedy series, Blackadder) when he would go and see the queen and she would laugh. You can’t be precious because you’re always up against it and talking to people about something they’re not sure about. And you’re on your own.”

What else has helped her achieve so much at Pinsent Masons?

“I’d say my ideas around potential. My supervisor says I can see things joined up, I can see the possibilities – what if we did this? And that would work with that, and I put them together quite quickly, particularly around people.”

Turner spent much of last year “linking coaching to business development for colleagues in growing partner teams, whether pitching for work, managing the relationship, or helping partners be more effective with their clients.”

A specific example of Turner aligning coaching to business strategy, as well as being tenacious, is succeeding in placing a coaching approach at the heart of hiring and developing laterals (lawyers who started their career elsewhere and who are taken on in a similar role as the one they had before.)

“We’re using a coaching approach to help partners make the most of the large investment represented by laterals. Partners now appreciate through coaching that it’s not their technical skills and abilities that will help them be the best they can be but their mind sets, how they behave, their resilience [levels] and how they build relationships.”

Getting to this point in terms of the laterals work took a couple of years. Turner had to be patient, determined and thorough in setting out evidence around what a coaching-informed approach could offer – proof is highly valued in a law firm.

“I am really proud of coaching becoming officially a part of a policy in how we bring our laterals into the business, with the recognition that having the behavioural element will assist them coming in. It might sound obvious but in many law firms, partner recruitment can still be informal and ‘matey’ where it’s about having dinner and seeing if you look like the right kind of person. The thought that we would introduce a non-partner to the recruitment process a few years ago would have been a no-no.”

The growth in coaching as an intervention in this and other areas at Pinsent Masons “reflects how because I’d established the respect for coaching and it’d become normalised, it didn’t feel strange or odd for partners to be thinking about that in terms of the client. Previously, partners wouldn’t have thought about coaching when they wanted to sort something out or to do with something personal [2019],” says Turner.

Also on the up is group partner coaching. For example, Turner says, “I’ve been using facilitated group coaching in situations where partners are wanting to develop a new office or bring a new area onto the market or a new client base, to help them make decisions and think through how they are going to achieve [these things]. It’s been very much Time to Think [an approach developed by Nancy Kline]. Again, that is just not something that would have been accepted two or three years ago.”

Turner’s been rolling out group coaching in a number of locations including Australia, Johannesburg, Dublin and Frankfurt, and when we spoke was off in a few months to Dubai.

 

Background

Turner is an experienced business coach with an extensive corporate background in strategy, change management and leadership development. She has more than 10 years’ experience as head of learning and development for two global law firms, working with partners and senior lawyers on their leadership development. As a change consultant, she worked in a number of small and global companies on their client relationship management skills.

Her qualifications and CPD include a BA in Business Studies (Birmingham University), a Certificate in Executive Management (Monash University, Australia), a Postgraduate Diploma in Adult Learning (Northern Territory University, Australia), Meyler Campbell Business Coach programme, Mindfulness for Coaches, and The Thinking Partnership® (Nancy Kline). She’s certified to work with Myers-Briggs MBTI® Advanced Coaching and Leadership Development and Myers-Briggs MBTI® Step 1 and Step 11 and she’s a member of the British Psychological Society’s Special Group in Coaching Psychology, and a board member of APECS.

Turner is accredited as a Master Coach with the European Mentoring and Coaching Council. She says her clients find her coaching “energising and insightful and value the clarity, challenge and inspiration” she offers.

 

Shifts

Other shifts in the business include its progress in becoming a Purpose-led organisation, sponsored by the board. Having a coaching culture has helped significantly, says Turner.

“I think [people having] coaching, the awareness of coaching and understanding the language [typically found in coaching] has enabled the Purpose project to get traction because it was the same sort of language, not figures and legal language. Things like what might be, how we behave, how we show up, rather than what do we do.

“Because the organisation now understood the language, this got the ball rolling more quickly than we otherwise would have done, particularly among senior people responsible for implementing the Purpose initiatives.”

In law firms, the emphasis is on what needs doing, what needs completing, asking, how will I know when I’ve done what I need to do? But of course, being Purpose-led isn’t necessarily about what you do. Turner contributed to conversations about how it was very much about “a frame of mind, deciding to be Purpose-led in the way you are with your clients and your team, and there are some values and beliefs which influence your day.”

Conversations have explored how it’s not always that simple or easy for people to change. Turner’s been helping colleagues to appreciate that “people don’t always change just because it’s a good thing, that people can say they absolutely want to change but they don’t” and to explore “what are the beliefs that get in the way?”

King’s counsel

Turner has been getting called in more frequently in an advisory role. “As a coach, I’m getting called in as advisor on strategic issues where the partners now recognise there’s a behavioural element which I can add value to, or a coaching perspective. I’m being approached to bring another perspective in coal face situations more often than a year ago.

“And it’s very important for me because it’s all part of where I want coaching to be seen, supporting the business strategy and how we are with our clients.”

She gives the example of “a big client who hadn’t been behaving very well in terms of values with one of our lawyers, a client we want to keep. And the client relationship partner asked me to work with the people who work with this client to see if they could work out a way to re-establish the relationship. This would never had happened before but now there’s an understanding of the role coaching can play.”

Turner recently read Hetty Einzig’s book, The Future of Coaching: “I was so intrigued; she talks about coaches as advisors. I see myself in that role sometimes.”

Another thread in Einzig’s book that resonated with Turner is the idea that “we’ve really got to shift that mind set of working with the individual in any kind of vacuum. The people I work with are really clear – otherwise they wouldn’t be working with us – that they are working with the business, working with Sophie, but in the context of the business. We’re not serving clients, and we’re going to get left behind if we as coaches don’t start seeing [that wider lens] as the norm. We should be asking about the context so coaching can add best value.”

How does she manage boundaries and wearing different hats?

“The boundaries really are complex. You’re advising the business and are often holding confidential information. You have to be careful to keep the information to yourself in other conversations. Or as a coach people are talking to you about things that are confidential to them.

“Coaching also helps build the brand. Every coach I ask to come and work with the partners is representing the brand – they’re either supporting or not supporting the brand, so it’s a risk.”

 

Relationships

Turner pays a lot of attention to the relationships involved in any coaching intervention, sometimes establishing a four-way relationship between herself, the coach, the person they’re working with and the line manager.

“I’m supporting them, I’m learning and they’re learning, and that’s what’s given the strength to the coaching. I’m very hands-on and it takes a lot of time. That’s another of the things about making my decision at the end of last year on something having to give.”

At the end of last year, Turner felt she was “pushing up a steep incline”. So she decided, “I needed to step back and go to the core of what I really love – those key, important relationships where I feel I am really adding value, and being in the front line in terms of the client because it’s more political.”

It’s been “a bit of a challenge”:

“I can get enthusiastic about an idea, then I have to think about how to position it to the senior team and get consensus but I was getting drained [by doing so much of that]. I’ve decided to reduce that a little; if I see an idea not to act on it necessarily.

“But I can’t spend so much time talking to the coaches as well as pushing new initiatives. It’s about where my heart is, and that is back with the relationships and the coaching.”

She enjoys the opportunity to have a dialogue with both the coach and client [partner], offering her feedback.

“Both the partner and coach seem to find it useful. In fact, I’m meeting with a coach and partner tomorrow because he wants to get my feedback and insights, and wants the coach to hear the comments around how he can grow. He’ll want me to share my perceptions and what I’m hearing with the coach and him. Sometimes it ends up as dual coaching – I might say, you might want to try this. So the partner gets the benefit of both of us in terms of learning. It’s about being fluid – we’re all learning, and this works, why not do this?”

She admits there may be some external coaches “who might be thinking, I don’t want Sophie to see me in action; I didn’t contract for this. But I build the relationship, I talk about how I like to work – the important bit is the open dialogue. Then I let things unfold and I’ll [get involved] if feels appropriate and right in the moment.”

When Turner looked at her strengths through the tool formerly known as StrengthsFinder (now CliftonStrengths) “Mine came out as individualisation, which means seeing people very much as individuals and being curious and appreciating that. I do see everyone as different, and I accept those differences, which I think helps what I do, and helps me build relationships.”

 

Next steps

When she’s not busy with her role at Pinsent Masons, she’ll continue to enjoy life as an enthusiastic participant in the world of arts, especially music, dance and literature. She loves travelling and experiencing different cultures, especially food and the arts. She is a fitness enthusiast (running and yoga), and enjoys walking.

Meanwhile, at Pinsent Masons, stepping back has allowed space for her to work more with the global offices. “I’m offering my coaching expertise in international offices that previously didn’t see the benefit, particularly in Asian offices.

However, “I’ve think I’ve established a lot. There’s nothing more to push so I can just step back a bit… . I really can’t think, oh no, we need to be doing this. Now it’s the bedding down of where we’ve got to.”