Thursday, May 10th, 2007
I had dinner with a close friend this week. She is a former lawyer who at ten years call left the profession to embark on an entirely new and unrelated career. She did not leave the legal profession because she was not good at it. On the contrary, she was very good at it!
When she took the bold step of leaving her firm she was amazed by the number of people who came up to her in confidence and told her how much they wished they could do the same thing.
They wished they could, but they couldn’t. There were two main reasons why they couldn’t. Here they are:
The first reason was money. They had family commitments, a mortgage, fiscal responsibilities that made it impossible to move.
The other reason was courage. “I just don’t have the courage to make a big change like that.”
I’ve told this story to illustrate two very common rut stories. In executive coaching we sometimes talk about rut stories and river stories. Rut stories are the stories we tell about our lives that keep us stuck. River stories are the ones that set us free.
I think almost all of us have rut stories we are holding on to. They are powerful stories. Some people would call them reality. Family and fiscal responsibilities are a reality. I’m not a courageous person is a reality.
Said like that, reality, becomes a sheer cliff face. No minor obstacle but an insurmountable one. A dead end. No options beyond this point.
Rut becomes river when we ask the question: what if that wasn’t a dead end? Imagine that the huge fiscal responsibility wasn’t an insurmountable wall, but was more of an obstacle blocking your path forward. How might you work around that? How could you design a professional life that both satisfies you internally and makes you enough money to care for your family? How might that work?
Rut stories are powerful. We give them meaning. We believe them. The process of transforming rut to river begins when we reflect on the limitations we impose, when we examine them, when we suspend reality - just for a moment - and new possibilities arise. Out of possibilities can arise action. Action leads to change. Rut to river.
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Sunday, March 25th, 2007
I just returned from the LMA (Legal Marketing Association) Annual Conference in Atlanta where I had the good fortune to present “Coaching the Alpha Lawyer” with Heather Gray-Grant the Marketing and Business Development Director from the firm Alexander Holburn LLP. I’d like to thank the members of the audience who attended the presentation for their warm welcome, active participation, and great questions. As promised, here is a list of my favorite coaching books:
1. Hargrove, Robert. Masterful Coaching, Revised Edition. John Wiley & Sons; 2002. I can’t recommend this book enough. His materials on the seven hat coaching system, winning strategies, and river/rut stories, are valuable tools for coaching in the law firm. If I could only own two coaching books this would be one of them.
2. Flaherty, James. Coaching, Evoking the Excellence in Others, Second Edition. Butterworth-Heinemann, 2005.
This is the second book I think is absolutely vital reading for anyone interested in coaching. The word for Flaherty is RIGOROUS. His bibliography reads like it belongs in a PHD dissertation. Where some coaches like to work exclusively with leaders who are motivated high-performers up for a challenge, Flaherty’s approach to coaching works with a much broader group of individuals.
In the introduction to the second edition Flaherty writes:
How do I contribute to someone’s competence in a respectful, dignified, and effective way? If you find yourself asking these or similar questions, then this book definitely has something to say to you. (p. xxiii)
In late April I will be taking part in an advanced coaching program with Flaherty in San Francisco, and I’ll be sure to report on the experience in this blog when I return!
Other great coaching books if you are interested in further reading:
3. O’Neil, Mary Beth. Executive Coaching with Backbone and Heart, A Systems Approach to Engaging Leaders with Their Challenges. John Wiley & Sons, 2000.
4. Crane, Thomas G. The Heart of Coaching, Using Transformational Coaching To Create a High-Performance Culture. Second Edition. FTA Press, 2002.
5. Coaching for Leadership, How the World’s Greatest Coaches Help Leaders Learn. Edited by Marshall Goldsmith, Laurence Lyons, Alyssa Freas. Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer, 2000.
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Wednesday, February 28th, 2007
I attended a great LMA Vancouver lunch hour seminar today presented by Tim Leishman from Kerma Partners. (Kerma Partners came into existence in late 2006 and has already developed into an alternative to Hildebrandt in the professional services consulting arena.)
Leishman first penned an article on lawyer practices styles in 1998, and the ideas he set out provide a helpful tool for thinking about and understanding the contributions lawyers make to the success of a law firm.
Leishman sets out four categories of contribution that lawyers make to their firms: Rainmaker, Point Person, Hired Gun, Brain Surgeon. In very short form here’s how he describes each of these types of lawyers:
Rainmakers are interested in connections. They are into meeting new people. They are initiative takers. They are high intensity networkers. They approach business development from the standpoint of “how can I help this person?” Or, “how can I make it easy for them?”
Point Persons are the client managers par excellence. They are most interested in loyalty. They approach their client service from the standpoint of how can I make this person look good? They are natural team players and consensus builders.
The Hired Guns are motivated by credentials. They like to focus on publishing, presenting and building their profile and reputation. They help strengthen the firm’s reputation for expertise.
Brain surgeons are those lawyers whose insight, and intellectual prowess, put them in a category all to themselves. They are highly knowledgeable in key niche areas of law and are known for their outstanding legal abilities.
Leishman’s point is that firms would be best to work to lawyers strengths rather then trying to get them to improve in their weak areas. Trying to get a Brain Surgeon become an effective practice group leader is likely an exercise in futility! Leishman sets out two priorities for law firms:
First, lawyers should be guided to develop in accordance with their relative strengths and talents.
Second, firms should learn to identify the natural abilities and talents that are associated with certain practice styles and learn from lawyers with those abilities so that those abilities can be developed in others.
Once you know your strength you can then maximize the intensity you are putting into it, and get the most out of it.
Attendees at the seminar also offered some of their own thought provoking questions and comments. One person commented that the difficulty for many firms is that they have a number of lawyers who fall into neither of the above categories. In these cases, coaching can help to support the lawyer in discovering and developing their strengths.
Another point raised was that there is a lot to be gained for firms in having practice group leaders learn to manage their groups by leveraging the strengths of their group members in each of these areas. Rainmakers, Point Persons, Brain Surgeons and Hired Guns when brought together as a team can bring about some powerful results for a firm. The challenge is that there are currently few practice group leaders given the time, training, and support from the firm to effectively manage, or learn to manage their groups in a way that maximizes the strengths of the members.
I encourage you to take a moment to read Leishman’s article. It’s a valuable tool for thinking about lawyer marketing and business development strengths and maximizing our investments in them.
Posted in Leadership, Business Development, Marketing | Permalink | 1 Comment »Thursday, December 14th, 2006
There’s a firm in Texas I’ve had my eye on for a while - Munsch Hardt Kopft & Harr. I met their talented Marketing Manager, Maria Lianez, at a TAGLaw legal network conference earlier this year. What struck me about the firm is their fresh approach.
This morning I took a moment to visit their site and came across an excellent article by their chairman and CEO Glenn Callison that was published in the Texas Lawyer journal. The title “Five Lessons For New Managing Partners” caught my attention. Here is a quick summary of Callison’s top top five points:
1. Know who you are - conduct a complete evaluation of the firm’s two key assets: people and relationships.
2. Determine where you are going - engage in top to bottom strategic planning.
3. Understand how the firm measures success - use several measurement tools AND examine subjective elements such as client statisfaction and firm morale.
4. Realize leadership is by consensus and example - in law firms, in particular small to mid-sized firms, effective leadership comes through continuous communication and leading by example “rather than any power inherent in the CEO or managing partner position”.
5. Accept that change is constant - the non-stop stream of change is what quickly fills a managing partners cup to overflowing. Associates leaving the firm, associates joining the firm, compensation issues, technology issues, and 101 other necessary and time consuming bits of business can rapidly overwhelm new managing partners. Callison’s advice for the new managing partner? “Manage by looking forward, not by looking in the rear-view mirror.”
One of my favorite sections of the article is point three. It is often easy to confuse the measurement with the object measured. Law firms are complex organisms. To really begin to understand how they are working, it is crucial to measure them in a variety of ways and over at least a five year period of time (if possible), and to consider these results along with more subjective information such as client satisfaction, retention issues, office morale. Look for the gaps between what is being said and what is actually being done.
My thanks to Glen Callison for sharing these gems with us.
Posted in Leadership, Strategy | Permalink | No Comments »Friday, December 8th, 2006
David Maister’s December 6, 2006 post shines a bright light on the value of caring when it comes to leadership. He quotes Craig Weatherup, former Chairman and CEO of The Pepsi Bottling Group:
“People trusted me, he said, because they knew me. They knew I cared about them. You can’t fake that, he said. That’s what gave me the power to lead.”
Reading Maister’s post I immediately thought of a senior associate at a big Canadian firm who I had dinner with this week. She’s quiet, soft spoken, and a highly sought after deal maker.She described to me her approach to legal work – caring about her clients. Connecting with her clients. Listening to her clients. She doesn’t network much, nor take her clients to hockey games, instead, her caring and authentic approach (and hard work!) earns her their trust and, no surprise, the deals flood in.
Naturally she is a skilled mentor too.
We all have our own personal style when it comes to marketing and business development but it is our values that make up the hard foundation that our professional careers are built upon.
Fake it and you will never make it.
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