How are you planning to develop your leadership in 2027?

How is almost 2027?

We’re into the last couple of months of the year, and despite all the things that need to be finished before the end of the year, this is the time of year when patent and trade mark attorneys start to turn to planning for 2027. Or perhaps, in many cases, they know they need to start planning for next year, but aren’t really sure what to think about and plan for.

As you think about the day-to-day IP practice you want to shape next year, look beyond the obvious of planning business development and technical skills development, but also how you can build in development of leadership and people skills for yourself and your team.

There are plenty of ways to tackle leadership development, it might be training, coaching, taking on more responsibility or building influence within your firm, but not every committee, management task, or training course will help you become the leader you want to be, or that the firm needs.

Define your desired outcome upfront

Before you add anything to your calendar, think about what you’re trying to accomplish. The quickest way to wasting time and exhausting everyone is to just jump headfirst into doing or learning with no idea of what you need to get out of it.

Where do you want to get to? What outcome benefits you and the firm? What is your goal?

That may be making partner, or getting through the next equity lockstep, or taking on a senior leadership role such as practice group leader or managing partner.

It could be growing a high-performing team of trainees and associates.

Maybe, it’s driving strategic change or innovation in how IP services are delivered by the firm.

Your leadership goals and the ambitions of the firm should guide your choices in how to develop yourself and your people.

Be strategic about how you use your time

After all, your time is precious and limited, and the day-to-day work involves plenty of strict deadlines and demanding clients.

Sometimes it’s hard to be selective in leadership efforts because you feel pressured to say “yes” to every internal project, or you are afraid of getting it wrong. If that is the case, look at previous times where you felt most effective and energised as a leader, and what activities actually delivered impact for your team or firm. Look for patterns of both ways of thinking and acting that you can repeat.

Leadership development is the same, with the pressures of doing the day job and being a leader, you have to be strategic in the way you and your team spend development time. Start by understanding what support is actually needed, and how it needs to be tailored to your world.

Generic leadership skills training that doesn’t take into account the specific circumstances of IP firms isn’t going to build useful skills or yield behavioural change in your context. Some people need more personal support as opposed to learning skills in groups, or perhaps a combination of taught learning and 1:1 support provides the optimum balance of learning foundations and building through practice.

Make deliberate choices about where you invest your time and why. Developing people and shifting culture take time. Focus on investing in the skills and relationships that will best equip you for the leadership role you want to grow into.

Leadership is an ongoing practice

Leadership isn’t just about creating and implementing strategy at the top of the firm. It doesn’t need seniority or a job title for anyone to lead others. Instead, leadership can be sprinkled through every part of your day-to-day work and practiced at every opportunity.

Everyday interactions, even as part of seemingly routine work, can be leadership opportunities. Consider correcting a trainee’s work when you go the extra step to teach the trainee about the commercial strategy behind your feedback, for the client and for the firm. They then go off seeking to implement that commercial strategy in future work, and you have lead them towards implementation of strategy.

It takes effort to always go through with the leadership steps instead of the easy route, just correcting the draft in the above example, and commitment to continuous practice and learning, even on a micro-scale, will bring about the macro-level leadership outcomes.

Make reflection and review part of your plan

Leadership development efforts lose momentum if reflection and review of how things are going are neglected.

We attend the training, practice something new, and set a personal, team or firm-wide strategy, and all’s going well at first. Then we get busy, deadlines accumulate, clients and team-members ask even more questions, and KPIs need to be met. And just like that, momentum and progress on the leadership stuff is lost, and sometimes has gone backwards. What a blooming waste of time, effort and money.

The only way to prevent the stagnation and backslide is to commit to ongoing effort. The effort doesn’t need to be a significant drain on time, but it does need to be a regular commitment to reflect on what has happened to review what is going well and what isn’t, how close you are to reaching the outcomes you set at the beginning of the process, and to identify what can be done differently to improve the odds of achieving your leadership goal.

Help yourself be successful by blocking off dedicated leadership time as part of your regular schedule. Set time aside time for the reflection and review. Schedule 1:1s with team members to get feedback on how they are doing and how your leadership is working for them (and what they think you can do better).

If you find you block time, and cancel on yourself because of work pressures, then consider finding an accountability partner, perhaps a trusted peer or an executive coach. It’s a lot harder to cancel a meeting with someone else than it is to quietly delete the appointment with just yourself.

Make your time count

You don’t have to do everything to be an effective leader. You do need to know what kind of leader you are working to become and choose activities that support your goals, empower your colleagues, and move your leadership forward.

So, my challenge to you is, as you plan for how your 2027 is going to look, think about how you can use your time to improve yourself as a leader more purposefully.

If you’re struggling to establish priorities, transition from technical expert to leader, or stay accountable for following through, leadership coaching can help you turn your goals into consistent action.

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