TOP 3 TIPS FOR DIFFICULT CONVERSATIONS

Years ago, I mediated a conflict between two partners in a law firm. Peter was ten years senior to Jim. They had worked together as partners for five years and over that period, it had become extremely difficult for them to have a civil conversation about anything.  Once they looked back at their history working together, they identified a root of their conflict. 

The root was anchored in Peter’s exertion of seniority to block Jim’s desire to fire his assistant immediately. Both had good reasons for wanting what they wanted. The assistant had been gone from the firm for at least three years.  It seemed like a disagreement of three years earlier, over how best to manage a subordinate, was still alive and affecting the ability of Peter and Jim to work together. Over the years, Jim’s resentment grew as did Peter’s certainty in his decision and exercise of power. They avoided talking about their feelings and instead empowered them.

Why is it easier for professionals to give clear direction and bad news in the midst of of a time-sensitive, critical emergency than have an open and honest conversation about feelings? The words for conversations to resolve a conflict or misunderstanding between two lawyers, accountants, financial advisors, and consultants, making sense of an uncomfortable situation or finding the right words to say and knowing what do are blocked by emotions.

While some emotions, like excitement and anger can feel energizing and bring clarity, others, like humiliation, embarrassment, guilt and shame can be paralyzing. The latter feel so uncomfortable that they block, what Daniel Kahneman calls System 2 thinking – deliberate, logical, and analytical thinking. Instead, they nudge into play the easily accessible options - acting too quickly and paralysis in an attempt to escape these feelings. The end point is the same - unintended consequences.  

The triggers for difficult conversations that trigger System 2 thinking often involve the readjustment of roles and responsibilities or the resolution of conflicting values.  Succession planning, compensation, or the business model are often a source of agitation.  Conflict and misunderstanding are often consequences.

If you are facing a difficult conversation arising out of conflict or misunderstanding, keep these three tips in mind.

1.     Acknowledge emotions and thoughts.

It’s a mistake to ignore emotions.  Doing so, empowers emotions to cause blocks and missteps and impairs good decision-making. Instead of ignoring emotions, notice the signs – the knots in your stomach, a headache, a racing heartbeat, or an increase or decrease of sensation within your torso or limbs. Then ask yourself questions about what you are feeling. Name the emotion if you can. If not, google emotions to expand your vocabulary and your ability to name emotions. You may have heard the phrase with regard to emotions, “name them to tame them.” The power of emotions over thought processes and decision-making lessens with acknowledgement. Emotions are easier to spot than the hidden narratives and thoughts, but know that unconscious thinking also affects emotions.

What are you telling yourself about the difficult situation and conversation? Expand your self-awareness and expand your options for managing a difficult conversation effectively.

Why do you expect an upcoming difficult conversation to be difficult? What are you expecting to happen during the conversation? What emotions do you expect others to experience? What do you imagine they expect? 

After acknowledging your emotions and thoughts, consider the overall message and specific information you really want to convey and how best to do it, so that it will be heard and processed as you intend. Focus on your main message and a good outcome for the conversation so that collaboration for a solution becomes possible. Be clear about what you want, don’t want, need, expect, or prefer. Know your mind and then you’ll be better able to help others, who can’t read your mind, understand where you need help.  

Noticing isn’t just personal.  It’s about noticing the emotions of others and adjusting what you say and how you say it, to keep the conversation flowing productively. Emotions, just like the content of a conversation, provide important information.

2.     Listen.

When your stress level is too high, you may overlook important information and limit the meaning of what you notice and hidden opportunities.  Instead, slow down.  Take a breath. Do nothing other than listen carefully. Listen for content and emotion. What’s being said and how? It’s easy to assume that you understand another person’s position; however, conflict is often not about different positions as much as it is about emotions, interests, needs, and wants that go unnoticed and unacknowledged. The only way to understand another person is to listen to understand. Asking good, open-ended questions will give you content worth your time and effort to listen carefully.

It’s often easier to engage in a targeted listening.  Listening for information that supports or undermines an existing position is easier than listening to understand what matters most to the person communicating an idea or emotion. Instead, if your goal is to resolve a conflict productively, listen without judgment.  Listen to understand. Assume whatever you hear is true for the person saying it instead of trying to correct what you believe is a misunderstanding. 

If you listen to better understand the other person’s interests and concerns, you may find options to resolve a conflict without damaging relationships.  One of my clients put it this way, “R before T.” Relationship before task.  The team and organization falls apart if relationships are not built and solidified at every opportunities. Without relationships, the tasks that can be completed are extremely limited.

3.     Demonstrate that you care.

Even the best listener and the most astute observer and analyst conveys unintended messages by skipping over the opportunity to demonstrate understanding and compassion.   Digest what you hear and observe and share back your summary. Then, ask if you captured everything the other person wanted you to notice and understand. Include emotional tenor and not just content.

Active listening, empathic listening, or reflective listening all suggest the importance of being aware of the inadvertent messages you send by what you do and say during and after the other communicates. During any conversation, especially one with an element of conflict, the opportunity to convey intentional messages to improve relationships exists. If your goal is to strengthen the bonds of a business or personal relationship, take advantage of all such opportunities.

Demonstrate that you care about the other person by asking open-ended questions. Then, acknowledge their feelings, demonstrate concern, and summarize and paraphrase what you hear and then asking if you understood their meaning.

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DEI: How Leaders Drop the Ball

By Susan Letterman White

Leaders expect results, organizations fall short, time and money are wasted, and frustration builds. 

How did that happen? How do you fix it? 

Expectations and effort are not enough. An equity audit is not enough.  Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training is not enough. 

Hastings Law Professor Joan Williams reports in Fortune magazine that organizations spend some $8 billion a year on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)­—and see remarkably few results. Leaders are trying sincerely to bring a more diverse workforce into their organizations, yet, despite expending large amounts of time and money to drive high expectations, their approaches are ineffective. They begin with an equity audit or hire outside experts from the best universities to explain concepts like implicit bias and systemic racism. Neither is sufficient alone or even together. 

As a current DEI practitioner and former managing partner of a law firm, I've provided assessment, training, coaching, and facilitation for high level executives at law firms, municipal government, and state and federal government agencies in transportation, healthcare, and finance.  I've worked with top leaders and executives who have a sincere desire to change their organization to a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture. When we work together, they experience positive change. However, most leaders, who are failing to achieve their organization’s expected results, drop the ball by not continuing the work. 

Too many leaders waste time and money trying to address DEI problems without sustainable results. The problems are systemic problems and the solutions should be systemic, too. DEI challenges are not solvable with a single intervention. Real, sustainable change requires ongoing efforts throughout every level of the organization.

Every organization has opportunities for systemic change. Yet, most organizations stop after making a single change at a single level of the organization, like training individuals to change how they think and behave. Every organization has opportunities for sustainability. Instead change efforts stall after an equity audit or a training series as if DEI is a “one and done” proposition.

An Equity Audit Is Not Enough

Leaders drop the ball when they don’t leverage the momentum built from an equity audit.

Leaders seek equity audits because they have recognized the symptoms of systemic issues of inequities, like disaggregated data showing implicit bias-based disparities in hiring, compensation, and/or promotions or listening sessions that generate qualitative data of implicit bias-based disparities in how people are treated in workplace meetings and team conversations.  Collecting and analyzing equity data and then creating the strategic blueprint is not enough.  Leaders must take the next step and call their team together to collaboratively design and implement a plan based on the blueprint, yet many organizations never go through the required steps and wonder why they are unable to execute the strategic blueprint provided by the racial equity audit.

This failure phenomenon is not limited to DEI projects. HBR reported that statistically, approximately 70% of change projects fail. There is debate on the accuracy of this statistic; however, there is no debate that according to 2008 research from IBM, the need to lead change is growing, but our ability to do it is shrinking. McKinsey reported that 70 percent of change programs fail to achieve their goals, largely due to employee resistance and lack of management support. Even when people are truly invested in change the success rate is only 30 percent more likely to stick.

DEI change recommendations have a better chance of being implemented when leaders quickly transition into implementation planning and execution of the strategic plan. If leaders hesitate pushing positive change forward, the organization loses momentum. To recover, takes additional time, money, and workforce effort. One of my first clients called me after this exact experience.

The law firm had hired a well-known consulting firm to develop a strategic plan. It sat on a shelf collecting dust because firm leaders had not been able to translate the strategic plan into an implementation plan, which often requires discussions about roles, responsibilities, and timing. Often, difficult discussions about trade-offs in resource allocation and sometimes difficult decisions about changes to a business model arise. The avoidance of difficult conversations combined with the absence of clear roles and responsibilities was enough of an obstacle to stall the entire process. By the time they called for help, any motivation and energy for the work, first had to be recovered.

DEI Training Is Not Enough

Leaders drop the ball when they make training their only DEI initiative.

Equity audits almost always include a recommendation for extensive DEI training. The strongest leaders may not be inclusive leaders and even the best effort at fairly evaluating individual performance is often not equitable. They will benefit from training. Training is also an easy initiative to launch. Leaders delegate the training design and delivery to external experts or their learning and development department. Leaders then “show up” and learn, like anyone else at the training. The time demand on leaders is minimal as compared to other DEI change initiatives and a leader can say they did something. Unfortunately, what often happens is that training is the first, and often, only DEI initiative. Similar to an equity audit, the bulk of the work and time is delegated, while giving leaders credit for DEI efforts. Also similar to the equity audit, the initiative has a high likelihood of not achieving the expected DEI results without the right follow-through from leaders. The follow-through with training is the immediate application of learned material to a DEI challenge and the intentional spreading of DEI competencies learned to others in the organization through behavior modeling and using feedback effectively. 

Systemic problems are never addressed with an initiative aimed to improve individual skills and performance. Systemic problems require systemic solutions. While DEI leadership training is a solution aimed at individuals in an organization, adjustments to policies, processes, and structures are systemic solutions aimed at the organization as a whole. Equity audits include recommendations for changes at the organization itself.

If roles, responsibilities, lines of authority, and collaboration requirements are unclear in job descriptions, then implementing change is difficult or impossible. If the culture does not favor a growth mindset - the openness to discuss and learn from mistakes - then people in the organization will behave in alignment with a culture that encourages excessive  defensiveness and inhibits learning and change. If communication is flawed, either the right messages are getting lost or the wrong impressions are left unexamined. If the hiring, evaluation, and promotion processes are inequitable; i.e.,they use decision criteria that are not objectively measuring the ability to do a job or apply objective criteria through an implicitly biased lens, then disparities will continue to define the status quo.

Equity audits always identify organization-level strategies, yet too often, they remain as ideals or long-term goals. They require more time and effort to put in place and, unlike training, there is no option to simply schedule an event and then “check-the-box” for completion. 

Fixing the Problem

Leaders meet expectations when they follow through

Take these steps to sustainable and systemic change that increases diversity at all levels and strengthens a culture of equity and inclusion.

An Equity Audit - A robust equity audit that identifies strategies for change at all levels of the organization is the first step. Without the result of an equity audit - the blueprint or overarching strategy for improving diversity at all levels of the organization and a culture of equity and inclusion - you won’t know where to focus your efforts. 

Designing Your Implementation Plan - Leverage the momentum of your equity audit and put the recommendations into action right away by bringing the right people together to collaborate on the development of the strategic implementation plan.  The “right” people are those who will be expected to implement any action step of the plan and those who will be affected by changes anticipated. These are changes at the organization level to structures, processes, resource allocation, and communications and selecting who is responsible for doing what by when to make those changes a reality. This is often the first time the points of disagreement surface and why including an outside facilitator to help transform conflict into a productive discussion that builds commitment, engagement, and motivation in addition to help with prioritizing initiatives is wise. 

Executing the Implementation Plan - Once you have a strategic implementation plan that dictates who is responsible for doing what by when, start the execution.  Execution is an iterative process where improvements are expected at every cycle.  When problems and obstacles arise, it’s time to develop strategies to eliminate or navigate around them.

Having Difficult Conversations -  The iterative process of executing a strategic implementation plan always surfaces points of resistance from anyone affected by the change work and disagreement among executives. Do not avoid these conversations.  

Making Difficult Decisions - Resistance can stop or stall progress. Do not avoid making these decisions. Get help from a facilitator who is experienced with conflict management.

What Next? 

Leaders are already demonstrating their commitment by allocating resources, like time and money. If your organization has done an equity audit it’s time to plan for its implementation.  If your organization has done training it’s time to aim more broadly and consider how to change processes and structures. Sustainable improvements will follow as long as actions continue.  As a leader you can change your organization and the time to do it is now. 

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The Power of the Pause

by Ashley Coleman-Fitch

Take one minute right now to pause– to do nothing for even just ten seconds. 

What did you do with your pause? 

How did it feel? 

How do you feel now on the other side of that pause? 

I recently facilitated a group working to build a more inclusive culture within their organization. As this group of primarily outspoken leaders contemplated how to bring the more reserved members of their teams into important conversations, the topic of silence came up. “We all need to pause,” one participant said, “[but] when I pause, I hear nothing. The silence is killer– not hearing that engagement on the other end.” There were murmurings of agreement. It seemed that the group understood all too well the risks of a lull in the conversation and accordingly, like many of us, had become practiced at avoiding these lulls by filling the space. But what happens, I challenged them, when we allow that silence and embrace it? 

As we discovered through our discussion, four powerful things happen: 

1. We allow ourselves space to think and respond mindfully

2. We create space for others to enter the conversation

3. We listen to the quality of the silence 

4. We breathe… and so does the conversation

Responding Mindfully 

The essence of mindfulness is the practice of pausing to acknowledge the present moment and allowing our whole selves– our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual selves– to show up in a space. When we are more attuned to the world around us, we begin fostering cultures of inclusion in diverse settings. Some experts argue that cultivating mindfulness is the most important step in developing intercultural competence, the individual precursor to developing cultures of inclusion.  Cultural competence expert Stella Ting-Toomey suggests that we must not only pay attention to ourselves– to our assumptions, to our internal dialogue, and to our emotional reactions– but also to others, “becoming exquisitely attuned to the other's communication assumptions, cognitions, and emotions.” (1) We begin to see more, to listen better, and to take in each interaction with the whole of ourselves, approaching the unfamiliar with curiosity and compassion rather than judgment and intractability. “To be mindful of intercultural conflict differences, we have to leam to see the unfamiliar behavior from multiple cultural angles.” 

The Buddist monk, spiritual leader, and peace activist  Thich Nhat Hanh writes, “Whenever we feel carried away, sunk into a deep emotion, or caught in thoughts about the past or future, we can return to our breathing to collect and anchor our mind.” (2) Nhat Hanh invites us to pause, to breathe, and to gather ourselves before moving forward– to become present and take ownership over our response. In this way, we give ourselves time to digest the present moment– what happened, as well as our emotional response– before responding, resulting in fewer gaffes and missteps in the conversation. Additionally, this practice allows each of us a moment to check our implicit biases and blind spots, consider the perspective we are speaking from, and purposefully attune our response to our particular audience to ensure that all aspects of our message– verbal and non-verbal– are heard and received by our intended audience, thereby also decreasing the likelihood that we might unintentionally offend someone we are attempting to connect with. Maybe it sounds like a lot of work, but it’s the work we need to do to connect better and be more whole and human, which feel like worthy goals. 

In addition to encouraging your full, authentic self to be present and helping you check your assumptions, biases, and blind spots before putting your foot in it, pausing to become more mindful does one other thing almost by accident: It makes you a more powerful, eloquent orator.

 As a facilitator, my role is to guide the conversation– to highlight pivotal ideas and help my participants get past blockages to dive deep into the subject. It can be tempting to talk, but after years of facilitating, I know that mine is the least important voice in the conversation. Truth and solutions are most powerful when people discover them themselves, so my goal is to talk as little as possible, keeping the spotlight on the most important people in the room– the people doing the work. It took me time to appreciate the value of saying less and even more time to learn to use silence as emphasis, highlighting the key part of my message. Embracing silence made me choose my words more intentionally, making my message more powerful and resonating in the silence that followed. It took me even more time to skillfully leverage silence to encourage my participants to become fully engaged and invested, allowing me to step back into the role of coach and guide. That is the power of the pause– its stillness acts as a catalyst for creativity and an invitation towards action and engagement. It invites flow– authentic energy exchange.  

An Invitation to Enter

“I grew up in a big family. If I didn’t talk over people, I’d never be heard.” one participant commented. There was lots of nodding and noises of assent around the table. 

Someone else offered, “I grew up in a family where it was not ok to interrupt someone who was speaking. It was deeply ingrained in me:  Wait your turn to speak… or else,” she finished laughing. 

The dichotomy of these two statements illustrates several important things for leaders to remember as they work to facilitate inclusive discussions: The deeply ingrained patterns that may never be articulated but show up in every exchange we engage in, the differences in communication styles, and, as a leader and facilitator, the necessity of attending to all of these different styles and carving out space for each of them in the space.  

Just as people enter a space differently– some strike up a conversation before they’ve even entered a room while others take a lap, mapping out the lay of the land before settling in while still others need to nest first– people enter conversations differently as well. Some dive right in, always the first to speak; others wait to be invited. As a leader and facilitator, it is important to be mindful of these different styles and leverage silence as a tool to level the playing field. 

A purposeful pause is an invitation. It allows your audience– learners, attendees, participants, peers, etcetera– space in the discussion to breathe, to digest your message, and to formulate their own mindful response. People are allowed to respond to what you have said silently, reflecting on both your message and their reaction before feeling pressured to respond back. 

Listening to the Silence

Have you ever gone out in the middle of a snowstorm and listened to the snow fall? There is nothing more emblematic of a peaceful moment than listening to the whisper of those tiny flakes shushing themselves into tiny piles. The world is muted, and for a moment, it’s easy to get lost in the stillness and the magic of the moment. 

But why is that moment so magical? What is it about snow that transports us and invites us to simultaneously get lost and be present? Its visual qualities aside– striking as they may be– part of snow’s magic is its ability to mute the world– to impose silence and stillness on a world that is constantly moving. And in that silence we find peace. 

Most of us are aware, at least peripherally, that every silence has its own quality: some silences are pregnant, full of anxiety and anticipation; others are tense, holding all of the unnamed feelings in the space; others feel dead, devoid of life or engagement; while still others can signal contentment and mutual understanding, a freeing from the usual din of small talk to be replaced by amiable presence with another. 

As facilitators, we are often so afraid of those uncomfortable silences, or worse yet, those dead silences that likely indicate that we have lost our audience, so instead, we fill the silences with our own noise. In doing so, we miss one of the richest sources of information that could tell us not only how our message is being received but who is receiving it and how. When we actually pause to listen to the silence, it speaks volumes. Armed with this new information, we can then better adapt our next steps to respond more effectively and guide the group toward the desired goal.   

Breathe

A pause in a conversation is like the blank space between paintings in a museum or gallery– it gives the mind space to rest, digest, and reflect before moving on to the next. It invites each of us– and the conversation– to breathe, to take in all of the nuance and complication embedded in our messaging, and to respond thoughtfully, as our whole authentic selves. 

Pausing to breathe, to contemplate, to respond makes us more effective communicators. It makes our message more powerful and leaves room for us to become more generous and compassionate listeners. This might be the most important skill in both understanding others and making them feel heard and valued, thus fostering community development based on authentic inclusion and belonging. 

Viktor Frankl once said, “Between stimulus and response there is a space…In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response, lies our growth and our freedom.” Create space to nurture your growth. Pause. 

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The Business Case and Blueprint for Leadership Development

The Value of Leadership Development Programs

The cost of Leadership development programs is not only financial.  They also divert lawyers’ time and attention away from the legal work. It makes sense to know whether the return on that investment will outweigh the expense.

There is a plethora of research showing a direct correlation between the perception of leaders as outstanding and their organization’s revenue generation, profitability, employee productivity and retention, and customer loyalty and satisfaction.[1] Any company, regardless of purpose, industry, or headquarters, performs better with excellence in leadership as perceived by others. While some results of the research are expected, others are quite surprising.

It is not surprising that organizations with poor leaders perform poorly. It is surprising that organizations with average leaders are substantially outperformed by those with outstanding leaders.  The collection of skills that make this difference is also surprising.

Leaders are required to be strategic planners and design step-by-step processes for reaching performance goals, like revenue and profit targets. If they are good leaders, we expect them to meet targets. In fact, there is a direct correlation between the strategic planning capability and organization efficiency, effectiveness, and financial performance. It makes sense that the better leaders are at designing and implementing plans for improving revenue and profit, the better the plans and their execution, and the better the results.

There is also an unexpected, direct correlation between key performance metrics and the perception of people as excellent leaders because of their strengths in helping colleagues solve a problem, seeking out others’ ideas, or a variety of other interpersonal skills, and those skills related to agility, learning, and change. People are evaluated by their bosses, peers, and direct reports as outstanding leaders because of these skills and behaviors and not whether or not their organization is profitable, yet organizations are considerably more profitable when leaders are perceived as outstanding in these skills.

In the legal field, there are always skeptics, who may argue lawyers, legal departments, and law firms are different.  Yet, across all industries interpersonal skills matter and their absence often overshadows any value of extraordinary technical expertise. In 2008, the Korn/Ferry Institute published their research showing that the characteristics of “best-in-class general counsel, [are] the same as those defining a Best-in-Class leader.” They were the ones with leadership skills for making complex decisions, managing diverse relationships, creating and innovating, inspiring others, driving results, and getting things done.[2]

It’s not difficult to imagine that people will stop listening to the regular instigators of conflict or the narcists who repeatedly talk about themselves. Yet harmony-seeking, selfless leaders who lack strong interpersonal skills lead companies where knowledge is not shared, ideas are never developed into valuable assets, and collaborative, trusting relationships are never forged. The cost is often existential. I’ve work with several law firms that no longer exist, despite strong revenue and profitability because partners needed harmony and avoided conflict and difficult conversations, literally, at all costs.

What is Leadership?

Leadership is the intentional influence of others to complete projects that require a group effort. Some may argue that there are no group efforts to deliver legal solutions. Law is packed with people who have a preference for independence in their work and a love of applying deep legal expertise to solve problems. However, as the general counsel of a large international company, it’s easier to see that the evolution in role parallels that of the Chief Financial Officer twenty years ago.

Today’s general counsels, along with their CEOs, choose their role. It is between aligning the legal function’s strategy with that of the company or being a technical expert with many different areas of the law. The deep legal expertise is still needed; however, a new set of responsibilities for general counsel has emerged. It includes delegating tasks to the right legal subject matter expert while also assuming a leadership role as strategy partner with the CEO and entire senior leadership team. It is not difficult to see the similarities with the law firm’s managing partner and practice group leaders.

This is a consequence of complexity. Today’s business world is complex as much as it is complicated. The challenges are like managing traffic and building the engine of an automobile. And, so is today’s world for the client who is looking for help managing their wealth, navigating governmental obstacle courses to protect assets, or recovering value lost. It’s the complexity, volatility, lack of clarity, and lack of predictability that requires lawyers have much more than deep legal expertise to help their clients in the ways clients expect and want.

It’s interesting that there is a collection of leadership skills that show up over and over as being correlated with excellence even though research also shows that excellence in leadership is all about the fit between what the leader does and what the organization needs.  Winston Churchill was not recognized as an excellent leader until Dunkirk and after WWII, he was voted out of office. There are lots of stories about people who were successful leaders in one organization only to be fired for poor performance shortly after moving to a new one.

Leadership is about competencies (sometimes called skills, capabilities, abilities), not styles or business models per se. Competencies are expressed through every style that meshes with every law firm from those with a lockstep compensation business model to those with an individual achievement model. A decision to skip leadership development based on the belief that lawyers and law firms are too different from every other business is not a logical, analytical, or sensible decision. It is contrary to the existing evidence. When a firm or law department is not performing up to its highest potential, that, in fact, is evidence of the need for leadership development.

The answer to the question of whether or not leadership development is sufficiently valuable is obvious when you examine the right data. If data about the law firm or law department’s key performance indicators is weak or average, the value of leadership development far outweighs its cost. The trickle-down effect of good or bad leadership will always impact productivity, client satisfaction, employee and associate retention, profitability, innovation, revenue, and culture.

Designing Leadership Development Programs

Focus on Excellence

Design leadership programs to develop excellence in the competencies that matter most for the organization, industry, role, and career level. Extensive research tells us that poor leaders cost an organization in lost revenue, profitability, and employee performance but the surprise is that the performance difference between organizations with average leaders and those with outstanding leaders is dramatic. Aim for excellence in leadership. Great matters.  Good is not good enough.

The aim of most developmental programs is to eliminate weaknesses instead of developing strengths. There is a difference between a fatal flaw or career stopper and a weakness. Research has repeatedly shown that selecting one to three skills that are among the relative strengths of a person and honing them is more likely to propel the person’s career forward than is turning a weaker skill into an average skill.

Focus on select behaviors

Include the behaviors that routinely show up in high-performing organization across all industries, geographies, and organizations and a variety of research studies. There is considerable data that successful leaders are achievement-oriented, able to influence the thinking, emotions, and actions of others, and are able to learn and adjust to change. Many of the related behaviors are:

1.    Making complex decisions

2.    Demonstrating a learning mindset and resilience

3.    Taking initiative

4.    Mediating and negotiating conflict and differences

5.    Establishing stretch goals and plans to achieve them

6.    Building relationships and influencing people

7.    Attracting, developing, and optimizing diverse talent

8.    Being courageous, trustworthy, and authentic

9.    Being flexible and adaptable

10. Have a client and outside focus

In addition to behaviors that routinely show up in high performing organizations, legal expertise, financial acumen, technology competency, and ethics are important capabilities for lawyers. Communication for lawyers includes capturing and retaining the attention of prospects and clients through conversations about how to create, retain, or recover what the client considers valuable in addition to advocating, mediating, and negotiating to resolve conflict. These are the differences that explain why excellence is also a matter of “fit” between the leader and organization. Yes. There are some leadership differences that legal industries leaders need.

Each capability is really a combination of different skills, behaviors, and approaches. For example, having a client focus, means developing and demonstrating an understanding of what motivates your clients’ decisions.  It means knowing what they want and expect, rather than what legal solutions they need. Communicating with clients means explaining legal solutions and client responsibilities clearly and concisely and also conveying empathy and understanding of their perspective on value because value to a client is not how much time it takes you to have a conversation or write a brief. Having an outside focus means noticing changes on a macro and micro level, from your prospective clients and competitors today to economic, demographic, and social changes that affect who your prospective clients and competitors may be in a year and your options for connecting with them.

Measure Using Standards

Since the measure of effective leadership is the perception of subordinates, peers, and bosses, use a 360º assessment tool to establish baseline and capture improvement measures before and after developmental efforts. A well-validated 360º assessment is the best predictor of leadership talent potential and the best measure of current levels of competencies. A good assessment defines the behaviors being measured and on a Likert scale will measure degrees of excellence. Once you have data about the baseline and improvement aims, you can create a step-by-step action plan for leadership performance improvement.

An example, from the Korn Ferry Leadership Architect model and assessment defines a “towering strength” as rare, “the best people may have only a few towering strengths.” It defines a “serious issue: as a “pressing need to improve…hurting performance…career could be stalled or stopped” because of it.  A good assessment defines the skills being evaluated. An example defines the skills of “Drives Results” as a person who “has a strong bottom-line orientation. Persists in accomplishing objectives despite obstacles and setbacks. Has a track record of exceeding goals successfully. Pushes self and helps others achieve results.” Standards, objective performance criteria for leadership competencies makes a difference.

Develop Throughout a Career Using Traditional and Untraditional Tools

When the details of an individual’s career intersect with the details of an organization’s talent cycle, there is a fit. A talent cycle is the series of processes that work together to create a consistent pool of people with the right skills and fit with the organization so that the organization is able to carry out its purpose. It begins with: (1) recruiting for defined positions; (2) making the decision to hire; (3) the onboarding process; (4) the developmental and evaluation processes; (5) career advancement, reward, recognition, and compensation; and (6) termination. Development and evaluation work in tandem. 

The most widely accepted theories on how to develop new knowledge and skills in adults combine traditional learning methods, like lectures and reading with the ongoing application and practice of new behaviors over time with reinforcing and redirecting feedback to master a competency. After a person decides to strengthen a capability, that person studies and learns a new skill, then applies the skill to a real-life situation and practices it over time. Ideally, the learner receives outside feedback and reflects on its effectiveness until it becomes an outstanding strength admired by many and possessed by few people.  Sometimes performance coaching is included as a means to emphasize reflection. Coaching is the preferred method for helping senior leaders and “C-Suiters” to hone their leadership skills. Leadership development efforts that add objectively measurable value to any organization include using the skill with regular job duties. It is the extensive practice of a skill over time that transforms an average skill into an outstanding one.

An important leadership skill for most lawyers is business development. This is relationship-building communication that captures the attention of prospective clients and influences their decision to hire the lawyer. There are several components to the communication skill including understanding and being able to notice communication preferences and differences, learning to adjust your own style, and when to say what in a “sales” conversation. There is information to consume by reading or watching a video (traditional learning methods) followed with practice time including role play to improve new behaviors.  Untraditional learning methods like role-play, performance feedback, and coaching support the required practice to transform knowledge into behavior and beginner behavior into talented behavior.

People become expert in a skill with practice and coaching. Think of top athletes and musicians. They all practiced every day for many years before becoming experts in their fields. It’s the same for any skill. You learn how to do something, engage in intensive practice often with coaching, and then plateau without continued practice and an intention to improve.  Whether a leader wants to hone business develop or management skills, it takes an intensive learning period that may include watching other leaders, receiving formal and traditional training, coaching, and planning actions in advance.

[1] John H. Zenger and Joseph R. Folkman, The New Extraordinary Leader, Turning Good Managers into Great Leaders pp.31-41, 281(2020)

[2] Nancie Lataille and Gabriella Kilby, The Legal Function Transformed: Best Practices of Today’s General Counsel (2008)

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Succession Planning: What’s Your Next Step?

Note: This article first appeared in the February 2021 Law Practice Today

Introduction to Succession Planning

Succession planning for lawyers means retiring, a career pivot, perhaps selling a practice, and definitely transitioning clients and open matters to another lawyer. It marks a life-cycle transition point. Psychologically, it means change and change is always hard, even when it’s a choice. Retiring or pivoting forces you to questions you may prefer to avoid.

Do you want to find an internal successor to handle your files? If that’s not an option, will you recruit someone from the outside, perhaps a junior lawyer – someone you have mentored in the past? Do you think your practice is desirable as a merger or acquisition candidate?

What should be on my “to do” list? What are the possible ethical missteps? What is my practice worth?

Law Firm Business Valuation

The underlying and unspoken assumption of succession planning is that there is value in the law firm or practice that someone else would want that outweighs the cost of its acquisition. When the value is greater than the acquisition cost, succession planning is about the logistics of complying with ethical rules regarding valuing a practice and retiring.

Law firm partners with a significant book of business have power.  If they leave without first transitioning clients, the clients will leave too. This means that managing partners have a responsibility to think about succession as a business sustainability strategy. What are the benefits of being a partner in your firm?  What is the cost to become a partner in your firm? Does your firm have a leadership pipeline to partnership?

The best succession plans are started years in advance of an actual transition and incorporate an understanding of the firm’s business model, partnership agreement, and how decisions about practice value are made.

Whether you are in a firm or a solo practitioner, take a moment to value your business. Consider the following:

•       Hard assets: cash-on-hand; property

•       Transferable, valuable, happy client relationships

•       Brand recognition

•       Skilled and committed staff

•       Embedded processes and culture of effectiveness and efficiency

•       Work in progress

•       Long-range strategy

•       Healthy capitalization

•       Receivables

•       Strong community presence

•       Positive office culture

Ethical rules affect valuation. Remember to consult your state’s ethical rules on transferring client matters, referral fees, or fee-splitting. There are often limitations. Look for obligations to keep clients apprised of possible changes in representation and their choice of counsel,  transfer files only to competent lawyers, and limit excessive valuation of good-will.  When discussing a possible acquisition, make sure to protect client confidentiality, consider conflicts, and review fee agreements in engagement letters. These issues may also affect the value a practice or its value to a particular acquirer. 

Law Firm Roles and Responsibilities of the Business Model

When a lawyer leaves a firm affect, it may affect the firm structure and responsibilities of others left behind. Who, in your firm, is responsible for rainmaking, overseeing work processes and attorney assignments, and making sure that bills go out on time and get paid? What processes in your effective and efficient business model will change when a particular partner retires? The connection is often obvious between a particular lawyer and the percentage of revenue that person brings to the firm.  It’s not always as clear who is responsible for recruiting, hiring, onboarding, training and development, advancing, evaluation, compensation, and termination of associates and staff. It’s often even less obvious who is doing what, when, and how to ensure that quality work gets completed on time in different areas of a firm. Use the table below to better understand your firm’s business model and what needs to continue uninterrupted.

Checklist

When a firm closes or a solo practitioner retires, pay attention to ethical rules regarding file retention and ongoing cases with pending court dates. Malpractice insurance coverage is for “claims made,” so even if you are retiring you will need a “tail” policy to cover any legal malpractice claims made after those doors are closed. Make sure to:

·      Finalize any active files where possible. If you can close out a matter and client representation, do so.  Use disengagement letters and include your intention to retire.

·      Advise clients with active files of your intention to retire and their need to retain new counsel. Don’t forget to remind clients of important time limitations and scheduled dates.

·      Active litigation files usually include court or deposition dates. Request extensions, continuances, or new dates where possible. Under some circumstances, ethical obligations may require you to delay your retirement. Remember to follow court rules regarding motions to withdraw your representation and substitute new counsel.

·      Return original documents and transfer electronic files to clients. Advise clients how long you’ll be retaining files, which depends on your state’s ethical rules.

·      Make sure to document any decisions and confirm agreement by your client.

·      Check your state for ethical obligations regarding retiring or suspending your active license, including change of address and contact information.

Five Steps for Succession Planning in Advance

There are five steps for succession planning: (1) Hire right; (2) Develop People; (3) Transition Leadership and Management; (4) Transition Clients; and (5) Reward Departing Partners. Planning for the departure of partners begins several years in advance.

1.     Hire Right 

Recruit lawyers with leadership competencies or develop these skills in addition to top-notch legal skills. These lawyers will be better at managing client relationships, developing new client relationships, and support the efficient and effective running of the law firm’s business model.

Not every lawyer should become a partner; however, hire lawyers that are partnership material.  What are the expectations for partners? Should they show business development potential? Do they need to have an interest in running a department? Do you expect them to collaborate with other departments, like marketing or attorney development? Do you expect them to mentor and train newer lawyers? When lawyers are hired because of the schools attended or honors received instead of their vision of lawyering, leading and legal capabilities, who supports firm sustainability? Hire lawyers that will contribute to a sustainable culture – a diverse, equitable, inclusive culture where well-being and belonging are cultivated.

2.     Develop People

Even perfect hires need development. Train and mentor successors in marketing, client relationship development and management, law firm leadership and marketing, law firm finance, understanding the firm’s business model, and mentoring others. None of these competencies are taught in most law schools.

Make sure to:

•       Expose associates and junior partners to management issues as part of their developmental process.

•       Expose them to the  firm’s financial model and goals.

•       Include them  at regular meetings and discuss progress toward goals.

•       Share information on management decisions. Not all is sensitive or confidential.

•       Delegate issues dealing with practices, technology, marketing to associates or small committees. People learn best by thinking through difficult challenges, making decisions, and implementing those decisions.  Where the outcomes are less than perfect are the opportunities to learn and group.

•       As they develop offer them leadership position on more important issues.

3.     Transition Leadership and Management

People learn to lead and manage others by leading and managing others. Introduce leadership training and create new roles for people to learn these skills.  Have an assistant or co-managing partner or manage with a triad executive committee. People learn by watching more experienced people lead, so give them opportunities to ask questions about and how leadership and management decisions are made and participate in the discussions and decisions.

 4.     Client Transitions

No firm wants to lose clients when a partner retires, and this is preventable with planning. As uncomfortable as these conversations are, talk retirement and know when it is coming. Three to four years before a retirement, a introduce clients to other partners and associates. Allow time for trust to develop with other firm attorneys. Does your business model encourage or discourage this behavior?

In firms with sustainable business models, identify successor lawyers for each client and have them prepare to take over for primary lawyers at retirement.  Include successor lawyers in lunches and client visits and transition portions of client work to successor well in advance of transition.

5.     Reward Departing Partners

Sustainable business models generate partners who support client transitions. They are not worried about their livelihood and power. Return capital – original investment and profits-not-taken. Figure out fair value of a partner’s ownership interest and pay it. Fund retirement benefits. Consider providing compensation through of-counsel arrangement that support the mentoring  and client transition support needed for sustainability.

Conclusion

Succession planning is shifting control of the firm and clients and doing so without going awry of ethical obligations.  It answers questions about the value of retiring lawyers. It provides longevity and sustainability for a firm. Succession planning is an opportunity.  Take it.

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Why is Leadership Difficult and Dangerous?

By Susan Letterman White

Leading can be like playing with fire. It is “difficult and dangerous work” according to the authors of “The Practices of Adaptive Leadership” . It’s taking charge of making a difference.  It’s doing whatever is necessary so that the team and organization being led reaches its objectives and maintains alignment with its purpose. What’s so difficult and dangerous with spending your time and effort trying to improve performance?!?

It’s difficult to influence others to do their part to help a group reach its goals, even a goal to make the whole (organization or team) better than its parts.  It usually means asking people to do more than they are already doing or change the way they have historically done something. People have an inherent aversion to change. So, there’s that. It’s also difficult to master the competencies that make a good leader and extraordinary leader and if you want leadership to make a difference in the key performance metrics, like revenue generation, customer and client satisfaction and retention, employee engagement, productivity, and retention, or profitability, then according to the reams of the research data you need people, who are outstanding, not just good, leaders.

It’s dangerous because sometimes it means speaking up when you see something that is wrong, which often comes with a price. You speak up.  Your boss disagrees with you and retaliates. In most instances, you have no protection. Take a look at this recent Massachusetts Appeals Court ruling to see that even though under Massachusetts law your employer would be fined for preventing you from placing in your personnel file a disagreement with a criticism placed in the file by your employer, your employer can still fire you for taking advantage of that law.  

It’s difficult for leaders and followers to act against their self-interest even when it is in the best interest of the organization. For example, most people avoid personal conflict.  Their desire to avoid conflict doesn’t disappear when people step into positions of formal authority and power.  Their desire to grow in their career doesn’t disappear either. If the recognition, advancement, and compensation processes reward behavior “A,” don’t expect anyone to engage in behavior “B,” even if that is the right thing to do and in the best interest of the entire organization. If the penalty process sanctions behavior “B” expect most people, who are not in a position to absorb the punishment without damage to avoid behavior “B.”

We’ve all read about the importance of exercising “leadership” regardless of one’s formal authority. Leadership trainings focus on leading oneself in addition to leading others. Managers are taught to use informal influence to persuade others and to speak up if they have a different perspective. However, what is the benefit to the organization when it receives data it is not interested in learning? We know how it may quickly turn into a harsh penalty for the “leader.” Unfortunately and all too often, power wins out.

Exercising leadership may put you in the line of fire and tough criticism more often than in line for praise. Are you attempting to lead a group that is firmly entrenched in its status quo? If so, expect resistance in the form of criticism. Leading is difficult and dangerous. Be sure you know yourself and why you would be willing to put yourself in danger before you start playing with fire.

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