Growth Partner
Beyond expert contributor to market activator
EY does not have an authority problem. Partners are experienced, credible, and trusted. The challenge sits somewhere else: market growth increasingly depends on behaviours that many partners were never trained, encouraged, or rewarded to practise consistently.
Growth today requires people to initiate conversations without waiting for demand, reach out beyond familiar clients and comfortable markets, build relationships before there is a clear commercial outcome, tolerate uncertainty and rejection, and then follow through deliberately over time. Most partners understand this intellectually. They recognise its importance.
The gap is not awareness. It is behaviour.
Growth Partner is designed and facilitated by Dr. Justin Cohen, drawing on over two decades of work with partners and senior leaders globally, including within EY.
Why Growth Efforts Often Fail to Change Behaviour
The Hidden Barrier
When resistance remains unexamined, it quietly determines behaviour — regardless of intent or capability.
Many growth initiatives focus intensely on strategy, targets, tools, and messaging. They provide frameworks, playbooks, and market intelligence. What they rarely address is something far more decisive: resistance.
Market-facing behaviours often trigger internal friction that partners experience but rarely voice openly. These blockers show up as persistent thoughts and feelings.
"I'm not a salesperson"
A sense that proactive outreach conflicts with professional identity and undermines the credibility built through technical excellence.
"If people need us they will ask"
The belief that business is demand driven and brand reputation is sufficient to generate it .
"I don't want to feel pushy"
Discomfort with initiating conversations where value hasn't been explicitly requested or where outcomes remain uncertain.
"This isn't where my real value lies"
A belief that market development activities detract from the deep, substantive work that truly differentiates the firm.
"Reaching out feels inefficient"
Concern that relationship-building without immediate opportunity represents poor use of limited time and attention.
"I'll do this once things calm down"
Perpetual deferral driven by the competing demands of delivery work, which always feels more urgent and concrete.
Growth stalls not because people don't know what to do, but because the reasons not to do it are never surfaced or worked with systematically. Real change happens when resistance is made visible and addressed directly, not bypassed with better tools or stronger mandates.
The Identity Shift That Enables Market Growth
This initiative is built around a deliberate identity shift that redefines how partners create and capture value in the market. It represents a fundamental evolution in professional self-concept.
Technical excellence remains absolutely essential. What changes is how that value is expressed, positioned, and delivered in the market. Partners begin to see themselves not only as problem-solvers who respond to demand, but as opportunity creators who shape demand through strategic relationships and timely engagement.
Reframing Market Engagement
Market engagement is reframed not as "selling" — which carries connotations of persuasion and transaction — but as leadership, contribution, and service in action.
This shift does not live in language or mindset alone. It shows up in what partners choose to do — or avoid — each day. It becomes visible in calendar commitments, conversation priorities, and the small but consequential decisions about where to invest time and attention.
Growth Partner Behaviours
The learning experience focuses on a small set of explicit, observable behaviours that directly drive market growth. These are not abstract capabilities or aspirational values — they are specific actions that can be practised, measured, and reinforced systematically.
Initiating outreach
Making contact to build or maintain relationships even when there is no immediate commercial need.
Reconnecting
Re-engaging with clients and contacts where conversations have gone quiet.
Expanding networks
Reaching beyond familiar clients, local markets, and established service lines to explore opportunities.
Asking for uncertain conversations
Requesting meetings or introductions where the the path to value is not yet clear.
Staying engaged despite setbacks
Maintaining persistence and consistency even when facing rejection, silence, or lack of immediate return on effort.
Taking ownership for follow-through
Ensuring continuity and momentum without relying on formal systems, reminders, or administrative support structures.
Equally important, the initiative creates structured space to examine what makes these behaviours difficult — where avoidance shows up, which patterns reinforce that avoidance, and how cultural or structural factors either enable or obstruct consistent practice. Growth is not forced. It is enabled by removing what gets in the way.
Why This Matters More Than Ever
In a competitive, relationship-driven market, where AI is doing more and more of the heavy lifting, growth no longer comes from expertise alone. but rather visible actions that build trust, relevance, and opportunity over time, often before outcomes are clear or measurable.
The One-Day Growth Partner Experience Designed to
The day works because it addresses growth as a behavioural challenge, more than a knowledge problem. Most people already know what they should do. The challenge is doing it when it feels risky, uncomfortable, or likely to fail.
Building a Growth Partner
There are four human capabilities that consistently determine whether market behaviours actually happen when the pressure is on.
Growth Mindset
Reframing effort as development, treating rejection as information, and viewing challenges as opportunities to build capability
Accountability
Ownership rooted in internal commitment rather than external compliance, leading to sustained effort beyond supervision
Confidence
The ability to initiate uncomfortable conversations and stay present when prospects express doubt or resistance,
Relational Capability
Building trust and rapport, listening empathically, to surface real client needs and opportunities.
These capabilities are positioned as practical supports for real market behaviour — tools that participants can immediately apply when facing the specific challenges their roles demand.
Throughout the day, participants practice using these capabilities in scenarios that mirror their actual work context, receiving feedback and refining their approach in real time.
Optional: Growth Partner Profile
As an optional enhancement, participants complete a short Growth Partner Profile ahead of the session. This is a brief, self-reflective profile across four core capabilities: growth mindset, accountability, confidence, and relational capability.
Each participant receives their own profile privately. Individual results are not shared or discussed publicly.
Aggregated patterns are shared toward the start of the day to surface collective strengths and challenges. This sets a clear baseline and supports open, candid discussion about growth opportunities.
The profile can also be retaken later to see how growth behaviours have shifted over time.
Growth Partner Augmented:
AI-Supported Coaching
Growth Partner Augmented introduces an optional AI-supported layer, empowering partners to confidently navigate crucial moments. This innovative tool helps overcome hesitation and action stalls, particularly in initiating outreach, following up, and managing discomfort.
Using EY’s own AI platform, partners learn to use AI as a private rehearsal and reflection space, a place to think, test language, and sharpen their approach. This enables immediate, constructive feedback, driving preparation and confidence before real-world conversations.
In practice, partners use this space to:
  • draft and refine Growth Partner initiation messages
  • pressure-test confident follow-ups when responses are slow or absent
  • rehearse upcoming conversations
  • reflect on interactions afterwards and adjust their approach
Used strategically, AI doesn’t replace the essential human element of the Growth Partner relationship. Instead, it significantly reduces the emotional friction, enabling partners to consistently take actions they know are vital for growth.
What Changes by the End of the Day
A tangible shift in mindset, behavior and culture.
Shared Language
A common vocabulary for discussing growth behaviour that enables clearer team communication
Pattern Recognition
Understanding of personal resistance patterns and the specific triggers that cause hesitation
Peer Examples
Visible evidence of growth already happening among colleagues facing similar challenges
Identity-Based Commitments
Concrete next actions grounded in who they want to become, not what they feel obligated to do
Growth stops being something people intend to do someday when conditions are perfect. It becomes something they know how to practice — even when it's uncomfortable, even when outcomes are uncertain, even when the easier path would be to avoid the conversation altogether.
Sustaining Growth
The one-day Growth Partner Experience is designed to shift behavior. What follows is designed to sustain it, ensuring that growth behavior does not quietly fade back into intention.
The 30-Day Growth Partner Pledge
At the end of the experience, participants make a time-bound, practical pledge. This is not a broad aspiration, but a specific behavioral commitment:
  • One or two concrete growth behaviors to practice.
  • Anticipate where resistance is most likely to show up.
  • Plan specific actions for when resistance occurs.
A short follow-up experience share, one month later activates social accountability.
Making Growth Visible Through Stories
Sustained behavioral change requires visible examples. Participants are encouraged to share Growth Partner Stories, highlighting where proactive outreach, relationship building or follow-through made a difference. These stories don't just recognize excellence, they create a learning and development opportunity.
Additionally, selected Growth Partner Stories may be featured to recognise growth behaviour and make it visible across the partnership.
Growth Partner Digital Program
To support sustained behaviour change beyond the day, Growth Partner can be extended through a lightweight, mobile-friendly digital experience.
This program reinforces the four core capabilities introduced in the live session — growth mindset, accountability, confidence, and relational capability.
The focus is on applying these capabilities in real market situations as they arise, particularly when resistance or hesitation returns.
Ongoing Learning Through Growth Partner Interviews
To reinforce learning, selected Growth Partner stories are developed into short podcast style interviews featuring partners within the Netherlands and across the wider EY network. These interviews surface:
  • How growth genuinely happens in diverse contexts.
  • Strategies for navigating hesitation and rejection.
  • Methods for activating and nurturing relationships over time.
These interviews will be available for partners to listen to on their mobile phones, at their convenience.
From Event to Practice
Together, these follow-up mechanisms transform the Growth Partner experience from a single event into a continuous practice. They create:
  • Continuity between initial insight and sustained action.
  • Social proof that growth behavior is valued and rewarded.
  • A learning loop grounded in real-world experience.
Growth shifts from something discussed in a room to something consistently noticed, recognized, and practiced over time.
Meet Dr. Justin Cohen,
Creator of Growth Partner
Growth Partner was created by Dr. Justin Cohen, a psychologist, global keynote speaker, and advisor to leadership teams. For over two decades, he has specialized in the intersection of psychology, behavior change, and performance.
His work focuses on bridging the critical gap between knowing what drives results and actually doing it. Justin’s approach combines behavioral science with practical, experience-led learning, fostering identity-level change for sustainable growth.

Dr. Justin Cohen is a Hall of Fame Speaker, bestselling author and former CNBC Africa prime time host.
Growth Partner: A Culture Lever
Growth Partner is more than just a program; it's a strategic culture lever, designed to meet partners exactly where they are, providing targeted support to help them embrace and demonstrate the growth-oriented behaviors now essential for market success.