Final Week: Leader/Follower Relationships

As my time with McGuireWoods Consulting comes to a close, I am able to reflect on the dynamics of teams and leadership at the firm. The main teams on my floor are Advocacy, Economic Development, and State Government Relations. There are attorneys and political veterans on every team, and there appears to be a Senior Vice President at the helm of each one. I cannot imagine the feeling of responsibility over people who have been cabinet secretaries for governors and political directors for legislators. MWC is effective because of its combined public and government relations services, which explains the decentralized office structure and high overlap.

While assignments might be given from on high, VPs often retain their own clients. It can be inferred that the SVP is then responsible for helping the VP complete their project by utilizing any networks they may have or leveraging their expertise. All of the SVP’s are very experienced and tend to be older, while VP’s are usually mid-career. The VP’s and SVP’s tend to rely on each other’s advice, and often collaborate as near-equals. I also get the impression that SVP’s will deal with the bigger clients directly, while the VP’s will work more indirectly on tasks to support the big clients goals.

All of this is to say that leader-follower relationships here are not so cut and dry.

Yes, there are people here who are more senior and take on higher stakes clients, but their ‘subordinates’ (if you can call them that) take on a fair share of responsibility and are granted high amounts of autonomy. As I have discussed in a past blog post, there is a mutual exchange of expertise between VPs and SVPs here because everyone has worked in different fields, so it follows that the leadership dynamic is not as hierarchical as it might be at other firms.