People often come to us in an organizational crisis. The way they’re working is creating recurring challenges, and they can’t see a way out of the cycle. Whether they’re leading as individuals or managing departments, they reach a moment where they realize: how I’m leading isn’t working.
That moment is not failure. It’s the beginning of leadership. It’s the first spark of awareness that makes change possible.
How I Became a Leader Who Could See the System
My last role before starting Leverage to Lead was as an Administrator in a global law firm. I earned that position because I worked hard, solved problems quickly, and could manage the daily chaos of operations across multiple offices. I was the consummate doer.
I knew how to manage people, HR, records, facilities, and workflow.
But the financial side of the business, the budgeting, realization rates, and collections, felt like a mystery. The firm’s Billing and Collections managers regularly checked in with me about outstanding attorney bills, and after a while, something became painfully clear:
Lawyers are trained to practice law, not to run a business.
Billing is its own complicated ecosystem of skills: forecasting, pricing, client communication, staffing strategy, and risk management. I wanted to understand it, so I dove in.
I learned the difference between hours billed and hours collected. I learned how a partner’s write-off could distort a junior attorney’s apparent productivity for years. I learned why certain matters were profitable and why others quietly drained the firm.
And I learned something else: relationships and communication, more than talent, built profitable practices.
Making Power Visible
Law firms run on a rigid hierarchy: senior partners at the top, associates in the middle, staff at the bottom.
But hierarchy bends when you have something valuable to offer.
- Helping partners recover outstanding revenue made me visible.
- Helping them structure profitable matters made me trusted.
- Helping them see financial patterns in their practices made me strategic.
I wasn’t trying to climb the ladder. I was trying to understand the puzzle. And in solving it, I realized something bigger:
Systems are always operating, even when we don’t see them. And, most importantly, positional power shifts when you understand how those systems work.
What I Saw in Women Attorneys
Once I understood the business side, I noticed a troubling pattern.
Many women attorneys believed that excellence alone led to advancement. They thought if they worked hard and did exceptional legal work, partnership would follow. I can’t tell you how often I heard the words: “I’m doing all the right things.”
To be fair, no one was offering them a different lens. But partnership isn’t a reward for good performance. It’s a function of visibility, relationships, and revenue.
You must demonstrate you can build a profitable practice. And you can’t do that if you don’t understand the system that determines your opportunities.
What struck me most was this: people often hold power in systems they don’t yet recognize. When you can’t see the system, you can’t see your leverage.
This realization was the true beginning of my leadership journey.
Helping People See Their Power
When I launched my coaching and advisement practice, my starting point with every client was simple: awareness.
Not résumé awareness. Not “boost your confidence” advice. Not power poses or “lean in” strategies. I mean real, grounded, systemic insight:
- What value do you offer in the business of law?
- How is your worth being calculated both formally and informally?
- What patterns shape your opportunities?
- How does the system reinforce (or diminish) your agency?
For many people, this was the first time they paused long enough to ask:
“Who am I in this system? And what do I want from it?”
That awareness changed everything.
They stopped volunteering for low-value work or automatically saying yes to every assignment. They created opportunities to work with partners who valued them, not those who simply used their labor. And they began building relationships that opened pathways instead of draining them.
They started to experience their discomfort differently, too, not as weakness but as information.
Together, we built their leverage.
Over time, those people moved into partnership, leadership, and business ownership. But the reason they transformed wasn’t tactical.
It was foundational.
Awareness: The Foundation of Human-Centered Leadership
Awareness is the moment you stop taking your experience personally and start seeing the system beneath it.
It’s the shift from: “Why is this happening to me?” to “What system am I in and what is it reinforcing?”
And once you can see the system, you gain choices:
- How to interpret what’s happening,
- How to name your value,
- How to respond with intention rather than a survival strategy.
Awareness is not the end of the leadership journey. It’s the doorway. It’s the beginning of discernment, agency, and responsible power.
What Comes Next
Awareness creates the capacity for courage.
In the next post in our Leadership Journey series, we’ll explore the second step:
an invitation to look inward. We will delve into how we build the emotional and relational grounding needed to see how systems impact us.
For now, we’ll leave you with this:
To be willing to look honestly at the systems we are in is a foundation-shaking paradigm shift. It takes real courage and commitment and we are walking the path with you.