Webinar report: From expertise to strategic leadership

As the executive coach Marshall Goldsmith famously says,
“What got you here won’t get you there.” 

Never is that truer than when a legal subject matter expert is seeking to move into a leadership role.

Your training, experience and deep knowledge of your specialism have served you well thus far, winning you the respect of your peers and visibility among your organisation’s senior management. However, as you plan the next step in your career, it’s time to develop the skills and behaviours of a strategic leader.

Which is why we were delighted to collaborate with Rebecca Hill for this webinar back in September 2025. A former Global Director at EY, Rebecca established Wise Sherpa in 2019 to provide consulting, coaching and mentoring to purpose-led professionals. Rebecca has a deep understanding of the legal profession, having also spent seven years with Allen & Overy LLP.

What is strategic leadership?

The sum of five key traits, you’re a strategic leader when others see you as: 

• Commercial – you understand how your work supports the wider business goals. You also have a strong awareness of your wider market sector, the economic climate and geopolitical influences;
• A communicator – while a subject matter expert (SME) is the one with all the technical knowledge, a strategic leader asks incisive questions and listens actively. You don’t have all the answers – or necessarily need to have – but your ability to connect and build relationships is central to your profile;
• Networked - you surround yourself by people who play to your strengths, support you, and will help you develop and evolve into roles you aspire to in the future;
• Savvy – you work on your political radar, spending less time on always wanting to be right and more on understanding the value of trade-offs and negotiation; and
• Positive – legal training makes you aware of risk. As a SME, you're looking for the flaws in things. As a strategic leader you’ve made a 180-degree shift and now explore the art of the possible. This inspires people. 

How do I develop these traits?

As a strategic leader, you make a conscious and ongoing effort to develop your leadership skills by:

• Building self-knowledge – you know your strengths and weaknesses. You’ve acknowledged your vulnerabilities and worked out what type of people you need around you and how to want to collaborate. You’ve also identified if and how you self-sabotage by, for example, acting as a people pleaser, victim or expert;
• Nurturing relationships – you invest in relationships that raise your profile. You let people know who you are, what your impact is and where you want to go. This way, people regard you as a leader of the future and will help you evolve. Surround yourself with door openers, advocates, thinking partners and cheerleaders and see these people as your personal board of directors;
• Maintaining boundaries – your approach to personal and professional boundaries is balanced and visible and this projects the aura of strategic leadership. Maintaining your boundaries – be they around sleep, work-life balance, use of social media or meeting planning - helps you avoid scope creep and overwhelm, empowering you to direct your energies towards what is most important.
• Developing accountability – you make use of tools such as RACI (responsible, accountable, consulted and informed) to understand what you’re accountable for as opposed to responsible for. This is because you recognise that your awareness of where responsibility ends and accountability starts is a significant leadership skill. You don’t shy away from courageous conversations and, through the consistency of your behaviours, are relied upon by others. You also make a point of celebrating great moments and giving credit where it’s due; and
• Prioritising relentlessly – no longer solely a doer, you recognise that it’s now time trust your team and delegate tasks, many of which you previously took care of yourself. You adopt a helicopter vision across your department and prioritise to make maximum use of the resources available to you. This is where tools such as the Eisenhower Matrix can prove invaluable. Use it at the end of each day to plan for the following day. 
• The Eisenhower Matrix
  Where a task is:

• Important and urgent – do it today;
• Important but not urgent – schedule a time to do it;
• Not important but urgent – delegate it to someone else; or
• Neither important nor urgent – drop it.

The next morning, review your decisions in the light of any new information or development

How do I know if I’m winning?

Don’t expect to become an expert at these behaviours overnight. They may well feel new to you as they’re part of a significant shift in your mindset. Instead, assure yourself that, by being aware of these traits and working on them each day, you’re setting yourself up to be perceived as a strategic leader. 

Feedback from your peers and colleagues is also a crucial part of this journey. It doesn’t have to be formal – or even in person – but always seek feedback that you can act upon. Three good questions to ask of people whose opinions you value are:

• What am I doing well?
• What areas can I improve in?
• How can I improve? 

As with most strategies, the perfect is the enemy of the good when it comes developing yourself as a leader. If you get most of your behaviours right most of the time, you’re doing incredibly well.

Read Rebecca's Legal Voices interview here.