Law People : Law Practice Management, Organizational and Personal Dynamics; Talent Management : Ronda Muir of Law People Management, Inc.

Lawyers suffer from a high rate of depression--the highest of all professions--and the peak time for depression to hit is around the holidays.  Add to that the stress that many are feeling now over the economy and whether they will have a job come the first of the year, and you have a recipe for poor performance, strained relationships and general year-end blues. 

Positive psychology is the study of what drives optimal functioning.  It focuses on the positive emotions, individual traits and institutions that improve productivity and satisfaction and that also have been determined to lengthen longevity by 20%.  But lawyers are world-class pessimists, a trait so clearly aligned with their profession that law students who score the highest on pessimism also have the highest grades.  So practicing positive emotions seems sentimental and unrealistic to many lawyers.

The proof, however, is in the pudding.  Don't let moping through the holidays be your "realistic" approach.  Here's a list of things that positive psychology research has found can help you beat back the depression demon. Even though it may sound too much like kittens and flowers and light, you might just find that one or more things on this list can help make your holidays happy. 

1. Keep a gratitude diary.  Spending even 5 minutes a day writing down what you are grateful for has a demonstrated positive impact on satisfaction, physical health and energy levels. For a bigger kick, send a note to someone you are grateful to.
2. Start the day with a smile.  If you can maintain a positive attitude through the first hour, you have a much better chance of keeping it all day.  Research shows that even if you don't feel positive at first, the positive feelings will follow that physical smile.  Laughter is good for you too, And a positive mood is contagious.
3. Perform an act of kindness.  One daily act of kindness, regardless of how small--like complimenting a coworker, bringing someone coffee, or large--volunteering at a food bank, mowing an elderly neighbor's lawn, builds strong connections and adds a sense of purpose and meaning to life.
4. Spend time with friends and family.  Plan regular time together.  And even if a late brief or closing keeps you physically away, phone calls and emails can keep you connected in the meantime. 
5. Replay those special moments.  When you're stuck in a conference room late at night, give yourself a break to replay those special memories you have--visualizing the moment and exactly how it felt.  It's a mini-vacation in the mind.
6. Manage your physical health--eat well, sleep well, exercise and stretch daily. The positive effects of good physical health--on your immune system, heart and dopamine levels--is the foundation for high functioning and lasting satisfaction.
7. Just minutes of meditation daily for as few as 6 weeks, using music or chanting to further the relaxation, has proved powerful in developing the ability to cope with stress and lighten mood.
8. Visualize!  Imagine vividly your goals and aspirations. Write down the specific details of your ideal life and incorporate them wherever you can into the life you have now.
9. Upgrade your self-talk.  Stop trash-talking to yourself--remember to congratulate yourself for your accomplishments and remind yourself of your strengths.
10. Release yourself from responsibility for what you can't control or change. Keep a discerning eye on what those things are and don't beat yourself up over what you can't do.
11. Forgive. Staying angry is like trying to kill someone else by drinking poison.  It only hurts you in the end.  Unburden yourself from the weight of resentment and anger over what others have or haven't done. Forgive their weaknesses, their bad intentions, their failure to be who you thought or want them to be.  Then embrace your lightened life.

 Happy holidays!

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One of the more challenging skills lawyers need to master is the ability to delegate--to younger partners, associates, and non-lawyer staff, and in this marketplace, to third party providers, like document reviewers and e-discovery firms.  And even to clients. 

But there is a lot of internal resistance in many lawyers to mastering that skill.  Perfectionism, wanting to stay in control and insecurity can sabotage efforts to delegate even when delegation is clearly the best route.  What if the delegee messes up and the delegator is left being held responsible?  What if the delegee performs the delegation in an entirely different way than the delegator would--how will s/he be able to evaluate the result? What if the delegee runs with the matter and excludes the delegator when s/he should be involved in making the critical decisions?  Or what if the delegee actually does a better job than the delegator might have done--will the delegator get at least some of the credit for that success or will s/he be bypassed altogether next time a similar assignment arises?.

With enough of these kinds of worries, lawyers can find themselves with overwhelming work and immense client bills because they are trying to "do it all."

While understandable, many of these concerns can be alleviated by simply delegating well.  The real problem often lies in the delegator's uncertainty about which part of a task is being reserved for his/her decision and which part is being delegated.

A good first step is to set up a four-part decision matrix.  This matrix identifies which issues you as the delegator retain ultimate control of and which ones others can make. The first two boxes contain the decisions you must make.  The second two boxes contain decisions that can be delegated to others.

In the first box are decisions that you have to make, and that no one else can, whether you are a managing partner or a junior associate.  For senior managers, these decisions bear on issues such as strategic planning and firm leadership.  For example, should the firm expand into another geographical or practice area market?  For the junior associate, the decision may be whether or not an assignment has been completed to the associate's satisfaction or which paralegal should provide assistance. 

In order to make the decision within this box, the delegator can consult with anyone who they think might have relevant information--the MP might ask the COO to confirm the start-up costs of a new office and/or the head of recruitment to ascertain the availability and cost of hiring expertise, but the delegator must make clear that s/he is seeking information only.  S/he explicitly reserves the right to make the final decision.  Similarly with the junior associate, who might go to other associates, staff or third parties to get the information s/he needs to feel confidant about the integrity of his/her work or the choice of a paralegal, making it clear that s/he seeks information only.

The second box is also for decisions that the delegator must ultimately make him/herself but in this box are decisions that come to the delegator as recommendations.  These recommendations are the products of an explicit or customary process that carries an assumption of expertise from the recommender, and are therefore usually approved.  For example, the executive committee may put compensation increases in this box.  There is an established method for those increases to be recommended--a compensation committee compares evaluations or an individual reviews annual performance--and while the delegator may ask questions or clarify reasoning, those recommendations are usually accepted.  For the junior associate, the recommendation may come from his/her administrative aid, recommending that a certain format be followed for documents or that a specific time-keeping procedure be used.  Or a third party document reviewer may recommend a certain procedure to follow for the best outcome in the document review.  These are recommendations the associate will likely accept unless s/he has a strong over-riding reason not to follow them.

In the third box are those decisions that are made by the delegee, but which the delegator is apprised of.  Guidelines are usually set up to give the delegee some limited discretion.  The professional development director, for example, may be empowered to determine which and how many trainings, conferences or other events lawyers and staff may attend at the firm's expense within a specified budget.  While the PD director reports to his/her supervisor quarterly and the firm management annually on those decisions and costs, his/her decisions are usually considered final by management until the guidelines change.  Similarly, the junior associate empowers a paralegal  to do specific authorized filings, only notifying the associate that they have been made. 

In the fourth box are those decisions that are made by delegees and that require no reporting to the delegator.  These are decisions with usually well-defined guidelines and little room for discretion.  The executive committee's HR director is empowered to enroll new employees in one of the approved benefits packages (determined based on recommendations and decisions made according to the second box) and s/he has no obligation to inform the committee of those enrollments.  The associate may have decisions relating to client meals, for example, in this box.  His/her AA is empowered to decide which of several approved catering companies to use and which menu of several to provide, with no expected review or revision of those decisions. 

Problems arise when the managing partner insists on reviewing and individually approving each of the benefits programs that new employees are enrolled in or a young associate second-guesses an experienced AA's choice of caterer for the client lunch.  Yes, there might be some incremental improvement because of the delegator's review but it's not worth the investment--any positive is offset by the terrible impact on general efficiency and morale.  If all decisions are subject to review and revision, progress halts and no one feels empowered or trusted to be responsible for the matters at hand.

There are caveats, of course.  Confidence in recommenders may require some experience to build, and guidelines are sometimes revealed to have unintended consequences.  But these and other obstacles are temporary ones that often can't be overcome until the rubber hits the road.  Refusing to delegate does not move anything forward.

On the other side of poor delegation are matters that should not be delegated but are: executive boards who tell the COO to determine whether associates will get bonuses, or associates who let the client tell them which conclusion to reach in their research.  The delegator may be looking to avoid responsibility for the decision or to keep from having to make a difficult one or may simply not feel qualified to make the decision.  Determining who should make the ultimate decision is critical here.

Once it is clear who the decision-maker is on each issue at hand and that is made clear to all parties involved, delegation becomes a simpler task.

What does your decision matrix look like?  Do others in the firm agree on which issues are in each box?  Executive coaching can make giant strides towards easing decision bottlenecks and improving morale.  Call us for a proposal.

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In a new CareerBuilder survey of more than 2600 hiring managers and human resource professionals nationwide, 71% said they value emotional intelligence in an employee more than IQ and 34% said they are placing even greater emphasis on emotional intelligence when hiring and promoting employees post-recession.  And 59% said they would not hire someone who has a high IQ but low EI, while 75% said they would promote a high EI worker over a high IQ candidate.

Why do these hiring managers value EI so much?  Because, they said, the high EI employees:

• are more likely to stay calm under pressure
• know how to resolve conflict effectively
• are empathetic to their team members and react accordingly
• lead by example
• make more thoughtful business decisions

What behaviors do these managers look for that indicate high EI?  Employees who:

• admit to and learn from mistakes
• keep emotions in check
• have thoughtful discussions on tough issues
• listen as much or more than they talk
• take criticism well
• show grace under pressure

Another recent announcement was the inauguration of the USF SELECT program, in which a small group of incoming University of South Florida medical students are being admitted into an elite program based on an evaluation of their emotional intelligence.  The SELECT program is based on the expectation that "students with higher emotional intelligence can become more engaged, compassionate physicians who work effectively with teams and can lead change in health care organizations." Although this is the first time USF has used emotional intelligence as a gauge of leadership potential, the goal is to eventually incorporate EI training into the curriculum for all medical students, a trend in medical school education that is spreading rapidly.  

The SELECT program will include peer and faculty "coaching" groups intended "to help them cultivate this skill set of emotional competence," according to the USF Vice Dean Dr. Alicia Monroe. 

In order to choose the incoming SELECT class, faculty submitted applicants to a 90-minute "behavioral event interview," a method of interviewing that is often used in the business world and is starting to be used by some law firms, but is rarely part of academic medicine applications. Students were asked to recall how they reacted to specific quandaries or important events in their lives and what they learned from each situation. Teleos Leadership Institute staff trained the SELECT faculty to look for "a grounded explanation in students’ lived experiences," Dr. Monroe said. "To see, through this, how the students articulated the way in which they reason, problem-solve and use self-awareness to interact effectively with others, to communicate empathy and to manage relationships.."

In asking how he viewed the relevance of the EI screening, one of the successful candidates stated that "Once we become more aware of how we interact on an individual level, we will be prepared to collectively lead efforts for systemic changes in healthcare delivery. This is the big picture and it is still abstract, but I hope this program sets us up to do just that."

Halfway around the world, the new Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard's department is providing emotional training workshops and personal coaching to her cabinet and staff.  "The fundamental purpose...is to foster enlightened and responsible leadership," according to one of the providers.

What is the common thread here?  Emotional intelligence is no longer a "squishy" concept that starry-eyed granola eaters and new agers proselytize.  We lawyers are about to be set back in our perennial competition with doctors by their realization that EI conveys real advantages, something corporate managers are already well aware of.

Will lawyers get the message?  Or are we too smug in how enlightened we are already?

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One of the more interesting findings in emotional intelligence research is that people who read emotional cues in others are generally good at reading their own emotional states and vice-verse—those who read themselves well are likely to read others well also. Conversely, an inability to read either oneself or others signals the corresponding inability. These findings are so well-established that most EI assessments only test a person’s ability to read external cues—knowing that the results will apply to that person’s ability to read their own emotions as well.

While this correlation may seem logical, we know that the experience of emotions is often different from what that experience looks like from the outside. A number of explanations have been offered for this linked phenomenon—perhaps it is simply a matter of having the vocabulary to describe emotions generally, or having actually experienced the emotions in question.  

 

A new study sheds some light. “Embodied Emotion Perception: Amplifying and Dampening Facial Feedback Modulates Emotional Perception Accuracy” by David T. Neal, a psychologist at the University of Southern California, and Tanya L. Chartrand, a professor of marketing and psychology at the Duke University Fuqua School of Business, published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, reports that not only do those who have had Botox injections not express facially what they are feeling, they also have very little idea what others are feeling as well.

 

According to the study, an observer unconsciously mimics another person's expression, and it is the experience of feeling that facial expression that leads the person back to understanding the emotion that produces such an expression. In the experiment, women with Botox injected 2 weeks prior to the assessment were significantly less accurate at decoding both positive and negative facial expressions than those who had been injected with a facial filler that did not impact muscle function.

 

In a second related experiment, participants with a gel on their face (similar to a facial mask) that required them to work their muscles harder to make facial expressions could more accurately identify emotions in others.

 

What does this mean for us in law practice?

 

Lawyers consistently score lower than the general population on emotional intelligence. The base of emotional intelligence requires the ability to “read” emotions—which information is then analyzed as to how to best manage those emotions. If the underlying “read” is not accurate, then we are caught in a “garbage in, garbage out” situation that makes any analyses and management decisions (skills that lawyers are not deficient in) nonetheless invalid.

 

The stoic lawyer who does not express emotions may be the very paradigm of the inaccurate reader—unable to express these emotions him/herself, s/he cannot identify the emotions others are feeling.

 

The good news here is that a short intervention may well be all that is needed to improve the situation—while two weeks can dampen one’s ability to express and therefore read others’ emotions, a similar period of concentrated training in expression can result in a significant improvement.

 

As part of our high-potential coaching program, we are able to offer that training to your best business development and leadership prospects.

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One can’t review the data showing the magnitude of mental illness, substance abuse and other indices of distress in lawyers without thinking of the lawsuit that, with apologies to Lord Alfred Douglas, no one dares speak about but is certain to come. 

There are all sorts of scenarios that could prompt it.  An associate will commit suicide or a partner will kill his domestic partner or a staffer will be attacked.  An in-house counsel will shoot one of her colleagues or friends or abuse a child or her boss will stalk a judge or threaten an outside lawyer.

There may be a criminal proceeding, but certainly a civil one will follow. It will point out that, according to expert opinion, management's policies and practices conspired to create a toxic environment that ignored particularly vulnerable lawyers, both as a group and individually, and that those policies and practices either neglected (possibly criminally) to stop the lawyer in question from committing his/her heinous acts or even pushed him/her into it.

Or, for a milder version, a malpractice suit will be mounted with an additional allegation that the lawyer primarily working on or overseeing a matter that was mishandled was and should have been known by firm or department management to be compromised by substance abuse, mental illness, etc. 

We have regularly seen fact patterns that resemble these scenarios in the various media reports of lawyers acting badly, and any senior partner has stories s/he could tell.  There's the drunken arson of a 9/11 memorial by a biglaw associate, or the lawyer facing criminal charges after shooting a hunter  So far, the publicized cases rarely have involved firms of note or suits against the firms themselves.

Perhaps the most notorious case over the last few years was that of Robert Wone, who left Covington & Burling to be General Counsel at Radio Free Asia only a month before he was gruesomely sexually assaulted and killed in the townhome owned by his college friend Joseph Price, an attorney at Arent Fox, and his gay partner. The lengthy investigation that followed is not something any firm would want to be involved in, let alone as an accused or defendant.  Price's law office was searched. The case dragged on for years.  All three defendants living in the townhouse were eventually dismissed, if not completely cleared.  Wone's widow proceeded to file a $20 million civil suit against attorney Price and his roommates.

It would be a fairly short distance to a similar suit against a firm if one of its lawyers had been identified as the killer.

The legal professionals in your firm have thoughts of suicide at a rate 4-20 times greater than the general public, depending on the source of data, and also have highly elevated levels of substance abuse and mental illness and other indices of distress. They are under extreme pressure to perform in a brutal market. and they have well-documented deficiencies in adaptability and stress management.  Levels of anger and frustration are off the charts. 

 

Most law firms would fail miserably the recognized assessment which determines workplace environments that literally make employees crazy.  

What can your firm do to avoid being one of the headliners when these lawsuits do occur? 

A number of precautions can be taken. Interviewing protocols can be toughened up so that you have a higher assurance that incoming lawyers are entering with relatively stable coping skills and mental health.  Reporting protocols can be set up within the firm to make sure that struggling attorneys are identified and supported.  Firms can offer coaching and psychological services (confidentially) to help their lawyers cope with both the professional and personal stresses that make them vulnerable to debilitation. Guidelines can be established as to what behaviors constitute grounds sufficient for requiring lawyers to take a break or leave the firm.  And you might check your insurance policy.

This is admittedly moving into the touchy area of ADA concerns about discrimination, but starting to explore these issues before the lawsuit arrives will put your firm on the best footing.

Remember, in these lawsuits, plaintiffs will not try to convince a jury there was a workplace environment like in those movies with Tom Cruise, where evil, even satanic partners work their maleficent intent on their own lawyers. What they will show is the indifference of management to clear and convincing data on the vulnerabilities of its lawyer population, the thoughtless promulgation of requirements like unreasonable performance measures likely to destabilize such a vulnerable population and the failure of management to attend to clear signs that the lawyer in question is in distress—absences, family problems, mistreatment of staff or subordinates, irrationality, emotional imbalance, substance abuse. Just the sort of things most firms and law departments would rather not know about their lawyers--and studiously ignore when they happen to find out.

We offer expert assistance in selecting attorneys, improving their coping skills, providing individual and on-site coaching and psychological assistance, identifying and intervening in problematic situations and developing protocols to sustain a productive workforce and reduce potential liability.

  

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Back when we were all focused on raising our retention rate of associates, I also waved the flag about the poor retention rate we have with the lateral partners we hire--a musical chair game that has been in full swing for a number of years and seems to have survived or at least is being revived after the downturn. 

What data we have implies that, while only about 40% of new hire associates last longer than 3 years, an even lower percentage of lateral partners do.  Anecdotally, one can find rates that are astoundingly low--in some firms only one in 4 or more lateral partners work out.  

These are particularly humiliating statistics because, in spite of the ethical constrictions on gaining client and current firm information, we still have MUCH more information about lateral partner candidates than we have about law school graduates: if we haven't personally practiced law across from these lawyers or on the same side of the table with them, we usually have friends, clients or colleagues who have.

I was recently in a roundtable discussion with lawyers addressing this issue.  One managing partner said that both the spectacular successes and the miserable failures of lateral hires seem like random events--how is one to guess? Another managing partner answered that he found that the reasons for a lawyer not working out are often right there in the pre-hire information--but no one paid adequate attention at the time.

Here are a few tips for improving your lateral partner hiring outcomes:

1.  Don't bother to proceed with lateral candidates who want to discuss compensation during the first conversations.  Very few successful lateral changes are made on the basis of a step-up in compensation--those who make a move for that reason will find a reason to move again.

2.  In making your financial calculations, don't assume that the lateral's book will materialize.  Yes, that means you are primarily hiring the person for their expertise and not their client list.

3.  Look for candidates who want a better platform and more support than they currently have, and make sure you can provide it.  The primary reason for laterals leaving these days is failure to find the level of firm support for their practice that they expected.

4.  Be careful of lawyers coming from an entirely different background--small firms, government or corporate counsel if, for example, yours is a big firm.  There are many administrative and procedural differences in these environments, as well as substantive differences (conflicts are not something most of those lawyers have had to think about) that can wreck havoc.

5.  Avoid the institutional drive to hire.  Set up some roadblocks that require a stop and re-think or the momentum of the hunt will result in a hire whether it ultimately makes sense or not.

6.  Plan carefully all aspects of a lengthy, detailed integration.  Think summer associate program, but more substantive.  Where the lateral sits, who the mentor(s) are, how your clients are introduced to the lateral, how the lateral's clients are introduced to the firm, how the lateral will meet other firm attorneys and visit other firm offices, who will work for the lateral, which committees s/he will sit on, what type of specific training the lateral will need and when and by whom it will be provided--these are just the beginning of the long list of considerations. Feeling like an outsider is the second major reason that laterals leave firms.

7.  Make someone accountable for the lateral's success.  This should be a partner of significant rank; it should not be a young partner or someone in the HR department.  Make sure that this person also gets support and recognition, including having their role taken into consideration in the determination of their compensation.  If you don't pay for it, you don't value it.

 

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There are only two bases on which most legal services are ultimately judged: 1) outcome and 2) interpersonal interaction.  Of course, price is important but a wide range in price is tolerated as a function of 1 and 2.

It can be very difficult for a client to judge outcome -- what part of the results in a particular trial or deal was achieved due to one's own lawyer's competence and what might be due to weak or strong witnesses or deal terms, the client's role, poor or great opposing counsel, a sympathetic or simply mistaken judge or just pure luck? Even, perhaps particularly, lawyer clients are not particularly good at determining the interplay of those factors.

Add to that complex situation that lawyers often sabotage themselves. As we noted in the last entry, there is good data indicating that lawyers as a general matter do not themselves judge well the likelihood of success in matters--usually (and increasingly) conveying unrealistically high expectations to their clients. Thus, clients may in fact be disappointed because of their over-enthusiastic lawyers setting too high a bar, rather than because of any real incompetence of those lawyers in conducting the matter.  But how's a client to know?

So let's stipulate that judging the quality of counsel by outcome is difficult.

The other most common basis for evaluating legal counsel is their interpersonal skills. While we are notorious among the lay public for our abilities in that area being held in low regard, even lawyers don't see much to applaud in many of their brethren.  According to a study by BTI, "personality issues" is one of the four main reasons general counsel fire outside counsel. Surprised? The same survey found that general counsel often keep an "arrogant" list--lawyers who, no matter how appropriate they might otherwise be, the GCs wouldn't be caught dead hiring just because interacting with them is so maddening.  Of course that doesn't say anything about those particular lawyers' skills.  But if those lawyers are in fact arrogant because they are very, very good, as more than one lawyer has contended, my bet is they are not getting the result in terms of new business that they were looking for. 

In a fascinating study recounted in Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink, the way doctors talked to their patients predicted which doctors were most likely to be sued.  A very short verbal interaction between doctors and their patients were recorded.  The doctor's actual words were obliterated, but the tone, cadence, and pitch were retained.  When participants rated these doctors for various attributes, one attribute was highly accurate in predicting the likelihood of a doctor being sued.  The attribute was dominance, which easily translates into the arrogance, or I-know-better-than-you, that those general counsel in the BTI study, and many other clients, complain about.

Why do we come off so poorly in this area?  Data from the Meyers Briggs Type Indicator gives some insight. The majority of the American public works to create harmony in relationships, while most lawyers are bent on demonstrating that they are right.  Americans are largely concrete thinkers, while most lawyers are conceptual, which can come across as "head in the clouds".  Lawyers have a lower tolerance for "process" than most Americans, wanting to get to the bottom line as quickly as possible, and as a group they tend to talk less and listen less as well.  Other trait data reinforces that picture--we are likely to be combative if a conflict arises or otherwise simply walk away to avoid it.  We don't rebound easily from a mistake and therefore both project our "rightness" and become highly defensive if questioned.  In short, as a group, we are not naturally gifted relationship builders.

Personalities are not easily if ever changed.  What can be improved, however, are specific behaviors. We can teach our young lawyers to manage client expectations carefully, to help the client understand the complex interactions at work which affect the outcome of matters, and to replace some of those "lawyerly" interaction styles with more client-friendly ones.  And your professional development, performance evaluation, promotion and compensation systems should all recognize and reinforce the importance of those behaviors. 

 

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Muir participated in a panel discussion last week at the Women Lawyers Alliance first Annual Conference, held in Chicago.  Muir and fellow panelists author Shaunti Feldhahn, eminent psychologist Dr. Florence Denmark and psychologist/coach Karen Kahn identified some of the challenges and facilities women have in making their mark as leaders in law firms, and also addressed specific questions on how to improve rainmaking skills, solve the perennial work/life dilemma, and give effective feedback to junior lawyers. 

Attendees had this to say:

• "Ronda Muir is terrific." 
• "Frank and pragmatic." 
• "Ronda knows so much--I would like a substantive presentation from her alone."

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From 2:00 pm to 3:15 EST on Thursday April 29, 2010 Muir will lead an audio conference discussion hosted by the Center for Ccompetitive Management (CCM) entitled "Lateral Partner Hires: Selecting and Integrating the Best Fit for the Firm," centering on the issues associated with hiring and integrating lateral partners. A record number of lateral partner moves were made in 2009 and 2010 is shaping up to be another record year.  Don't miss this chance to maximize your firm's efforts to grow while avoiding the expensive pitfalls of lateral partner attrition.

For further information and to register, go to http://www.c4cm.com/lawfirm/lateral-partner-hires.htm. 

 

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It was my great pleasure--something I don't often say about a conference-- to attend this invitation-only gathering last week, March 21-23, of both august and up-and-coming law industry professionals as they prognosticated the future of our practice and what that might in fact look like up close for a broad array of providers and clients. 

While I will digest and relay over the next few weeks a number of interesting findings and tantalizing predictions that were discussed, let me summarize a few currents that are of particular interest to me.

One, notable is the influx and rising success of non-lawyer services in this emerging marketplace, whether those services are provided by in-house specialists in law firms, wholly-owned subsidiaries of firms, or independent companies.

Two, changes making their way into law firms are both reducing incoming associate classes and also raising the ante for efficiently training and promoting those associates, with the result being that firms are experimenting with more discriminating approaches to hiring and more sophisticated methods of providing professional development.

Three, perhaps as a corollary of at least the first point above and probably the second point as well, law firms are becoming truly more diverse workplaces that respect and rely on the contributions of non-lawyer sociologists, MBAs, IT specialists, project managers, psychologists, accountants and other professionals to more efficiently analyze, structure and deliver services responsive to client needs.

Stay tuned for the  review of this conference's exciting topics.

 

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Firms are placing their futures at risk if they cannot identify, develop and empower the next generation of leaders.  So it is no surprise that more law firms are investing in leadership development.  For example, according to PaLAW 2009's 14th annual Managing Partners Survey, cited in the November 23, 2009 issue of The Legal Intelligencer, the number of firms surveyed that provide leadership training at any level increased from 40.5% in 2008 to 67.7% in 2009, almost a 60% increase. 

What does it take to be a good leader?  And do we lawyers have what it takes?

There are numerous theories about the best style of leadership--see  Primal Leadership (2002) by Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee for an informative evaluation of 6 major styles. Apart from style, Richard Daft, author of The Leadership Experience, cites numerous studies that have sifted out five recurring personal attributes of successful leaders: openness to experience, emotional stability, conscientiousness, agreeableness and extroversion.

If you look around for potential leaders in your firm, chances are few of your colleagues possess all five of those attributes.  While conscientiousness is something lawyers tend to have in spades, openness to experience (also known as risk tolerance), emotional stability (or emotional intelligence) and agreeableness (aren't we hired NOT to be agreeable?) are all factors that in various studies lawyers tend to fall short on. Certainly, we have clear and robust data that most lawyers (over 70%) are introverts, rather than extroverts. 

So can introverts lead?  Successfully, that is?

Yes they can.  If the concern is that introverts tend not to be charismatic, outgoing personalities, Jim Collins's book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . And Others Don't provides some comfort. Collins discovered that glitzy, dynamic, high-profile CEOs are actually a hindrance to the long-term success of their corporations. Charismatic leaders are attractive to others, but they may be less effective in drawing people to the mission and values of the organization itself.

Collins contrasts Lee Iacocca, Chrysler's leader and spokesperson in the 1980s, with Colman Mockler, the CEO of Gillette from 1975 to 1991. While Iacocca almost single-handedly steered his car company away from disaster and put it on the road to prosperity, after his retirement Chrysler's profits faltered, and the company was sold to a German rival five years later. Apparently Iacocca had done little to invest in his successors or build a culture that would ensure the longevity of Chrysler.

In sharp contrast, Mockler made personal sacrifices and took substantial risks for the long-term success of the company and the profits of the shareholders, and he was so effective that $1 invested in Gillette in December 1976 was worth $95.68 in December 1996 and eventually earned a significant premium when the company was sold to P&G in 2005. Laconic and reserved, Mockler labored in relative anonymity for a big-time executive; he was a man who prioritized the success of his company over ego gratification.

Mockler and executives like him are examples of what Collins calls "level 5 leaders," those who are modest, self-effacing and understated, and display a workmanlike diligence—more plow horse than show horse, they set up their successors for even greater success in the next generation.

Leadership guru Peter Drucker goes further to say that "charisma becomes the undoing of leaders. It makes them inflexible, convinced of their own infallibility, unable to change."

So maybe we introverted lawyers, likely to be low on the charisma meter, may have some hope of mastering leadership. Certainly being people who think before we act and listen before we talk can be useful in leadership roles.

Successful leadership may also be enhanced by introspection--a natural for introverts. Leaders who scrutinize every aspect of their leadership and personality (and that of others) may be able to find internal motivations and assumptions that contribute to dysfunction and inefficiency.

Another way that introverts may be able to surpass the traditional leadership attributes is in their ability to "make sense." Wilfred Drath and Charles Palus at the Center for Creative Leadership explain that "most existing theories, models and definitions of leadership proceed from the assumption that somehow leadership is about getting people to do something."  Essentially cheerleading.  That is an effort that requires relish for and persistence in being extraverted.

But Drath and Palus reimagine leadership as "the process of making sense of what people are doing together so that people will understand and be committed." Leadership, in this view, is a matter of providing interpretation. Leaders can give people a lens and a language for understanding their work and experiences in light of larger purposes. They can help shape the mental frameworks of others so that those people see themselves as making contributions to the mission and direction of their organization, working in community for a common purpose.  Here is an opportunity for the thoughtful introvert to make his or her mark.

In the corporate world over the past decades, leaders have produced greater organizational efficiencies by employing advanced analytics and defined metrics and systems. But most organizations that have successfully manipulated these resources are finding it difficult to extract even greater efficiencies from them over time. Many are turning to their human capital as the next source of growth.  Yet many businesses are realizing the difficulty of identifying and developing leaders, particularly those who can lead this kind of productivity growth.  For example, the 2008 IBM Leadership Survey found that over 75% of CEOs lamented their ability to identify and develop leaders to succeed them.

Law firms should take note. 

Leadership involves not just leveraging the collective knowledge and expertise of an organization. Leadership is also about cultivating and nurturing human capital, particularly in such a talent-dependent industry as ours.  Leaders who recognize the perennial needs of individuals to be appreciated, to be part of a community and to feel they are contributing to the greater good are more likely to be able to raise the productivity of their troops.

And introverts can do that.
 

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Muir led an inter-active limited-attendance roundtable on Law Practice Management for Current and Prospective Law Firm Leaders at the 12th Annual Meeting of the Association of Patent Law Firms (APLF) in Chicago, Illinois on Thursday, September 17, 2009.  Topics discussed included the distinction between managers and leaders, the importance of values-driven firm identity, the role of practice group leaders in moving the firm forward, and transitioning from consensus-led management to more executive approaches.

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In the current stressful marketplace, the rate of lawyers' incidence of impairment has been ratcheting up from high (see, for example, our September 5, 2008 entry "The Depression Demon Coming Out of the Legal Closet") to even higher.  See "Employment Woes Fuel Uptick in Lawyer Depression."  Firms suffer losses in productivity, morale and recruitment because of impaired lawyers, and also risk client desertions, losses to their reputations and malpractice liability. 

Firms can take several approaches to both assist their lawyers and protect their bottom line.  Thomas & Knight attorney Peter Riley, as managing partner, instituted an extensive program to address lawyer stress caused from depression, substance abuse, anxiety, etc. in order to provide help fast, without worrying about insurance authorization or long waits for appointments, and with complete confidentiality.  Even with the costs of the program, Riley finds it cost-effective to the firm.  "When a lawyer or lawyer's child or spouse is in crisis, that is going to be the focus of their attention," he says.  "If we can provide assistance for them quickly, we have not only done the right thing for our lawyers, we have done the most economic thing.  It's the perfect intersection of what is right and what is profitable."

Let us draw from our extensive experience in this area to help you spot and support critical talent confronting personal distress.  We can assist on an individual-by-individual basis or by helping you set up a confidential, effective program attuned to your goals and budget.

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An article by psychologist Amy J.C.Cuddy in the February 2009 issue of the Harvard Business Review reports that we make fast assessments of people on two bases:  their intentions and their competence.  And more importantly, we assume one is related to the other.  This response is evolutionarily linked, she argues, to the advantage of quickly determining whether an unknown person 1) is friendly or hostile and 2) can follow through on their threats or promises. 

Unfortunately our assessments are often marred by biases that produce faulty judgments.  For example, we have a bias towards the elderly as being incompetent but non-threatening.

In the business world jungle, these instant assessments can carry long-term consequences, particularly if they are inaccurate because of poor perception skills (a common problem area for lawyers) or individual biases.  Inaccurate assessments can lead managers to trust untrustworthy associates or undervalue potentially important people.  They can also undermine efforts to build effective teams and retain valuable employees. 

Which One Are You?

For our work with lawyers, the more important finding of the research is that people see "warmth" and "competence" as inversely related:  a surfeit of one ("She's SO nice") is believed to imply a deficit in the other ("She probably can't stand up to a board").  For example, employees who are  consistently perceived as "warmer" are also viewed as less competent, with the practical result that employees who are mothers are often demonstrably underpaid and under-promoted.

While lawyers as a group are not usually at risk for being rated high on the warmth scale, leaders who know the importance of interpersonal relationships, and particularly women, often struggle with portraying to clients and colleagues the "right mix" of warmth and competence, fearing, just as the research tends to show, that too much of the former undercuts the perception of the latter. 

There is some trepidation in telling lawyers not to be too warm--certainly there are those who would argue there is little risk there.  Yet, particularly at a time when, rightfully, the legal world is exhorted to value and praise and build relationships, knowing how to do that practically without impairing the legal product produced, either in actuality or in the perception, is important.

Our advice has long been to bifurcate these two parts of leadership:  warmth is important and should be directed toward individuals, while critical analysis should be directed toward issues, not people.  

Whether with clients or colleagues, inquire about the kids, rib them about their  diet and praise them for their recent efforts, but when you review the business product, do not stint on hard analysis.  In both conflict resolution and decision-making research, similar findings make it clear that too pervasive an effort to build cohesion can overwhelm the validity and productivity of the underlying endeavor. The hard but important work of critical give-and-take can be mortally blunted by attempts to be "nice."

In order to improve our judgments and others' perceptions of us, Cuddy suggests that we also spend time working to reeducate ourselves and our employees away from the savannah influence:  don't be too quick to make judgments in these two areas, and do not assume that kindness and competence are mutually exclusive.

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What do you know? Narcissists--big personalities with big egos who like to exert control and reject collaborative decision-making--are the ones leading many law firms through these perilous times. 

"Narcissistic leaders are distinguished by their big ideas...and general indifference to the opinions of others,” according to Douglas Richardson of Altman Weil. “They resolutely reject the status quo, thus affronting all those tied to tradition and cautious about change. They want to reshape the world to their vision. They don’t much care if others label them vain and self-centered; they count on the power of their vision and their personal charisma to drive them to the top during periods of great upheaval or change. Their style is at best despotic, and often coercive.”

Such leaders tend to be nonreflective and poorly attuned to the needs of differing individuals, Richardson writes. The results are high lateral partner movement and high attrition among younger lawyers for whom money and status are not primary motivators.

Richardson says such leaders may display genius and vision, but they are at their best when they know their limits—or when someone can point them out. He suggests hiring an outside coach “with plenty of candor, a tough skin and a strong mandate from the firm to help with top team-building.”

 

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In a recent article in The New York Times entitled “Girl Power at School, But Not at the Office,” Hannah Seligson gives some good advice to all working women, even those of the “post women’s right movement” generation in which she grew up. 

After feeling self-assured and equal to men in academia, Hannah found the workplace to be different: women undermining other women, men not taking women seriously--focusing on their appearance and “assistantizing” them.  

But she also recognizes that women can get in their own way in the workforce. Work skills women must develop, in her opinion, are a thick skin, the ability to promote oneself, and the ability to negotiate. She also recommends that women dump the perfectionism and create a professional network.

Here are some jewels to consider:

Rather than getting rattled by their feminine “sensitivity,” women have to “become impervious to the daily gruffness that’s a part of any job.”  

Seeking perfection can lead to paralysis and keep women from speaking up or taking risks. 

“Soliciting feedback… demystifies what your boss thinks about you and it also gives you the data to become a more valuable employee.”

“Reprogram your brain to think that girls do brag. Your job is a two-part process: one is actually doing the work and the second is talking about it in bottom-line terms.”

Since “women don’t have as much of a tradition of business networking (‘Do you want to go grab a beer?’ doesn’t quite roll off our tongues),” learning to ask colleagues specific questions about how to advance can be the organic approach to mentoring. 

Finally, women need to “speak salary.” Women often think they will be paid what they deserve, as long as they do the work. Follow the example of men who fearlessly ask for a raise over and over again, regardless of the response. As a Harvard Business School faculty member explained: ‘By and large women believe that the workplace is a meritocracy, and it isn’t.”

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Lawyers are introverts, big time.  According to Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) results, almost 3/4th of lawyers, compared to only 1/4th of the general public, are introverts.  That means they go inward to charge their batteries-- preferring internal introspection to external interaction. 

On the Caliper Profile personality test, lawyers also rank astonishingly low in the sociability trait--which measures how comfortable a person is initiating and building close relationships. Low sociability scorers are less inclined to enjoy interacting with others, preferring to spend more time with information. 

Of course, we know that lawyers are thinkers--they think, analyze documents and deals, edit and write, all loner tasks.  In a recent study, lawyers ranked sixth overall on a list of the 200 best jobs for introverts, just behind the loner braniacs who work as computer software engineers and accountants. 

The question for management becomes how to integrate these loners not only into a coherent, committed organization but also into the 21st century vision of service delivery:  coherent, committed teams.  How do you overcome/compensate for the introverted nature of lawyers in day-to-day management, business development endeavors, client service?

Slowly.  Start by using the strengths of introverts--such as their tendency to (appear to) listen and to deliver well-thought-out opinions-- and proceed from there logically to the overwhelming consensus from research that collaboration improves productivity and satisfaction. 

 

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Regardless of your politics, the last year has been a fabulous display of woman-power in the political arena. For the first time in American history, a woman was a major contender for her party's presidential nomination, and came damned close to winning it.

Without Monday morning quarterbacking her entire campaign, there are some interesting nuggets to retrieve from her run, perhaps telling us something about the future of women in politics and in power generally.

As someone who assists women lawyers in developing good business producing skills, I was interested to see the following note about Senator Clinton in the Sunday, June 8 New York Times:

"Unlike her opponents, Mrs. Clinton refused to make solicitation calls to donors and had to be talked into calling the party officials known as superdelegates."

Sound familiar?  Hesitation to make direct appeals for support is a recurring theme in the work I do with women. Results should speak for themselves, they say. I shouldn't have to ask. Who wants to be a squeaky wheel? Men, on the other hand, I find, tend to take the attitude that if they don't ask, how can someone say yes, and that if they are not the ones to champion their own cause, why expect others to?

What seems to underlie the hesitation on women's part to "ask" is a fear of having to deal with rejection and also an uneasiness about putting the relationship at risk.  What if they say no? What do I do/feel? And what happens to our relationship then?

There is an argument that this kind of sensitivity makes women better in the relationship building department, a critical part of developing business.  So is this a tendency that should be overcome or preserved? The answer is both.  The sensitivity should be protected but the kind of fear that immobilizes should be allayed.   Good relationship builders know how to keep the relationship even if there are disagreements.  Good relationship builders survive rejection and help the relationship survive as well. 

Learning and believing the self-talk and attitudes that help overcome the hesitation is one way to start coping with the fear. Taking the risk and then seeing that the results are not as scary as anticipated also helps.  It is a matter of venturing into the unknown, or what has been projected to be a distasteful known, with good intentions and a willingness to listen.  So you get the benefit of both high sensitivity and, hey, if you don't ask, how can they say yes?

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The use of assessments worldwide is rapidly expanding and lawyers are still lagging at the back of the pack--way back. 

An article by Lisa Belkin in yesterday's New York Times notes that there are 2,500 "profiling instruments" that companies rely on more every year when deciding whom to hire or promote. Sixty-five percent of companies surveyed reported using assessments in 2006, up almost double from the 34 percent reported a year earlier, according to Staffing Industry Report, a human-resources newsletter.

To paraphrase her article, the content of tests has stayed more or less constant for three decades. What has changed is the workplace. The cost of losing experienced employees now represents a tremendous lost of investment.  "Employers want a guarantee that a new hire will stick — and the best way to do that is to make sure that job and candidate are a good fit in the first place."

Globalization that separates performance and accountability/review across continents has further complicated the process of finding and training the best person for the job. So offering on-line testing across those continents makes these assessments not only appealing but also fast.  

I am often asked by potential clients, particularly those who have been in corporate settings, if we either offer or recommend simple, cost-effective assessments for them to use in attorney recruitment, training and development.  While we can recommend and administer a number of good assessments that can be highly useful -- Myers Briggs Type Indicator (the most popular test in the country, used by 89 of the Fortune 100 and taken by 2.5 million Americans each year), Caliper's Personality Profile, Birkman Method, MayerSaloveyCaruso Emotional Intelligence Test, Thomas Kilmann Conflict Instrument, among others--they are not inexpensive and they are not targeted to lawyers. 

A recent college graduate friend took a Johnson O'Connor aptitude assessment, a common test for teens and young adults to help determine career possibilities.  Since her father and grandfather are lawyers and she is considering going to law school, she was surprised to find that "lawyer" was not one of her designated career possibilities.  She was told that a few years ago Johnson O'Connor stopped offering "lawyer" as an option for any of their test-takers.  The reason?  They are no longer able to reliably correlate attributes or aptitudes with the successful practice of law.

And therein lies one of the problems with assessing attorneys.  While research has indeed identified a number of attributes that lawyers exhibit to a greater degree than others-- for example, high pessimism, skepticism, urgency and autonomy, and low resilience, sociability and collaboration-- the problem lies in the data that shows the impact these characteristics are having on practitioners.  These very attributes present in so many lawyers are also the attributes contributing to the dissatisfaction and distress that the legal profession exhibits:  astonishingly high rates of depression and other mental illness, substance abuse, suicide, and divorce, for starters. High rates of dissatisfaction that are also contributing to the staggering drop-out and attrition rates.

In addition to the challenge of identifying what makes for a good (as well as well-adjusted lawyer), there is also the expense of doing that well.  The testing often done at corporations is highly individualized, developed after an extensive review of what attributes in fact produce productive and satisfied employees at that particular company, and sometimes at that particular location.  Google hires over 10,000 new employees each year and enjoys the amazingly low attrition rate of 4%, but to accomplish that.it invests in a highly detailed questionnaire and assessment that is developed from extensive employee data   That process is not inexpensive. 

Not only is it the individual lawyers who have complex and sometimes hard-to-read attributes.  Law firms and law departments, often in spite of their studied denial, also have "personalities."  Understanding those personalities is critical in determining the type of person who will thrive or fail there. 

Our unique expertise in understanding the attributes of individual lawyers, as well as each legal workplace, makes us ideally suited to help you enter the challenging world of 21st century attorney assessment, development and retention.

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Muir is participating in a business development program for new partners of a global law firm.  The program involves small group training and individual coaching to produce individual business development plans that can help put new partners' careers on a productive course. 

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Growing future leaders at our best business schools increasingly involves teaching "softer" skills, and often using personal style assessments. One of the more rigorous and long-standing low-residence courses at Harvard Business School is the nine-week Owner President Management Course (OPM), which spans three years.  Roughly 120 business owners, only half of whom are usually from the US, are enrolled in this course.

Last year, one of the course professors, Dr. Linda Doyle, included The Birkman Method in her "Leadership and Organizational Effectiveness" classes for the OPM, a class that examines leadership styles through case studies.  The Birkman Method is a personal style assessment that identifies a number of traits, and also how those traits manifest in an organization and morph under stress.  Using the Birkman assessment, OPM participants are able to identify and analyze their own authority styles, and the strengths and problems that might develop from those styles.  Harvard has decided to continue the use of the Birkman in this course and is considering including it in other MBA courses.

Yale School of Management has also introduced personal style assessments into its curriculum.  All MBA candidates are now required to take an assessment to help identify leadership styles, strengths and potential problems.

Heidi Brooks, Director of the Leadership Development Program at YSOM and a lecturer in Organizational Behavior, is convinced that these assessments are avenues to self awareness and interactional intelligence that can only improve management effectiveness.  Since most major corporations hire and promote at least in part on the basis of similar types of assessments, having MBA candidates familiarize themselves with the testing process and the information it provides also gives them an early advantage. 

Besides Harvard and Yale, Dartmouth University's Tuck School of Business, University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business, Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School and Stanford's Graduate School of Business are among the business schools that have heard from alums and companies across the country that it is the softer skills--communication, brokering compromises, managing conflict, developing relationships and leading groups--rather than strategy or financial analysis that are missing in MBA graduates.  And are doing something to address those weaknesses. 

Stamford's B School revamped its leadership-training curriculum this fall, now requiring all first-year students to take personality tests, participate in teamwork and management-simulation exercises and critiques of their people skills.  Professional executive coaches will watch the simulations and offer advice.

At Tuck, the leadership-development program, modeled on corporate programs, that was launched in 2004, puts all first year students in teams of five.  The groups complete coursework together, help each other with assignments and then rate themselves and each other on how well they operate in a team, including how well each of them "solicits feedback and acts on it" or helps "manage conflict."  Reports on their performance are used to inform the coaching sessions the students attend and to design personal development plans.

Says Warren Bennis, professor at USC's Marshall School:  "It isn't just nice--these interpersonal skills.  It's the stuff that's necessary to lead a complex organization."

It is only a matter of time, as they say, before law schools recognize the impact of "people skills training" and follow suit.  Not only are lawyers less educated both in school and in the workplace on the importance of developing these skills and the methods of doing so, the data shows that they are as a group psychologically and behaviorally more challenged  in achieving results.  Which makes this sort of training--whether at law school or on the job-- even more critical.

 

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A recent article in the New York Times on young 20-something Internet mega-millionaires quoted one as saying “You ask yourself, ‘Why am I not happier given how lucky I’ve been?’”

While we as lawyers, being supremely circumspect, would rarely verbalize this sort of “squishy” sentiment out in the open, given the levels of unhappiness in our profession, it is a question we should be asking ourselves. 

So here are some of the findings about "happiness," which has exploded as a subject of research over the last few years. Let’s start with the data on the current state of happiness in the US.

Recent surveys point to a relatively high “happiness quotient” these days:

·             86% of Americans are content with their jobs (General Social Survey)

·             76% are satisfied with their family income (Pew Research Center Survey)

·             62% expect their personal situation to get better over the next five years vs. only 7% who expect it to get worse

·             65% of Americans are satisfied over all with their own lives—one of the highest personal satisfaction rates in the world.

As the query of that Internet mega-millionaire illustrates, happiness is not correlated with financial resources or even political stability: countries like Nigeria, El Salvador, Columbia, Mexico and Puerto Rico (along with Switzerland, Denmark and Canada) register higher rates of happiness than the US in the World Values Survey. Other countries, such as Romania, Russia and other former Soviet countries, consistently score at the bottom.

This fairly rosy picture in the US becomes decidedly darker when we factor in the “happiness” data on lawyers:

·             Lawyers generally have one of the highest dissatisfaction rates with their work of all industries/professions, with 65% of young associates surveyed by the ABA last year intending to change professions within two years.

·             Lawyers also have the highest “personal distress” rates of any industry, exhibiting dramatically higher incidences of suicide, mental illness, divorce and substance abuse than other industries. 

Women lawyers seem particularly effected by these developments:

·             Fewer women are seeking law degrees: from 1963 through 2001 female enrollment at law schools climbed nearly every year, from 3.7% to a peak of over 50%; since 2002, however, the percentage of women in law schools has declined each year, currently down to 46%.

·             At a time of very high attorney turnover generally (over 20% leave their jobs every year), the highest drop-out-of-the-profession-entirely demographic is women.

·             In spite of many years of women in the "pipeline," only a small proportion of women stay to become partners in law firms (17%) or senior legal counsel in corporations (18%).

The message seems to be that, in spite of Americans' general glee, few lawyers are happy living the lawyer's life.

What Makes Us Happy?

As it turns out, over the last few years a wave of books on happiness, primarily written by academics, have been published. Among them are:

The Pursuit of Happiness, by David G. Myers

Happiness, The Nature and Nurture of Joy and Contentment by David Lykken

Happiness, A History by Darrin M. McMahon

Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman

The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama and Dr. Howard C. Cutler

The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt

Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert

Happier: Learn the Secrets of Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment by Tal Ben Shahar

Most of these books are based on David Lykken's findings that there is an individual “set point” of happiness to which most people revert, regardless of their life circumstances—illness, financial concerns, family problems. Lottery winners and paraplegics, those both accepted and rejected as partners or general counsel, all on average return to their baseline levels of happiness within a year.

If health and other circumstances don't impact our happiness, what does? Jonathan Haidt compares our emotional life in The Happiness Hypothesis to a small, conscious monkey riding a large, unconscious elephant: in many ways we are estranged from the great bulk of our own inner feelings. The running commentary in our minds about what we feel and why is often simply wrong, he contends. For example, research subjects unknowingly hypnotized to react in a specific way to a cue quickly come up with rational, and in their mind truthful, “explanations” of why they acted that way, even though those explanations are causally entirely beside the point: their reaction was programmed in their unconscious by the hypnosis. 

Not only are we not able to access a great part of our inner feelings, evidently we are not very good at analyzing the happiness data that we do have access to. Daniel Gilbert in Stumbling on Happiness explains that we are very bad at remembering what made us happy in the past and in predicting what will make us happy in the future, often overestimating the bang we will get and how long it will last. For example, people often list children as a source of happiness, yet the data indicates that children in fact are "extremely negative," "mildly negative" or have no effect on overall happiness. (More about this later.)

Could We Be Happier?

Continue Reading...

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"We evaluate 'courage' as a behavioral characteristic of our lawyers, and we link this evaluation to compensation," says John P. Donahue, Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of Rhodia Inc., in the July 2007 issue of InsideCounsel.   Rhodia has "embraced professional objectivity of its in-house lawyers as a core value" and Donahue wants to make sure that "our lawyers can deliver bad news to clients," with whom they are often closely aligned. 

Valuing Courage

Given the data we have about the strong tendency of lawyers to avoid rather than confront conflicts (yes, even those feisty litigators, oddly enough) (see my article "The Unique Psychological World of Lawyers"), Donahue's goal is one that can't be lauded enough.  Hospital administrators contend that a ratio of 1 conflict avoider in 4 employees results in a "dangerous workplace"--think:  "I don't want to get so&so in trouble over reusing needles" or "Maybe she'll start writing down dosages after she gets used to our procedures". 

Left to their own proclivities, lawyers' much higher rate of avoidance than hospital workers risks being just as dangerous.  Avoidance not only fails to resolve firm and client issues, but at the extreme, failure to report and confront violations of Sarbanes-Oxley, insider trading and discrimination laws, to name a few, can not only crater a career, but also a firm or a company.  Add in malpractice, fraud and the range of criminal possibilities (see, for example, Enron and other corporate demises and the unfolding saga of Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman) and silence should never be considered golden.

Hence Donahue's laudable efforts to support and promote courage.   

Which is where our thought for today could end.

Evaluating Courage

But Donahue goes further than suggesting putting in place environmental supports like "constantly talking" about maintaining objectivity, creating a culture that embraces bearers of bad news and rotating lawyers among client departments. He wants his lawyers' courage to be evaluated and then to compensate them accordingly.

Evaluating courage or any other personal characteristic as it relates to their work is a radical idea to many lawyers. Basing compensation on that evaluation is outlandish.  They don't know what a "behavioral characteristic" actually means, don't trust the evaluation process, and certainly don't think their compensation should be linked to so un-rigorous a process.  They are, after all, good lawyers, and good lawyers average in the top 10% on the characteristic "skepticism" in personality assessments (see again my article "The Unique Psychological World of Lawyers").

In this case, they should get over it.  Whether Donahue is using structured assessments or more unstructured evaluation techniques, these behavioral and personality evaluations are likely to be the key for law firms and law departments to break their recruitment and retention quandaries and, as icing on the cake, help solve the diversity dilemma.  (See my January 5, 2007 blog entry "KPMG Model Delivers Risk Management, Teamwork, Client Satisfaction and Diversity Too," reporting on KPMG's use of the Birkman Method assessment to revamp its business model and achieve retention and diversity goals.)

This is not a new position, at least for me.  (See my article "The Case for Assessment: Using Discrimination for Better Hiring," which outlines all the uses of assessments in the non-law firm world and how law firms might profit from them.)  And now the tipping point is in sight as more law departments and law firms inch towards greater use of evaluations and assessments-- and trumpet the benefits.

General Counsel Scott Terrillion, of Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc, uses an "evaluative selection method" to find the best attorneys for his company, with diversity being a natural consequence.  Roland Dumas, director of diversity for the legal recruiting firm Major, Lindsey & Africa, points out that "if a law firm screens candidates based on what law school they went to and how well they did there, it won't achieve much diversity.  There simply are not enough African-American and Latino law students in the top law schools who would survive the 'top quarter' cut."  Instead, Dumas recommends "capabilities" interviews, which use rich conversations to probe candidates to find those who have the talents the firm values. 

Struggling to complete with bigger firms, Kansas City, Mo.-based Blackwell Sanders developed a system for selecting and assessing associates that is more behaviorally evaluative than most firms use, and it found that using these behavioral evaluations, starting with the initial interview, enabled the firm to spot talent it might otherwise miss. The firm has documented its efforts in a handbook, From Classes to Competencies, Lockstep To Levels, which, according to the foreword by Ida Abbott, is "an act of remarkable candor and leadership ... [that] will enable law firms to expedite the design and implementation of competency-based evaluations and performance-based advancement."

The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.  Blackwell Sanders doubled the total number of minority associates, tripled the number in recent incoming classes, and increased by 22% the number of females associates.  Perhaps even more notable, a "high" minority attrition rate declined to "0" within four years. 

Jeffrey N. Berman, managing partner at Berman Fink Van Horn, says that for the last 10 years his firm has taken an even more radical step--using individually administered psychological assessments as part of their hiring process. Determining assessment traits important to the firm has given the firm "a handle on the type of attorney that is going to be happy and successful here," Berman says.  

The firm tells all prospective hires, lawyers and staff, that they will be required to take a personality test if an offer is made.  Contrary to the fear of many hiring partners, Berman reports that no one has ever objected to the assessment or refused to proceed, in part, he believes, because everyone in the firm has participated and also because it has been so accurate in predicting success.   "It never ceases to amaze me how accurate the testing is," he adds, noting that it has never proved inaccurate with anyone they've hired, even when the results contravene the impression of interviewers.

So diversity is not the only benefit firms can expect from the targeted use of evaluations and assessments--law turnover and high satisfaction and performance result as well. 

Our firm offers law departments and law firms state-of-the-art advice on identifying the characteristics that produce happy, productive lawyers in your environment and designing evaluations and assessments to use in hiring and promoting those candidates.  Don't be left in the backwash.  This is a wave that can do much to move you forward.

 

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As a woman, a lawyer and a consultant who specializes in emotional intelligence among arguably one of the most challenged professions of our species-- lawyers-- I cringe every time I see articles such as "Brilliant Women Last in Love," published August 18, 2007 in Australia's Herald Sun. The premise-- leave it to self-critical, self-effacing women to propagate it about their own kind-- is that lower long-term marriage statistics for women who are smart, well-educated and/or successful in their work are evidence that these women are more likely than other women to be emotionally deficient in some way.

Of course, demanding work, of whatever kind, can create stress for both genders, including vis-a-vis their partners and families. And so can over-reliance in personal relationships on any professional strength, no matter how valuable that strength may be professionally.  

In addition to those challenges, women have traditionally born the brunt of supporting families-- housework, food preparation, social connections, child and parent care, etc. So those women who also have demanding careers are often more challenged/stressed than their male counterparts, who are more likely to enjoy minimal expectations in these areas.  Compounded stress, as we all know, can wear down even the best of relationships.

However, there is no evidence that professional women are less likely to have good emotional skills than other women or than the men they are working with.  What the research is absolutely clear about, consistent for years, is that married men are the happiest in our population and married women are the LEAST HAPPY, with single women and single men, in that order, in between. 

Therefore, it is just as likely, and I believe probably more likely, that the statistics about smart, successful women and marriage reflect the fact that these women are smart enough to realize and acknowledge the unequal and unhappy role marriage often plays in their lives and are also empowered enough personally, and successful enough financially, to do something about it.  In the process they are likely to propel themselves up from last to second in the "happiness" stakes.

There is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON TO BELIEVE that the less smart, less educated, less successful women are glued to their marriages because they are so happy or so adept at relationship building. The female depression rate, highest among married women, should easily dispense that myth.  Nor is there reason to believe that professional men, less burdened by family obligations and often enjoying the career and personal support of their spouse, are any better equipped to deal with the kinds of stress that professional women cope with. 

I study emotional intelligence in both men and women, using the Myers Salovey Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT), the only EI assessment that is abilities-based, i.e. does not rely on self-reports ("Why, yes, I am indeed emotionally intelligent.") but rather requires participants to react to scenarios.

The results of that assessment show very little difference (women enjoying a slightly higher average score) in emotional intelligence between the sexes--a result many women find surprising. There are a number of other assessments, however, that show clear gender differences, including the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, which reveals women to be much more likely to base their decisions on what is good for relationships than on logic. 

But emotional intelligence is in fact fairly gender neutral. If the theory of this and other stories is that leading with your head can negatively impact your personal life, it is a problem that bedevils both sexes-- brilliant men ever as likely as brilliant women.

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An article by Ronda Muir entitled "The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in Law Firm Partners" appears in the July/August 2007 issue of the ABA Law Practice Management Section's Law Practice Magazine. 

Among the attributes that emotionally intelligent partners bring are better judgment, higher productivity, enhanced business development skills and better client relationship management.  Most importantly, high emotional intelligence fuels the kind of leadership-- one which promotes collaboration and teamwork-- that is critical to excellence in the 21st Century, and that can provide firms with a competitive edge.

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Why Feedback?

Effective leadership in lawyers is achieved by using some of the same strategies that work with other high-performing professionals, while also requiring an appreciation of the nuances that are particular to the legal personality.  Awareness is the standard starting point for most leadership assessment and improvement programs.  Studies have clearly shown that the higher your self-awareness, the better a manager and performer you are, and, as an added carrot, the more you actually enjoy your work. 

Unfortunately, studies also clearly show that the higher you rise in the ranks of an organization, the less likely you are to be accurately aware of your impact.  Thus, oddly enough, in any given business the CEO is probably less informed about how she and her work are perceived by her colleagues--below, across and above her-- than is the night typist.  This turn of events is often attributed to the fact that the higher up most organizations one goes, the less systematic, extensive and honest is the feedback. 

Feedback and Lawyer-Leaders

Lawyers, and certainly general counsels and firm partners, often function like the CEOs of their own small businesses, and therefore risk suffering from that same top-of-the-heap lack of awareness that other senior management executives experience.  As to the younger lawyers, while run-of-the-mill annual associate reviews are often standard, most of these reviews are still not successful in effectively giving meaningful feedback . And once those lawyers become senior managers or partners themselves, there is usually no system at all for them to get feedback-- from the associates who work for them, from other partners or senior managers or from clients. 

There are well-established ways to produce effective feedback in an organization: professional assessments of individual working styles using Myers-Briggs and other testing instruments, regular feedback-targeted personal reviews, mentoring programs that include in-depth feedback, and department, practice group or firm-wide meetings or retreats. Bottom-up (from associates) and cross (from other partners or colleagues) reviews are recent additions to the array of law firm/law department feedback systems that try to provide senior lawyers with that critical awareness.  Other tools are practice group, partnership and client surveys, particularly if the surveys are followed up with face-to-face discussions. 

Unfortunately, giving and receiving written and person-to-person feedback strikes many lawyers as bordering on, if not squarely in, the realm of useless touchy/feely psycho-babble. Yet it is a skill that should come easily to lawyers.  Rigorous analysis and clear communication, particularly in identifying issues and crafting resolutions, are the stock-in-trade of what we do.  Why then is it that lawyers so resist using these potentially powerful tools in their own practices?

Feedback and the Half-Empty Glass

The wrinkle here may well lie in other personality attributes that lawyers often possess.  First, as a group, lawyers score high on resistance to feedback-- they get defensive and don't listen, or lash out with their point-by-point answers.  Part of this response derives no doubt from years of advocacy thinking-- every point deserves a good counter-point.  The high esteem that lawyers tend to hold themselves in-- another trait that serves them well when under attack from opposing counsel-- also feeds the inability to hear "criticism." 

A further attribute that may well contribute to lawyers' disinterest in feedback is their inherent pessimism. Martin Seligman, a University of Pennsylvania psychology professor who has been a leader in the development of the field of positive psychology over the last ten years, identified lawyers, in a survey of 104 careers, as the most pessimistic.  While researchers can argue whether that attribute makes lawyers likely to be more or less accurate in their assessments of legal situations, it does make them, as a group, more resistant to "new" policies or procedures, and more likely to think that remedial steps are of dubious value. 

"Peanuts" and You:  Cashing in on a Valuable Commodity

I was recently in the student center of a large suburban high school.  In a deja vu from a "Peanuts" cartoon strip, a teenage boy sat behind a hand-written sign that said "5 cents -- I'll tell you what I think of you."  Beside the sign was a very large pile of nickels.  An enterprising kid was demonstrating what a valuable commodity honest feedback is. 

Lawyers have the skills and the opportunity to cash in on that valuable commodity.  As lawyers, we can begin our leadership effectiveness program right there:  by simply learning something about ourselves, we can start accessing a whole new array of potentially useful tools for enhancing our practices and our lives. 

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In connection with the 129th annual International Tradmark Association meeting in Chicago, Ronda Muir, Senior Consultant, presented a program on Wednesday, May 2, at Robin Rolfe Resource's Women's Power Breakfast for seventy senior corporate and law firm women in intellectual property.   Her presentation focused on what makes lawyers, and women lawyers, different from other professions and how to use those differences to make good lawyers better.  This year INTA welcomed over 8,500 registrants from around the world.

 

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See Muir's article for guidelines on making your law practice (and life) more innovative, creative and collegial.

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Temple University’s Beasley School of Law is including a course on law firm management in its curriculum for third–year law students starting this past month.

Called "Legal, Professional and Business Aspects of Law Practice," the class is divided into four sections:  law firm economics, time management, client development, and ethics related to the business of firms.  Some of the topics included are fee structures, accounting, partnership and tax law as related to firms, firm organization, and referrals.

The textbook for the course was written by a professor who teaches a similar course at Pace University. Stephen J. Friedman, dean of Pace University School of Law, and formerly commissioner of the SEC, general counsel of The Equitable and E.F. Hutton, and co-chairman of the corporate department at Debevoise & Plimpton, finds law graduates to be "ill-equipped to be effective beginning lawyers" and wants curriculum at law schools to be "more purposeful, more focused and more integrated." 

And evidently particularly more attuned to the challenges of effective legal practice and good law firm management.

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Carol S. Dweck, a Stanford University psychology professor, is the author of the recently published "Mindset: The New Psychology of Success," which documents how people with a "growth" mind-set who believe they can improve themselves out-perform those with a "fixed" mind-set who believe their capabilities are fixed.  "The growth mind-set person recognizes that you're not good at something before you're good at it," Dweck points out. 

In one instance, Dweck found that when people experience a blow to their self-esteem, those in a fixed mindset repair their self-image by trying to feel that they are better than others, which n a business setting might take the form of blaming or taking things out on a colleague. Those in a growth mindset recover their self-esteem by trying to improve themselves and correct their deficiencies.

While it's gratifying to see the impact of personal belief documented so clearly, parts of this thesis are hardly new-- optimists outperform pessimists across all industries and job descriptions (except in law), in part simply because they believe they are capable of effecting change.  And the success that this sense of empowerment generates in any arena leads to the expectation of and achievement of success in others.  Optimists are also more resilient--understanding that specific setbacks are just that, and not a referendum on their personal worth, which makes them more likely to persevere.

Which brings us to lawyers, the least optimistic of any career, for whom Dr. Seligman has documented that pessimism is in fact a career enhancer, and who consistently score low on resilience.  For lawyers, the new psychology of success begins with systematically training themselves to confine their pessimism to their legal analysis and to bolster their resilience and optimism in the rest of their lives, including management.

In any event, Dweck's overall assertion that rigid thinking benefits no one, least of all yourself, and that a change of mind is always possible, is welcome.

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While Emotional Intelligence has become a popular buzzword, the researchers on whose work Daniel Goleman based his bestselling Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, only formulated an assessment to test EI in 2002. Called the MSCEIT (Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test), it is the only EI assessment based on abilities instead of self-reports, i.e., it gauges your actual EI performance instead of asking how good you are at EI. 

Does it make any difference whether a lawyer is emotionally intelligent or not? To determine whether there is a correlation between emotional intelligence and excellence in lawyering, we undertook a study. 

We began with lawyers listed in The Best Lawyers in America as our "excellent" lawyers. Those willing to participate were given the MSCEIT and follow-up feed-back free of charge. 

Our participating lawyers practice across the country: Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, Houston, Columbia, SC and New York. Their firms range from a small, 15 lawyer boutique to regional powerhouses to global behemoths. And the results are interesting.

• This group of excellent lawyers performed 20% higher on average than lawyers generally.
• This group's highest score was in Understanding Emotions, the most cerebral of the four branches of EI, and the branch that most lawyers perform best in.
• Also like most lawyers, this group's lowest score was in the Perceiving Emotions branch. Although notably higher than the average lawyer score in this area, even excellent lawyers barely score the national average.
• Excellent lawyers score significantly higher than lawyers generally on the sub-branch Managing Emotional Relationships. 

While these excellent lawyers, like lawyers in general, are better at analyzing emotions than recognizing them, they are operating on a higher EI plane than their colleagues. The excellent lawyers' significantly higher average total results and significantly higher ability to manage emotional relationships may account for at least a part of their excellence: they are generally more emotionally intelligent and they are better in relationships with clients and colleagues.

Stay tuned for some of the (non-identifying) specifics on the best performing individuals.

CALL TO BEST LAWYERS TO PARTICIPATE

While we have a good start, we want even more results to produce a more reliable study. We invite any lawyers now listed in The Best Lawyers in America to take the MSCEIT—a 40-minute confidential on-line survey-- at our expense. We will provide you with individual feed-back, a written report, and the opportunity to have your firm identified as high performing.

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In a December 13, 2006 Legal Times article extolling the energy and talents of Pamela Rothenberg, the managing partner of Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice’s Washington D.C. office, Rothenberg stressed how much she relies on The Gallup Organization strengths, an assessment that is described in the book First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently, in managing the firm. 

Martin Seligman, the Fox Leadership Professor of Positive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, has worked with The Gallup Organization to expand and refine their strengths assessment to make it particularly relevant to lawyers. Seligman is so certain of the usefulness of the Gallup strengths assessment in raising productivity, that he has issued a challenge to assess free of charge the members of any firm willing to participate, on the condition that he be paid 10% of their increased profits. 

We have used the Gallup strengths assessment in a number of client projects for law firms and law departments. If you are interested in participating in Seligman’s challenge, or simply want to know more about these strengths and how they could be useful to improving productivity in your firm, contact us.

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Part of the growing managerial team at law firms over the last decade or so has been the addition of the Professional Development or Career Development Officer. The goal, according to one firm, is happier, more productive attorneys who in turn are less likely to leave. The trend began several years ago, when large firms, such as Paul Weiss, whose current Director of Professional Development is David Cruickshank, realized the benefits of actively directing and supporting their attorneys' career development. 

Over time more firms have signed on to the concept, such as Chicago’s Gardner Carton & Douglas (soon to merge with Drinker, Biddle & Reath), which in 2004 appointed their first Chief Career Development Officer, responsible for the summer associate program, orientation of new associates, assignments and feedback, mentoring, training and formal performance reviews. Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal also hired at that time its first Chief Learning Officer, as have Holland & Knight and Arnold & Porter. Each position is tailored to the individual firm’s goals and requirements-- some focus primarily on providing targeted training to associates and partners, some attempt to manage quality assurance or reach out to alumni, while others take a more free-wheeling approach. Cordell M. Parvin, the lawyer at Jenkens & Gilchrist who became their first official Attorney Development Officer a few years ago, said at the time that his firm was moved to formalize the position in order to help their lawyers make for themselves a career that they love. “We’re in an era where young lawyers have never been paid more money, and they’ve never been more unhappy.”   

Adding Internal Coaches

A recent twist has been the inclusion of individual coaching responsibilities in the Professional Development officer’s role, or, as in the case of some firms, such as Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe (soon to merge with Dewey Ballantine), Arnold & Porter and Fenwick & West, the addition to the team of an internal full-time coach. Like the Career Development position, the coach's role can be defined in many different ways, depending on the values and goals of the firm. And the coaching methodology could differ significantly depending on which of the myriad coaching approaches are used.

The Challenges of Coaching Lawyers

Dr. Martin Seligman, the Fox Leadership professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, founded the school of Positive Psychology, which focuses on factors that make for professional and personal success, instead of following the traditional diagnostic model of addressing weaknesses. His work identifies optimism particularly as producing sizeable psychic benefits. A widely successful coaching program based on Marty's positive psychology model encourages “learned optimism.”  

According to Marty's research, however, lawyers are strongly pessimistic-- so much so that law appears to be the only career where pessimism is a career enhancing attribute. So the question arises as to whether changing lawyers' pessimism to optimism will kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Ideally, such coaching would give lawyers the ability to switch out of their day-job mindset, not only when socializing or in family situations, but also when engaging in non-lawyering professional activities like managing their firms and courting their clients, producing bottom-line benefits. 

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In-House Counsel recently reported on the results of the Managing Outside Counsel Survey Report prepared by the Association of Corporate Counsel and Serengeti Law of Bellevue, Washington.  The study revealed, among other things, the four reasons that companies are firing outside counsel. In 2005, 55.6% of the General Counsel surveyed reported that they terminated the relationship with at least some of their outside firms, up almost ten percent (50.7%) from 2004. The reasons most cited for firing outside counsel were:

1.       poor quality of work

2.       lack of responsiveness

3.       high fees

4.       personality issues 

Note that, after the threshold issue of competent work, two of the three main reasons for firing an outside firm were for deficiencies in what some lawyers refer to as “soft” skills—lack of responsiveness and personality issues. 

How responsive are your lawyers?   Do they have well-developed client relationship skills?

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The Fifth International Positive Psychology Summit 2006 was held October 5-7 in Washington DC.  Dr. Martin Seligman, the Fox Leadership Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, founded the school of Positive Psychology, which focuses on factors that make for professional and personal success, rather than following the traditional diagnostic model of addressing weaknesses.  There were a number of presentations of interest to lawyers.

Richard Florida, an economist, Hirst Professor in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, author of the bestseller The Rise of the Creative Class (Basic Books, 2002) and The Flight of the Creative Class (HarperCollins, 2005), was the keynote speaker.  The dramatic results of his research found that highly talented people will overcome financial disincentives to join communities and businesses that promote subjective well-being, such as supporting diversity and encouraging tolerance.  His astonishing findings are that it is the people, the "soul of the city," that drives the production of jobs and financial success, rather than the other way around, as classic economics theory maintained.

These findings fit nicely with the results of David Maister's survey on the factors that drive financial success in personal services businesses.  Maister asked simply "Are employee attitudes correlated with financial success?"  In his book Practice What You Preach:  What Managers Must Do To Create A High-Achievement Culture, he expands on the results of that survey.  Not only is the answer "yes", but, more importantly, Maister found that it is attitudes that drive financial results and not the other way around.

The message for law firms and law departments is that, in a world of escalating pay raises but ever-increasing movement, the soul of the firm-- and how it influences employee attitudes and their sense of well-being-- cana be the key to achieving financial success.

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