As the accounting profession evolves and New Partners take on increasing complexity, the ability to slow down may be the most powerful leadership skill of all.
Our 2025 Intend2Lead New Partner Experience Survey revealed something important: the number one challenge New Partners face isn’t simply time. While roughly 70% said their hours stayed the same or even decreased, the work still felt harder. The intensity increased—with new responsibilities, higher stakes, and what one Partner described as the mental “carry-on luggage” that follows them home.
Without space to reset, Partners remain depleted. Learning to manage energy, not just time, becomes essential to showing up fully at work (and at home). The key to helping ease this transition is expanding your capacity by shifting from time management to energy management. It’s this spaciousness that leads to more productive hours.
Conscious leadership isn’t about doing more
In our programs, we define conscious leadership as human-centered, inside-out leadership: focusing on mindset first, then skill set and habits to create sustainable change. Conscious leaders don’t try to do more; they show up differently, with clarity, intention, and compassion.
From the survey, we heard New Partners wrestle with:
- Delegating and letting go of prior responsibilities
- Taking on new ownership responsibilities they don’t feel as comfortable or familiar with
- Unclear boundaries and expectations
- The pressure to prove they deserve the seat
The instinct to solve these challenges is to move faster and continue doing and producing in the same way you did before. But now that you’re a Partner, the key to managing the new pressure is spaciousness and a practice of slowing down, so you can see clearly, prioritize wisely, and lead effectively.
When you practice spaciousness, you’re actually practicing high-level efficiency. When you pause to reflect, plan, and coach others to do the tasks you should no longer be doing, you’re practicing high-impact leadership, which multiplies the productivity of you and your team.
The mindset shift: from “doer” to “leader of leaders”
New Partners often say, “I can do it faster (and better).” Of course you can—that’s how you got here. But what got you here won’t get you where you want to go.
Your role now is to unlock your team’s capacity. That takes a different kind of energy—coaching, reviewing at a higher level, asking stronger questions, and letting others take on the task-driven work. This feels harder at first because it’s new and uncomfortable – you’re building new neural pathways and expending more cognitive energy.
When you shift from doing to leading, your brain is no longer operating on autopilot. Work now demands patience, self-reflection, and delegation. That mental weight doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It means you’re learning, which takes more energy as your brain lets go of familiar habits and wires new ones.
The solution? Normalize the discomfort and treat the early months as a training block. Expect it to feel heavy. Plan your day to protect higher-energy windows for coaching and strategic work, and balance heavier tasks with lighter ones.
Each time you pause instead of jumping in, delegate instead of doing, or hold space for someone else’s learning, you’re building endurance for a new kind of work. Protecting your peak energy hours for the hardest mental lifts, and recovering in between, helps you sustain the effort long enough for these new patterns to take root.
Time management vs. energy management
Accountants are trained to track time in increments as small as six minutes. We know from our work that this conditioning and mindset is deeply embedded in the profession.
But as a New Partner, billable hours aren’t enough. You are now responsible for the time and energy of both yourself and your team. How you generate, protect, and replenish that time and energy is part of your new role.
Energy management means you:
- Design recovery into your days, not just your weekends
- Align work with energy peaks and place coaching and strategy when you are at your sharpest
- Choose high-leverage actions over reactive busyness
Energy management begins with reflecting on how you invest your own energy, so you can lead others at your best. By creating moments to pause and check in on how you feel, where your focus is, and when you need to replenish your energy, you begin leading from intention instead of depletion.
Practical ways to model spaciousness
- Own your calendar.
Block 60–120 minutes of focus time most days and protect it as you would a client meeting. Turn off notifications, close your inbox, and give yourself room to think and focus on your highest priorities. Many leaders find their most important work slips to after hours, not because the day is too full, but because attention gets scattered by constant requests and pings. Reclaiming your calendar starts with clarity: decide what matters most this week, then give it space first. - Delegate.
Shift your focus from doing the work to developing others through it. Reinvest the time you once spent completing tasks into delegating. It can feel uncomfortable at first, especially when the results look different from how you might have done them. But every time you pause, guide, and ask thoughtful questions, you’re expanding someone else’s confidence and capacity. Over time, that investment pays off in trust, teamwork, and scalable productivity. - Use limits to sharpen priorities.
Set a hard boundary on your workday and let it guide you. When you decide how many hours you’ll work, it naturally forces you to prioritize what matters most. Some things will need to be delegated, delayed, or dropped, and that’s part of leading differently. Boundaries help you focus and protect your energy for the work that really counts. By honoring those limits yourself, you model a healthy, sustainable pace for your team. - Schedule reflection to stay out of the weeds.
- Take 10–15 minutes each week to pause and look at the big picture.
- Notice your goals, what’s working well, and where you feel stuck.
- Capture learning from your successes—what should you keep doing?
- Identify the one to three priorities that matter most in the week ahead.
- The best leaders ask for help the most.
Our survey found that mentorship—both within and outside the firm—and strong peer connections were linked to higher confidence, greater effectiveness, and smoother transitions for New Partners. Those who reach out to peers, mentors, and senior colleagues not only find guidance but also realize they’re not alone in the challenges of leadership. Sharing experiences, questions, and even doubts builds belonging and transforms the mindset from “I” to “we.” Ask for help early and often from a mentor, an external coach, or a peer Partner.
Direct your energy
Leadership at this level isn’t about managing every task or squeezing more into the day. It’s about managing your energy, directing it towards the work that matters most, and ensuring it’s renewed along the way. Regular reflection helps you step back from constant activity and lead with greater clarity and intention.
Some questions we invite you to ask yourself:
- What are the new things I need to be doing more of? Less of?
- Where do I need to extend myself grace?
- Where do I need to allow myself time and practice to grow?
- Where are my expectations of myself unreasonable?
- Where could I go for help?
- How can I invest in myself to get the support I need (coaching, mentors)?
- What is just one thing I could focus on right now to be a better leader?
These questions are designed to help you focus your energy, let go where needed, and approach growth with purpose and discipline. Remember, you don’t need to change everything at once. Just work on one thing at a time.
Why this matters
Our survey surfaced six factors that drive New Partner success: Goal Setting, Feedback, Compensation, Training, Executive Coaching, and Mentorship. Spaciousness turns these structures into real growth levers: goals clarify, feedback connects, and coaching conversations inspire lasting change.
When you lead from steadiness rather than strain, you create space for better decisions, stronger teams, and healthier firms. Leadership at this level isn’t just about clocking hours, it’s about investing your energy more wisely.
See you in the DoP,
