Case Study 7
Diagnosing Leadership Alignment and Culture in a Professional Services Firm
Client: FitzGerald Morris Baker Firth, P.C.
Industry: Legal / Professional Services
Organizational Context
FitzGerald Morris Baker Firth, P.C. is a regional law firm providing legal services across multiple practice areas. Like many professional services organizations, the firm operates in a high-performance environment where attorneys are promoted primarily based on legal expertise rather than formal leadership development.
In these environments, organizational challenges often stem not from technical competence but from leadership alignment, cultural expectations, and communication dynamics across partners and staff.
Business Challenge
Firm leadership sought a data-driven understanding of leadership effectiveness and organizational culture following a previous leadership training engagement.
Specifically, leadership wanted to move beyond anecdotal feedback and gain a clearer picture of:
- Alignment between the firm’s stated values and daily leadership behaviors
- Perceptions of leadership effectiveness across the organization
- Cultural dynamics affecting collaboration, communication, and morale
- Leadership development priorities for the firm
Professional services firms often struggle to surface these issues due to hierarchy, billable pressures, and confidentiality concerns.
Elite 9 Intervention
Elite 9 Talent Solutions conducted a Phase I Organizational Diagnostic Engagement designed to replace assumption with measurable organizational insight.
The engagement included:
Organizational Climate Survey
A firm-wide confidential survey designed to measure perceptions of communication, leadership effectiveness, collaboration, and organizational culture.
Leadership 360° Feedback Assessment
A competency-based 360-degree feedback process that evaluated leadership effectiveness across multiple raters while preserving anonymity in a small professional population.
Advanced Organizational Leadership Analytics
Elite 9 translated the diagnostic data into three proprietary leadership metrics to help the firm understand systemic patterns:
Leadership Trust Gap
Measured the difference between how leaders perceive their leadership effectiveness and how employees experience it.
Leadership Cultural Index
A composite score reflecting the health of the firm’s leadership culture across dimensions such as communication, accountability, collaboration, and psychological safety.
Leadership Alignment Score
A firm-wide metric measuring the degree to which leadership behaviors align with the firm’s stated values and expectations.
These indices helped transform raw survey and 360 data into clear, actionable leadership insights.
Strategic Impact
The diagnostic engagement provided firm leadership with the first comprehensive, data-driven view of leadership culture across the organization.
Key outcomes included:
- Identification of systemic leadership strengths and cultural risks
- Quantification of leadership perception gaps through the Leadership Trust Gap metric
- Measurement of firm-wide leadership culture through the Leadership Cultural Index
- Evaluation of leadership consistency through the Leadership Alignment Score
- Clear identification of priority development areas affecting collaboration and organizational performance
Elite 9 translated these insights into an executive summary and a 12-month professional development roadmap, enabling leadership to move from diagnostic insight to targeted organizational improvement initiatives.
Long-Term Value
This engagement positioned the firm to:
- Strengthen leadership effectiveness across partners and managers
- Improve organizational communication and collaboration
- Align leadership behaviors with firm values and expectations
- Make future leadership development investments based on evidence rather than assumption
By combining climate data, 360 feedback, and proprietary leadership indices, Elite 9 provided the firm with a disciplined foundation for sustainable leadership and culture development.
