Real Life Practice

Want to be a better leader? Get to know yourself.

In Hamlet, Polonius prepares his son, Laertes for travel with the following advice – “This above all: To thine own self be true.” Unless leaders can first be true to themselves, they cannot be true to others. Great leaders follow Polonius’ advice, although it is no easy task. To be true to yourself, means to know yourself. To know yourself you must be self-aware. Self-awareness means understanding ourselves – and understanding how we are perceived by others.

Why is self-awareness important? Because without self-awareness we can get caught up in behaviors that are inconsistent with our own values and beliefs. Without self-awareness, we may not have the courage to say “no” to the unimportant things in life so that we can focus on the truly important. Without self-awareness, leaders may fear appearing vulnerable. Without self-awareness, leaders can’t understand how their characteristics and behaviors are impacting other people. Self-awareness is the ability to understand ourselves and our characteristics, and utilize our characteristics in ways that serve us best.

In her book, Lawyer, Know Thyself, Susan Daicoff explains that some of the very characteristics that make lawyers successful in the courtroom can lead to problems in a more collaborative environment.

“For example, being a predominantly rational, objective, competitive and argumentative sort of person may allow one to function well as an advocate during the workday, but be quite destructive to one’s interpersonal relationships. It may bleed over into being hostile, argumentative, and aggressive in all situations, which could hamper one’s ability to relate well with others, and thus impair one’s ability to garner social and collegial support.”

In other words, when you’re leading your next staff meeting, remember, it’s not an adversarial contest. If you lack self-awareness, you may not realize that the characteristics that serve you well in the courtroom, may not serve you well at all in your work as the leader of your firm – or your family.

Ironically, you may notice certain characteristics in your colleagues, yet not be aware of them in yourself. All too often, behavior we dislike in others is the very behavior we sometimes exhibit. And while we may refuse to recognize our own problem behaviors, they may be very obvious to those around us.

“If we can stop, listen, and think about what others are seeing in us, we have a great opportunity. We can compare the self that we want to be with the self that we are presenting to the world. We can then begin to make real changes that are needed to close the gap between our stated values and our actual behavior.”

From What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, by Marshall Goldsmith

Who are you . . . really?

When you envision yourself and your law practice, what do you see? Your answer to this question will have a dramatic impact on how well you fare during these scary times. Are you creating your firm or are you just re-creating what thousands of lawyers before you have done? If you’ve never thought about these things, now is the time. You can hum the same tired tune or you can orchestrate your future. Now is the time, and the choice is yours. You can do this.

The lawyers who will thrive in the coming years are those who have created their own vision of what their law firm can be. And who then get busy making that vision a reality. Those that thrive will bring a true spirit of entrepreneurship to their firms. They’ll wake up every morning with one burning question: “How can we serve our clients better?”

So get busy. Start by asking yourself and your team the question: “How can we serve our clients better?” Make a list. Get going. Start renewing. Start reinventing. Take it one step at a time. You will get there.

Don’t be overwhelmed by the work that you discover must be done. One step at a time. Symphonies aren’t written overnight. They are written note by note, line by line, measure by measure. Your life and law practice can be that symphony or samba or rock ‘n roll anthem. Just start. Now.

Leadership is about attitude. Check your attitude at the door.

Literally. Attitude is everything. Before you step into your next meeting or walk through the door of your office, check your attitude. Are you relaxed or are you stressed out? Are you tight-lipped because you’re still irritated by that last phone call with opposing counsel or are you ready to smile? Are you already smiling?

Whatever your attitude, good or bad, it’s your choice. Leaders are expected to do a good job of controlling their emotions and attitudes. Here’s the good news; you can make a conscious decision to change your attitude at any time. As a leader, it’s your job to model the kinds of attitudes and behaviors you want to encourage in your team.

Look at the culture of your office, is it positive or negative? Whatever the culture, environment or mood, it is a reflection of the leadership. Understand that, as a leader, you are being watched – all the time. Everything you do matters. Everything.

You set the tone for your office. So, make a conscious choice to set a good tone. In the words of Winston Churchill, “If you can’t laugh, smile. If you can’t smile, grin. If you can’t grin, stay out of the way until you can.”

Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison for his stance against apartheid in South Africa, knows the value of a smile. During his run for president of the ANC, his election poster was simply his smiling face. According to an article in the current issue of Time Magazine, “There were a thousand things Nelson Mandela was bitter about, but he knew more than anything else, he had to project the exact opposite emotion.”

Mandela’s experience is a powerful lesson for all leaders.

Click here to read Mandela’s 8 Lessons of Leadership at Time Magazine online.

Just do it!

If you’re like most attorneys, you’ve attended your fair share of seminars. Not just CLE seminars, but seminars on Practice Management, too. You may have even read a book or two on time management or client development. You probably have a pretty good idea of what you’re supposed to do to better manage your time or attract good clients. Heck, as the saying goes, it’s not rocket science. You know what you need to do. You just don’t do it. And you are not alone.

So, why don’t we do what we say we want to do? Why don’t we take the actions we say we want to take?

In his book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, executive coach Marshall Goldsmith explains that in is thirty years of coaching fortune 500 executives he has learned one very powerful lesson: “There is an enormous disconnect between understanding and doing. . . . Most of us understand, we just don’t do.”

Having all the information in the world on a topic doesn’t mean that we’ll act on it. According to Goldsmith, people don’t change or improve without follow-up. See if this is not true in your own life. Have you ever started an exercise program only to drift away from it after a few days or a few weeks? Have you ever promised yourself you’d start eating better . . . tomorrow? Follow-up is the key. So whether you’re goal is to change your diet or your practice, find someone to be your coach, your accountability partner. And then, just do it.

Giving recognition can pay off as much as pay.

Do you know that, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, the #1 reason people leave their jobs is because they do not feel appreciated on a day-to-day basis? And according to a 2007 Gallup Poll, most employees have not received any recognition in over a year! In his book, How Full is Your Bucket?, Tom Rath explains that giving sincere recognition to employees creates what he calls “engagement.” Employees who are engaged are happy, productive, successful – and typically stay in their jobs.

While the idea of engagement may sound very warm & fuzzy to attorneys, it’s clear that engaged employees can make a huge impact on the firm’s bottom line. A recent Time magazine article reported that Royal Bank of Scotland found that a 10% increase in overall leadership effectiveness resulted in a 3% boost in customer satisfaction and a 1% reduction in employee turnover. That translates to $40 million saved in costs to retrain workers.

OK, so maybe your firm isn’t as big as Royal Bank of Scotland. But if you could increase client satisfaction AND reduce employee turnover AND benefit your bottom line by creating more engaged employees, why not give it a shot? The good news is that creating engaged employees will cost you nothing more than time, attention, and your sincere desire to start catching members of your team when they are doing something right.

Click here to check out How Full is Your Bucket? at www.Amazon.com.

Have you set your goals for 2008?

In is book What They Don’t Teach You in Harvard Business School, Mark McCormick reported the results of a study that tracked Harvard MBA graduates from 1979 to 1989. In 1979, the graduates were asked whether they had set clear, written goals for the future and made plans to accomplish them.

Here’s what the study found: Only 3 percent had written goals and plans for accomplishing them; 13 percent had goals, but they were not in writing; 84 percent had no specific goals at all, aside from getting out of school and enjoying the summer. These statistics may not surprise you.

However, these may. In 1989, the graduates were interviewed again. The 13 percent who had unwritten goals were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84 percent who had no goals at all. And the three percent who had written goals were earning, on average, 10 times as much as the other 97 percent of their classmates! The only difference between the groups was the clarity of their goals.

So where do you fit? Have you written down your goals for 2008? If not, what better reason do you need? Go for it!

Emulate success.

One of my favorite authors on business development and leadership is D.A. Benton. In her book, Lions Don’t Need to Roar, she discusses the importance of emulating success as a means to become more successful. As you continue to grow your practice and strive toward greater success, keep this advice in mind:

Keep a keen eye trained on those who are successful. See how they operate. Discern their good traits from the bad. Tuck away and remember what you’ve learned by watching and listening. Then use it when you are in a similar situation yourself.

Emulating the skills and traits of those who are where you want to be is one of the most effective ways of getting there faster. Watch and learn from those lawyers who are successful, happy and living balanced lives. Emulate the good. Discard the bad.

What made IBM great?

In his book The E-Myth Revisited, Michael Gerber tells a story of asking Tom Watson to what he attributed the phenomenal success of IBM. Watson replied that “IBM is what it is for three special reasons.”

1) Watson said he had a very clear picture of what the company would look like when it was “done” – a model of what it would look like when his vision was in place. 2) Once he had that “picture,” he created a picture of how IBM would “act” when the vision was in place. 3) Then he said, “I realized that unless we began to act that way from the very beginning, we would never get there.”

As Gerber says: To the Entrepreneur, the present-day-world is modeled after his vision. To the Technician, the future is modeled after his present-day-world.

Dare to be great! Create your vision, then live it. Starting now. Just like IBM.

Advice from Roy.

Roy Yamaguchi is the 50-year-old creator of Roy’s Hawaiian fusion restaurants. In a recent interview published in the Gulf Coast Business Review, Roy was asked what advice he would give entrepreneurs. His answer: “I think the most important thing to understand is who you are and where you are in your life and how committed you are to where you’re going in the future.”

ALOHA!

How law firms can deliver “Ritz-Carlton” service.

It’s a fact that the most successful law firms know how to deliver stellar client service while maintaining a high level of productivity and morale among their attorneys and staff. And the demand for stellar service is not going to decline in the years to come.

Rather, the demand will continue to increase as we move from an Experience Economy to a Transformational Economy, as discussed by Pine & Gilmore in their book, The Experience Economy.

But where can law firms go to learn how to deliver “Ritz-Carlton” Service, you ask? Ritz-Carlton. That’s right. For the past seven years, the hotel chain known for its extraordinary service has run The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center where client service companies can learn the secrets of the Ritz. King & Spalding is one of only a few law firms who are participating in the program. Check out the article on the Leadership Center in this month’s ABA Journal.