Case Study: Partner at Global Strategy Consultancy
Coaching for strategic influence, career clarity and executive presence in a political environment
Outcomes
Established leadership brand: Aligned with her unique strengths, improving her confidence and executive presence.
Definition of success rooted in personal values: leading to greater satisfaction, boundaries and prioritisation.
Clear future progression plan: With a decision framework for career direction, enabling consistent action and clearer steps towards her vision.
Less guilt, frustration and second-guessing: resulting in cleaner decision-making, better relationships and more mental bandwidth.
Strategic visibility and influence: through relationships and communication that feel natural for her, instead of overt self-promotion.
“I feel more like myself again, but with better lines around what I will and won’t do. And more trust in myself that whatever I choose, I’ll figure it out. It’s been years since I’ve felt this good this consistently.”
The Organisation
A top-tier global strategy consultancy delivering complex client work under high expectations. Partners are accountable for commercial impact and internal leadership in a fast-shifting environment of strong personalities, changing teams, and internal politics. Progression isn’t determined by contribution alone: performance matters, but so do visibility, perceived influence, and the ability to hold the attention of a room.
My Client
A Partner on the Senior Partner path. She joined the firm as an Analyst and built a reputation for strong delivery, respected expertise, and clients who actively request her. Colleagues describe her as collaborative, empathetic, grounded, smart, genuine, caring and driven. Her core values centre on humility, empathy, hard work and honesty.
The Challenges
“I feel like I’m going in circles. I’m worried about the uncertainty of what comes next and, as a result, not enjoying the now.”
As she grew in seniority, she noticed the firm increasingly rewarding politics, aggressive self-promotion and competitive tactics over substance and collaboration. Feedback such as “do more internal marketing” and “manage upwards more aggressively” was directionally true, but for her, the dominant interpretation felt inauthentic.
The strengths that had made her successful (humility, overachieving, not rocking the boat, invisibly filling gaps) were now becoming constraints. The way she was working was starting to feel unsustainable at her level.
When we began, she was experiencing:
Eroding confidence and increased second-guessing
Constant comparison to louder, more political peers
A felt choice between compromising values or being sidelined
Ongoing uncertainty about her future and her definition of success
Consistently high stress, poor boundaries, and difficulty enjoying the present
On intake, she rated herself 3/10 on professional satisfaction, mental clarity and life direction.
Our Coaching
A six-month engagement with fortnightly Zoom sessions, as-needed support between sessions, and a pre-coaching alignment process (including feedback from 3–5 trusted colleagues).
Our work centred on four linked outcomes:
Re-grounding her leadership identity: clarifying who she is as a leader, independent of the firm’s dominant styles, and separating true growth edges from other people’s projections.
Restoring confidence and mental clarity: rebuilding trust in her judgement, reducing over-identification with external approval, and strengthening an internal reference point for decisions.
Navigating politics without self-abandonment: developing values-aligned influence built on credibility, relationships and client impact—without mimicking unethical behaviours or withdrawing in frustration.
Career direction clarity: moving from looping “stay vs leave” debates into a more nuanced framework for progression, timing, and optionality.
Key Shifts
1. Identity and values as strategy
She re-anchored in what genuinely makes her effective: caring about people, doing serious thinking work, and making a meaningful difference. Instead of experiencing these as liabilities in a political environment, we positioned them as her power and her advantage.
We shifted values from “things she tries to keep intact” to non-negotiable constraints that guide decisions: which projects she takes on, how she works, who she partners with, and what standards she holds for time, energy, and integrity. This became both a performance strategy and a satisfaction strategy.
“This is what actually makes me good at my job. I’d lost that in all the noise.”
2. Success, guilt and control
She began delegating earlier and involving others sooner, loosening the grip of perfectionism and the belief that carrying everything was the only safe path. As her operating model changed, efficiency improved, resentment dropped, and her work stopped expanding to fill every gap.
Her definition of a good day shifted from “How many hours did I work?” to: “Did I act in line with my values, and did I let my whole life matter today?”
That reframing reduced guilt, strengthened boundaries, and made her decision-making cleaner.
3. Power and influence without performance
We reframed her relationship-building skill as a form of power, not a by-product of being “nice”. Long-term, high-trust relationships were already part of her edge; the missing piece was using that edge intentionally in the internal system.
She became more selective about projects she agreed to, clearer about her role in key wins, and more deliberate about where she invested energy. She looped colleagues in earlier rather than silently doing work others would later present. The sense of being “used” reduced as her agency increased.
“I’m using what I’m naturally good at, more intentionally.”
4. Career direction through options
She clarified what she wants and needs over the next chapter, shifting from confusion to a working plan: a defined decision point ahead, with concrete steps to take between now and then.
Most importantly, she let go of the idea that leaving would equal failure and let go of the belief she needed the perfect next move before acting. Instead, she built optionality and began moving with more self-trust.
Where is she now
More consistent good weeks with a lighter mood and less constant strain, improving both peer relationships and life outside work.
A clearer sense of who she wants to be as a leader, independent of firm politics: supporting confidence, decisiveness and satisfaction.
Less frustration through conscious choice about where effort is worthwhile, freeing energy for higher-quality client outcomes and a more enjoyable life beyond work.
Tangible experiments in boundaries, delegation and influence proving she can lead differently without betraying herself, opening up more credible future paths.
