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

In honor of the endings and beginnings at this time of the year and the personal and professional resolutions that each of us aspire to for the future, it is fascinating to look to the life of the founder of modern psychology, Sigmund Freud. A recent entry in "The People's Therapist," a blog by a former S&C associate, Will Meyerhofer, who is now a therapist to lawyers, recounts some interesting information on Freud's relationship to strong emotions, which is summarized below.

Oliver Sacks notes in his book "Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain" that Freud was known to not like music, quoting his nephew, Harry, who claimed Freud "despised" music.

Freud himself wrote about his reaction to music in the introduction to "The Moses of Michelangelo":

"I am no connoisseur in art...nevertheless, works of art do exercise a powerful effect on me, especially those of literature and sculpture, less often of painting...[I] spend a long time before them trying to apprehend them in my own way, i.e. to explain to myself what their effect is due to. Wherever I cannot do this, as for instance with music, I am almost incapable of obtaining any pleasure. Some rationalistic, or perhaps analytic, turn of mind in me rebels against being moved by a thing without knowing why I am thus affected and what it is that affects me."

His friend, Theodor Reik, wrote that Freud feared giving himself over to the mysterious effects of music on his emotions. Reik felt that Freud's resistance to music amounted to:

"[a] turning-away...[an] act of will in the interest of self-defense...[and the] more energetic and violent, the more the emotional effects of music appeared undesirable to him. He became more and more convinced that he had to keep his reason unclouded and his emotions in abeyance."

Let's see.  Super-analytic type who is uncomfortable with strong emotions determines to not let himself "give in" to those emotions, but to remain as fiercely rational as possible. Sound like anyone you know?

While it is reassuring to know that even the grand man of psychology struggled with understanding emotions that overwhelmed him, his strategy of dealing with them is less than heartening.  It is no wonder that when Leonard Woolf, along with his wife Virginia, visited Freud in London late in his life, Woolf described Freud as "a half-extinct volcano... sombre, suppressed, reserved."

Only a few months later, at the age of 83, Freud arranged for a morphine overdose to end his life.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is the challenge that yawns most scarily right in front of us, the one we least understand and most want to avoid.

Meyerhofer points out that "the word 'freude' in German means 'joy.' The word 'dream' comes from the Middle English word 'dreme,' which means 'joy' and 'music.'"  He suggests that Freud may have retreated into joyful musical dreams at night, even if he wasn't able to embrace them during the day. 

Perhaps there is a hint in this etymology as to why Freud was so driven by his fascination with deconstructing dreams, dreams which like music reflect abstractions of emotions that he personally couldn't fully understand or give himself up to. If only analysis and rationality could provide all the answers.

Another rift on the etymology is that Freud possibly never truly lived up to his name because he wasn't open to the full panoply of emotion, wasn't able to experience the roller coaster that  both plummets us into the depths but also raises us up to the highest heights--a mysterious and sometimes painful ride that nonetheless informs every aspect of our feelings and ultimately our intelligence.

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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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Goleman Clarifies

In the emotional intelligence ring, there have long been two theories—those who think that EI counts for 80% of success and those who don’t.  Daniel Goleman’s 1995 blockbuster book Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ is the source of much of this scrapping—he asserted in the original edition that IQ accounts for 10-20% of business success, leaving a big 80% gap attributable to other factors. Many think that EI fills that entire space—some contending that Goleman himself essentially said that at the time. 

As we have reported, over the years there have been a number of rounds on this question, with Goleman saying that he has been misinterpreted and others accusing him of retreating from his own findings. This past week, Goleman finally came out firmly with the declaration that “people seem to jump to the conclusion that EQ alone makes up that 80% gap—and it does not… As the person who put the concept on the map, I can tell you that they are dead wrong.”

While chastising consultants for over-selling emotional intelligence, Goleman also restates the importance of EI in the business world:

“It typically takes an IQ about 115 or above to be able to handle the cognitive complexity facing an accountant, a physician or a top executive. But here’s the paradox: once you’re in a high-IQ position, intellect loses its power to determine who will emerge as a productive employee or an effective leader. For that, how you handle yourself and your relationships — in other words, the emotional intelligence skill set — matters more than your IQ. In a high-IQ job pool, soft skills like discipline, drive and empathy mark those who emerge as outstanding.

Companies know this. Corporate surveys find that more than two-thirds of major businesses apply some aspect of emotional intelligence in their recruiting, in promotions, and particularly in leadership development.”

Emotional intelligence is critical to productivity, effectiveness, leadership. And businesses are smart enough to recognize that in their recruiting, professional development and leadership development. Except of course in the business of law.

Is It Your Blood Pressure?

In another corner of the EI world comes results announced last week of an interesting study : "the emotion-recognizing ability [is] reduced in people with high blood pressure, even after taking into account medication use and other factors."  Leading to "emotional dampening," hypertension evidently "reduces the ability to recognize anger, fear, sadness, and other emotions in people's faces."

According to the authors of the study, published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine:

"In complex social situations like work settings, people rely on facial expressions and verbal emotional cues to interact with others. If you have emotional dampening, you may distrust others because you cannot read emotional meaning in their face or their verbal communications.You may even take more risks because you cannot fully appraise threats in the environment.”  

The authors believe emotional dampening also may be involved in disorders of emotion regulation, such as bipolar disorders and depression.  

This theory of emotional dampening also evidently applies to positive emotions.“Dampening of positive emotions may rob one of the restorative benefits of close personal relations, vacations and hobbies."

While there is no hard data on this that I am aware of, I would put bets on our lawyer population having outsized blood pressure, consistent with the pressure, stress and demands of the job.  And then there are those well-documented low scores in emotional intelligence that lawyers historically get.

Lack of trust, risky behavior, depression, heart disease, lack of close personal relations and little or no restorative time?

So that's it!

 

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The following entry won the BlawgWorld Pick of the Week. BlawgWorld is a free weekly email newsletter that links to the best articles on the Web for lawyers and law firm administrators.

 

                                                     

House Speaker John Boehner teared up when introducing two newly elected Republican congressmen during a closed party meeting on September 15th, not the first time Boehner has choked up in public. A lengthy list of public cries just over the last few years include tears at a commencement speech, while thanking colleagues for their support during budget negotiations, during a talk about schools, discussing at various times his wife and his 11 brothers and sisters, celebrating election night, singing "America the Beautiful," talking about American security and American families who are suffering economically and simply upon taking the speaker's gavel, many of which sobs are commemorated on YouTube.

 

While Boehner seems to get away with it, The New York Times columnist Gail Collins contends women particularly must avoid tears in order to maintain their credibility:

One of the best-remembered moments in the Obama/Clinton campaign — Hillary Clinton cries in New Hampshire — is an excellent example of the difference between what men and women can get away with, tear-wise...With her back to the wall and the presidency on the line, Clinton approached the edge of a sniffle and we are still talking about it. Boehner is driven to great, noisy sobs when he contemplates the fact that as a youth, he mopped the floor at his father’s tavern...

[Nancy] Pelosi, of course, does not cry in public. We will stop here briefly to contemplate what would happen if she, or any female lawmaker, broke into loud, nose-running sobs while discussing Iraq troop funding or giving a TV interview.

Vivien Chen, of the Careerist, concludes that women can cry to diffuse a bully, but, otherwise, crying's probably not so cool.

According to the Harvard Business Review, Boehner can get away with crying "because of three key differences between John Boehner and the rest of us above-average professionals looking to progress in our careers: first, he's the boss, second he's not crying about workplace issues, and third, he's old (or older, depending on where you sit)."

The unwritten corporate rule is simple, according to HBR: "It is never okay to cry in your office, with your colleagues, or, god forbid, in front of your boss." So if you feel tears coming on, HBR advises that you either excuse yourself and "then get the hell out of your office...And if you can't keep it together to excuse yourself, simply exit the building quickly and worry about explaining later."

Does it surprise you, then, to learn that a study conducted by recruitment consultants Michael Page International found that mounting stress of all sorts leads one in three lawyers to cry?

Probably most lawyers would be loathe to admit to crying, so such a statistic looms rather large. If there are behind-the-door sobs, the question becomes whether tears are ever a good response during your working day, public or not.

Human beings are the only species that cries emotional tears, so there isn't any animal data available, but there's some interesting research about the differences in the crying habits of men and women.

Evidently women are biologically wired to shed tears more than men. Cells of female tear glands look different than men's and her tear ducts are smaller, so if a man and a woman both tear up, the woman's tears will spill onto her cheeks more quickly.  A hormone in tears called prolactin, a lactation catalyst, also aids in tear production. By the time women reach 18, they have 50% to 60% higher levels of prolactin in their bloodstream than men do.  Age is also a factor.  In an extensive study, researchers found that women under 45 are 10 times more likely to cry at work as men 45 and older.

A study of 37 countries determined that women in developed Western economies not only cry much more than men, but also much more than women in societies where women have fewer rights.

The male reticence to tear up seems to be related to testosterone levels.  As men age, and their testosterone levels decrease, they cry more. There are also powerful cultural inhibitions that make men less likely to cry, although those are relatively new, according to Tom Lutz, a University of California, Riverside professor. In the context of centuries and millennia, "male tears are the norm and males not crying is a recent historical aberration," he says, traceable to the late 19th century, when factory workers—mostly men—were discouraged from indulging in emotion lest it interfere with their productivity.

Which brings us again to lawyers in modern offices, wary of demonstrations of vulnerability, weakness or failing to spend time productively.  Yet evidently still shedding tears, even if behind closed doors.

What is one to do with those exasperating feelings of frustration and anger that would like to express themselves fluidly?

We have reason to believe that not only do men and women have different crying profiles but that they experience strong emotion differently--men have a stronger and longer-lasting physical response to emotion than women do, with higher heart rates and blood pressure, and it is more debilitating to their cognitive functioning--they aren't able to think as clearly and they remember fewer details of what happened during the emotional experience than women do. 

So what looks like a ban against emotional displays in the office for fear of reducing productivity more likely reflects the male experience of debilitation.  It is the male experience that may in fact give some justification to keeping one's emotional experience at the office more serene--let's not impair our functioning with this kind of stuff.  That attitude becomes the cultural norm, and women are often branded as the ones who breach it.  But women, unlike men, can move through their emotional experience more quickly and with less impairment, making their aversion to an office episode less likely, at least for reasons of reduced productivity. 

The alternative is to suppress emotions, and the adverse impact of suppression is much more dramatic for both sexes. Cognitive functioning declines significantly when the required energy is devoted to choking off emotional expression, leaving little energy for rational thought. And suppression means the cause of the emotion is not being dealt with--the culprit is not being confronted--and therefore there is no relief in sight.  So suppression both traumatizes more significantly and lengthens the period of damage.

What can we as practitioners conclude from all of this?  If you are a Boehner and feel those tears start to flow, go ahead and find a place to let them flow.  Preferably one that is not immediately in sight of your clients, colleagues or staff.  Wring out all the emotion--anger and hurt-- from those tears and then, when the storm has passed, sit down and analyze what brought on those emotions.  Are you frustrated with your situation?  Angry at someone's words?  Worried about the impression you made?

Once you have a handle on what feelings prompted the tears, go directly to the source and articulate those feelings.  "When the client told me how dissatisfied she was with my brief, I was devastated since I  had worked so hard on it." 

Then come up with a plan to get you back on the road forward.  "I would like to have a conference call where we go over each complaint so I can produce a second draft that suits us both."

And if you find your tears flowing because you're so proud of your team, just let them go wherever you are.

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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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The words being thrown around were trust, intimacy, empathy, vulnerability, honesty, transparency, communication, emotional intelligence, teamwork, forgiveness, feedback, collaboration, connectedness, courage, relationship-building.  It would be understandable if you thought that you had walked into a marital counseling conference or some new-age event.  

In fact, the setting was Georgetown University Law Center’s March 9th conference entitled "Welcome to the Future: Trends in the Delivery of Corporate Legal Services," led by Co-Director Mitt Regan.

After presentations on survey data showing how firms attract and keep potential clients (more on this in later entries), the attributes that were identified as being most conducive to outstanding client service were those listed above that make all types of relationships good and better.  And it was acknowledged that it can take only a few individual lawyer behaviors to destroy a client's trust, and in a startlingly short time.

Jeff Emelt, GC at GE, was quoted as saying that empathy is the quality he wants in his lawyers, which is particularly important when he gets legal advice he doesn't like.  While his predecessor valued his favored lawyer for being the best listener he'd ever met. 

Susan Hackett of the ACC Value Challenge said all the metrics used by firms and clients to capture data and set and meet goals need to be discussed with a lot of transparency and vulnerability--so clients can see how firms make their profits and even what those profits are.

Lisa Damon, member of the Executive Committee at Seyfarth Shaw, was instrumental five years ago in designing and promoting a firm culture that emphasizes "standing in the shoes of the clients," relying on transparency, communication and collaboration to weld strong bonds. While only into the first year of that program, Damon says that they already have delighted clients who are more engaged in the entire client/lawyer process.

Amy Schulman, Executive Vice President and General Counsel at Pfizer, was the featured speaker, discussing the Pfizer Legal Alliance, a program in its 3rd year that limits the number of firms that Pfizer uses to 20 for the bulk of its work. Pfizer requires that the firms use another value device other than the billable hour to determine fees ("If what you use to anchor the relationship is money, you’re going to lose, because it's not motivational at some point," according to Schulman), that they help Pfizer achieve an overall 15% reduction in legal spend, and that they work cooperatively with each other, as needed, to staff and manage projects. 

Each firm has an in-house relationship partner at Pfizer and Pfizer encourages secondments and sharing associates, even recruiting at law schools together with some firms. Twice a year Pfizer grades each law firm on performance issues ranging from substantive knowledge to responsiveness to willingness to collaborate, as well as how well they take the feedback they are given. This is, of course, a challenge for most lawyers--they are often highly defensive to anything that smells of criticism.

"We learned a lot about firms," Schulman says, "by whether they welcomed the feedback or responded by saying, 'You got it wrong.'" 

According to Schulman, making the PLA work is like developing other intimate relationships--it takes hard work, vulnerability and bravery--and ultimately requires a leap of faith. "Relationship-building requires a certain kind of emotional courage and confidence."

Most speakers acknowledged that feedback from clients is necessary to improve relationships--proactively asking for and acting on client evaluations should be the starting point of sophisticated client service.  But once the feedback is received, understanding how to respond at the time and in the future requires a panoply of skills that firms must identify, develop and support from the top down.  Inculcating these skills and values into the DNA of a firm becomes geometrically more difficult as the size of the firm increases.

As J. Warren Gorrell, Co-CEO of Hogan Lovells, pointed out, there is "a lot to be learned by firms from organizational behavior theory."

There were a couple of provocative questions.  Are women lawyers more likely to have some of these skills and therefore be able to deliver better service?  And if so, why aren't they being recognized and rewarded for those abilities?

And in the end does expertise always trump empathy or any of these other touchy, feely skills?  The conclusion seemed to be that regardless of the legal arena or degree of subject matter difficulty, quality of advice is considered a given from all firms, with clients repeatedly going to the qualified law firm that provides them with the better relationship as well.

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Muir's "The Unique World of Lawyers" explores the ways in which the personal style of lawyers differs from that of the majority of Americans and how it effects both what lawyers perceive and how they are perceived.

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Muir will be the Keynote Speaker at Hofstra Law School's Boot Camp on Tuesday, January 11, 2011.  Her presenation “Emotional Intelligence—Your Secret Weapon for a Successful Law Practice”  will cover what the term ”emotional intelligence” means, the history of its discovery and development as a leadership skill, how lawyers score in emotional intelligence, how it is related to other assessed professional skills, what makes emotional intelligence a secret weapon for successfully practicing law in the 21^st Century,  and how to improve your emotional intelligence.

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Muir's "Emotional Intelligence for Lawyers" reviews the history of the development of emotional intelligence and how it applies to lawyers.

Muir's "The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in Making Partners" was awarded the Edge International Law Practice Magazine Award for excellence in writing. 

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Over the last few weeks, GCs have used the opportunity to speak out from lecterns at various  events about what they expect from their outside lawyers.  Here's a short collection with more to come.

Diversity

"No corporate law department ever hired or fired an outside firm because of their diversity despite all the noise about corporate diversity objectives."  Or so one pundit out there contends. 

At a recent NAWL conference, Walmart's Associate General Counsel Kerry Kotouc gave a name and face to the retort to that contention.  Walmart's legal department asks candidates for outside counsel extensive questions about diversity in their firms and on their proposed Walmart teams, according to Kotouc. 

More importantly, the department also looks into the underlying truth behind the answers.  Are these diverse lawyers only showing up at pitches and on team lists or are they really an important laboring oar on Walmart's matters? 

In particular, Walmart wants to know that their lead lawyer is the one getting compensation credit for their role--origination credit or relationship credit, as appropriate, says Kotouc.  Which has resulted in some frank discussions with firm managers about firm compensation structure generally and who is getting what when it comes to compensation with respect to Walmart's matters specifically. 

Bottom line, Kotouc assures us that Walmart has hired or fired a number of firms based on that diversity information.

Compatibility

Sabine Chalmers, Chief Legal and Corporate Affairs Officer at AB InBev, the largest global brewer and one of the world’s top 5 consumer product companies, pleaded with outside counsel this past week to do something they might not have heard before:  choose lawyers for her matters who are compatible with her inhouse team. 

Of course, to do that, firms must know the client well-- its business, culture and even the individual lawyers working there. Chalmers is already more than annoyed when outside candidates or even engaged counsel order Coors instead of Bud, or Coke instead of Pepsi. But of course knowing your client goes further than knowing its products--Chalmers wants firms to understand the tone and style and objectives of the legal departments AND individual lawyers well enough to identify compatible outside lawyers to work with them. 

Lest this seem an odd or ultimately irrelevant request, note that BTI found in a not-too-distant survey that personality issues were one of the top 4 reasons cited by inhouse counsel for firing outside counsel.

The initial obstacle in doing what Ms. Chalmers wants is that we lawyers aren't always so good at assessing our own or others' personal styles.  Additionally, we aren't always so great at the old-fashioned relationship building skills that should ensue. 

How to identify differences in style? While there is no hard data, there is good evidence that many lawyers who leave law firm practice to go in-house are doing so at least in part because they are uncomfortable with their current law firm culture.  So in-housers as a general matter may in fact have a different style or prefer a different culture than their out-house brethren, particularly those at the firms they came from. Some inquiry as to the inside counsel's professional history might be a place to start. 

What Ms. Chalmers hopefully didn't intend to request is that outside and inside lawyers' personal styles be the same. There is always an advantage for working groups to include different strengths and approaches.  In this case, seeing both the big picture and the practical details, attending to both risk awareness and support for innovation, and a myriad other complimentary strengths are necessary to forge the best strategy. It would be a mistake to stack teams too heavily on one approach in an effort to reach compatibility.  

But even if teams have this "substantive" balance, the devil is often in the interpersonal styles that may keep those strategies from being effectively implemented--such as competitiveness, defensiveness, non-responsiveness and other communication problems, and dominance. The shorthand in the corporate counsel world for these tendancies in outside counsel is "arrogance."

The Scope and Purpose of Assignments

Marty Candiello, formerly General Counsel at Sunoco Chemicals, also emphasizes the importance of outside counsel really knowing their client--such as knowing the stock price, since the legal spend figures directly into shareholder value.  Knowing what kind of answer she expects to an assignment and what resources to throw at that answer is another priority for Candiello's outside counsel.  Candiello became known as "the 80% lady" because in many cases she wanted only the answer likely to be 80% right, to be achieved without throwing all the troops at the issue.

And if you're up for physical mutilation in the name of client service, Jeff Carr, Vice President, General Counsel & Secretary at FMC Technologies, suggests that outside counsel cut off one of those hands--"Don't give me on the one hand, on the other hand, just give me the bottom line advice."

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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 recently led an Introduction to the Business of Law seminar for junior associates at an AmLaw 100 firm. The presentation is customized to the firm and is gauged to bolster associates'  engagement and loyalty and to improve their productivity. 

Topics include a definition of terms, such as utilization, realization and cash management, and a discussion of what drives the economics of law firms, the impact of current marketplace trends, as well as how all these factors influence every associate's career, and what they can do to benefit themselves and their firm.

Director of Professional Development: "Associates called me specifically to thank me for setting this up; others said that the topic answered a lot of questions they wanted to know about (but probably wouldn't have asked). Several who didn't make it called to ask if I had recorded it because everyone said it was a good presentation...plus I appreciate that you were great to work with."

Partner in charge: "This was a very helpful presentation--a number of associates came up to me afterward to say how thought -provoking it was. It is difficult at times, particularly with the most junior associates, to get them to ask the questions they want to ask. You answered many of them in your presentation. We look forward to doing this again."

Firm Consultant: "The presentation was excellent. Law is a business like any other business. Every attorney, particularly at these large firms, should know about what you discussed in your presentation."
 

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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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Muir is leading 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.  For more information or to register, go to http://www.aplf.org.

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Here's some more data that puts into question our reliance on high scores and law school credentials in determining which lawyers we want to populate our firms with.

LSAT Scores

According to a chart prepared by the Tax Prof Blog, math or physics majors are likely to score the highest on their LSATs, theoretically making them the best candidates for law school and the best lawyers.

Or maybe not. As one blogger commented, "At a prior AmLaw 100 firm, I was chastised for not getting the chair of the IP department 'out there more,' writing, doing press. My response, 'The guy has an undergrad in chemistry, then went off to law school. I’m lucky if he opens his door.'

But this blogger goes further: "The BUSINESS of law, and the success of any given individual lawyer, is becoming more dependent on the development of personal relationships, the ability to reach out and promote one’s self, and SALES, [so] we need to remove the barriers that keep those who are so predisposed out of law school."  Or, as one article recently proclaimed: "Emotional Intelligence a New Hiring Criterion."

Following that prescription--matriculating and then hiring candidates based on something other than hard scores or law school credentials--would require a much more sophisticated method of discriminating, such as personality testing, as part of law school entry requirements or firm recruitment considerations.  Are we ready for that? 

We know that rainmakers and managing partners show a different array of personality traits than most lawyers--they are more social, more extroverted, more resilient, more empathic and more persistent--in total, more emotionally intelligent.  Should we be populating our firms from the bottom up with more of those traits?  Particularly now that one of the survival strategies for practicing law requires successful marketing, business closing and relationship building? And if so, what are the best procedures to insure that we identify a high percentage of the kinds of lawyers we want to hire?

Screening for these rarer combinations of traits might also require firms to look at a broader range of law schools than they typically have--at the very time that the pendulum appears to be swinging back to hiring only from the most prestigious schools. 

Premier Law Schools

A recent study entitled "After the JD" by the American Bar Foundation points out some of the benefits of broader recruiting.  The study concludes that graduates of non-elite law schools who work at the top 200 firms are happier than their colleagues from top-tier schools and also last longer in their jobs.

Why would that be?  It makes sense that lower-tier law school grads would work harder to nail the few BigLaw positions available to them, and, as a result, would be both more grateful for their jobs and also likely to have fewer opportunities to leave.  Other pundits have suggested that student who opt for regional law schools are more likely to have stronger family and community relationships that they want to maintain.  And that they are also more likely to have financial considerations that militate in favor of attending a less expensive law school with the possibility of working part or even full time.  Strong relationships, financial savvy, self-regulating drive--maybe our kind of candidates?

But regardless of how good it is for us, recent market pressures may in any event make firms drop the broad-barreled recruiting approach.

As Aric Press in The American Lawyer points out: "I fear that we will look back at the exuberant spree of the last few years as the high-water mark of non-elite law school hiring. There simply weren't enough bodies to go around, so the Big Law machine was willing to expand its recruiting pool. The fact that some of those hired performed well, or were happier with their lots, or possessed the drive and emotional intelligence that clients crave will not be enough to change old habits. When it comes to preserving the prestige patina, sometimes the rules of cognitive dissonance are suspended."
 

Press also reminds us of the opportunity these kinds of findings afford those firms who are thinking about their future and trying to insure its success--"an opportunity for the firms wise enough to seek first-class talent no matter what brand is on a diploma. Putting that attitude into practice would be an important part of an effort to take hiring more seriously, of not relying on admissions officers to do the work of hiring committees, to actually define attributes that firms and their customers need--and then try to recruit for them. Rather than retrench, this is a moment to put your partners to work on the future of your firm. As it happens, they have plenty of time to devote to the project."

Informal Survey

Let us know what you and your firm are doing in two areas of recruiting: 

1. Have your target law schools broadened or narrowed and why?

2. Have the attributes you are looking for changed?   In which ways?  And how do you identify those attributes in candidates? 

Stay tuned.

 

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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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Ronda Muir will be a featured panelist at the annual general meeting of the Attorneys' Liability Assurance Society (ALAS) in Quebec City, Quebec to be held June 25-26.   ALAS is the premier provider of professional liability insurance for large law firms in the United States, currently insuring 237 firms.  Muir will discuss lawyer personality, firm culture and other aspects that impact risk particularly in the context of mergers and lateral hires. Over 250 loss management and managing partners are expected to attend. 

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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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In a February 8, 2009 New York Times op ed column entitled "Mistresses of the Universe," Nicholas Kristof notes that senior staff meetings of Wall Street types resemble “a urologist’s waiting room” and suggests that "Wall Street could use an infusion of women as well as cash." 

Having more women in financial services might counter some of the risk-taking and competitive urges fostered by high levels of testosterone and would improve decision-making, according to the research Kristof cites.  In addition to suffering from testosterone-overload, men are also found in the studies he cites to be “particularly likely to make high-risk bets when under financial pressure and surrounded by other males of similar status. Women’s risk-taking was unaffected by this kind of peer pressure.” 

Of course, women managers also have their Achilles heels. The January 2009 Harvard Business Review includes a 360-degree feedback study by Herminia Ibarra and Otilia Obodaru that finds that female leaders are perceived to be strong in traits such as tenacity and emotional intelligence, but trail men in one important aspect: their superiors, peers and subordinates say that women leaders lack vision.

Better Performance in Diversity. Regardless of our specific gender strengths and weaknesses, the data on the advantages of having diverse management is piling up. Two separate studies in 2008, one by Catalyst, an organization that supports expanded opportunities for women at work, and the other by management consultant McKinsey & Co., looked at gender in management and found that companies with more female executives perform better. 

Why would that be?  University of California-Irvine professor emeritus Judy Rosener says brain scans prove that men and women think differently. Rosener says she's concluded that a company with a mix of male and female leaders, with their differing attitudes regarding risk, collaboration and ambiguity, will outperform a competitor who relies on the leadership of a single sex.

Women aren't better, Rosener says, but they bring to the table something that men don't.

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On February 18, 2009 Muir will lecture students at Northwestern University's Business Institutions Program on how to improve management decision-making. Based in part on the article "Promoting an Effective Board or Management Group," the discussion will explore, among other subjects, optimal personality traits for good decision-making, constructing effective teams and avoiding extreme decisions.

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The news is out:  "Law is becoming more of a business."  That was the headlights line by David Lat, founding editor of AboveTheLaw.com, in a January 25, 2009 New York Times article about the salary freezes, layoffs and dropping profits in the legal marketplace. Lat adds, "And you will see more of an emphasis on results than in the past."

Surprisingly enough, that realization seems to be downright radical, and a gathering consensus to that effect may mark a tipping point, pushing the conception of legal practice into a brave new future.

Certainly some firm managers will respond by taking out their calculators and trying to quantify their way to results--slashing salaries, reducing pencil-count.  Jones Day partner Mickey Pohl advocates refocusing legal services on providing "business-focused solutions." The job of a law firm is not to solve "a legal problem," he contends. "It's to approach a client's legal situation with an eye toward the overall health and strategy of an ongoing business, a business that has to worry about remaining in existence; satisfying customers, shareholders, and stakeholders; staying acceptably profitable; protecting its reputation; and resolving litigation disputes in a cost-effective manner." In short, brilliant legal strategy, at least in isolation, can make for poor business solutions for a client.

We counsel both our law firms and individual lawyers that "getting the right answer" is only a small factor in the successful practice of law.  Getting it right in a timely manner, getting it right in a way that best serves the client from a holistic viewpoint, getting it right so that the client understands and appreciates the answer, and getting it right in the method of delivery and followup are other critical parts of providing valuable professional services.

According to a pundit at Law and More, "there is a downside to recognizing that law is a business and that it should be focused on the business of its clients. For one thing, the specialness of this profession ends... it loses its protective aura... Instead, it stands out there like, well, any other brand, competing for attention...In addition, lawyers, even the most legally adept, will be called upon to put a human face on new business development, ongoing client interaction, and being influential with all other constituencies, be they judges or government agencies."

"Yet, this [skill] remains alien to many prominent lawyers...They address me in legalspeak or, worse, in the top-down tone and content of those who know far more than I but are patiently taking the time to bring me along. They lack more than a conversational mindset. They are downright deficient in Emotional Intelligence [EI].  Boosting EI of the individual lawyers, the law firm, and the classes in law schools seems like it's job-one in the business of law." 

The data demonstrating the challenge most attorneys face in emotional intelligence is already in. Fortunately, emotional intelligence, unlike IQ, can be improved through training, but most law firms have not considered it worth the investment.  But not only will the type of interpersonal style described above fail to obtain, keep and develop business, we also know that it clearly risks alienating the client to the point of litigation. Research shows that more than 80% of malpractice lawsuits against doctors can be predicted by examining not the doctor's education or skills, but simply the tone of the doctor's interchange with his/her patient:  a tone of "dominance" places the doctor at extremely high risk for a lawsuit.  And who but lawyers know how to pitch dominance to an off-the-charts level.

We are being pushed to explore taking bold new steps on every front that has historically defined our profession.  Compensation is being overhauled, partnership structure is adapting to the demands of the times, the billable hour is under siege, real estate is being reevaluated and leverage is under scrutiny.  But perhaps one of the most radical steps that may come from considering legal practice to be, after all, a business is the one that pushes us to educate ourselves and our attorneys in the fine, perhaps once known but now lost art of providing service.

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What does behavioral science and our expertise about lawyers tell us about President and Mrs. Obama, who are both Harvard-educated lawyers?

Assessments.   A number of assessment tools give us a profile of what a typical lawyer's attributes are. Lawyers on average score one or two standard deviations higher on IQ assessments (i.e. 115-130) than the general US population.  Using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, lawyers are likely to have the following personality types:  "introversion" (need for time alone to think and recharge), "intuition" (greater comfort with concepts than with details), "thinking" (decision-making based on objective reasoning rather than empathic compassion) and "judging" (a work style that methodically charts out and completes goals).  According to the Caliper Profile, compared to the general population, lawyers generally have high levels of skepticism and strong abstract reasoning skills, highly prefer autonomy ("I am the boss of me"), exhibit a strong sense of urgency, show low resilience in the face of setbacks (and criticism), and are often uncomfortable and/or unskilled at forming and building relationships ("sociability").  Of the five conflict resolution styles, lawyers tend to use only two:  competing ("I want to win") and avoidance, compared to the collaboration that business people often prefer.  Lawyers also have on average lower (by one standard deviation) emotional intelligence than the general US population and are much more pessimistic.

Handedness. President Obama, as he recently pointed out when signing his first Executive Order, is a lefty. Mrs. Obama is right-handed.

Humans--while not the only species to exhibit handedness--are and have been for over 5,000 years the only one with a consistent, strongly preferred handedness. Ninety-three percent (93%) of humans are right-handed and a higher proportion of males than females are left-handed.

The left hemisphere of the human brain processes things in parts and sequentially, and is usually the center for language, science, mathematics, and logic. When the left side of the brain is dominant, it controls the right side of the body, making these individuals right-handed.  The right side of the brain synthesizes and is a source of dreams, fantasies, art, music, and feeling, and is dominant in left-handed individuals.  Almost half of left-handers also use their right hemisphere for language.  Lefties are therefore more likely to mix emotion and language, vision and feeling.

Is it better to be left-handed?  Research on handedness tends to place the abilities of left-handers at the extremes--over-represented among both the gifted and the mentally challenged.  And a number of miscellaneous attributes are reported to be associated with being left-handed, including higher instances of allergies, alcoholism, epilepsy, eczema, thyroid problems, and a shorter life-span by an average of nine years.  Also, a significantly higher portion of male lefties than righties are homosexual. 

What makes someone left-handed?  Premature birth, prolonged labor and breech births seem to correlate with babies who become left-handed. While there is no conclusive explanation for handedness, one theory suggests that the male hormone testosterone might be responsible. Large amounts of this hormone slow left hemisphere development in the male fetus and might explain the clear predominance of males among lefties. 

The hormonal theory also seems consistent with differences that have been found in cognitive performance at the intersection of handedness and gender.  For example, overall, males perform better than females on spatial tasks (a left hemisphere and therefore right-hand dominant task), while left-handed males perform poorer than right-handed males on those tests (and right-handed women perform poorer than left-handed women).  As to verbal abilities (a right hemisphere and therefore left-hand dominant task),  left-handed males out perform right-handed males (and, by the way, right-handed females out perform left-handed females).  So the picture that emerges is that left-handed males are most like right-handed women in their cognitive approaches. 

Analysis of career choices show, as would be expected (and I predicted in a college paper too many years ago to admit to), that a disproportionately high rate of left-handed males, consistent with their superior verbal abilities, are lawyers.  Similarly, I surmised (and as to which I can now claim vindication), right-handed women should also be over-represented among lawyers.

Blood Type.  Okay, we are starting to get a little far out here, I admit, but several theories contend that blood type relates to specific personality clusters, a result of metabolism and other organic forces that mold leaders, followers, bean-counters, risk-takers.  In Japan and other Asian countries, a resume often includes blood type to bolster the applicant's qualification for the job.  In any event, the Obamas' blood types do not seem to be publicly available and Barack Obama's mixed racial heritage (as well as some mixed race heritage on Michelle Obama's side) make assumptions based on race difficult.  Nonetheless, people of African ancestry are most often Type O, the original blood type.  According to Eat Right for Your Blood Type by Dr. Peter. J. D'Adamo, Type Os tend to be hardy and strong, are best fueled by a high protein diet and need heavy physical exercise.  Type Os also have a strong drive to succeed and often exhibit leadership qualities, including a willingness to take risks and, concomitantly, a high degree of optimism.  Former president Ronald Reagan, to whom Obama has been compared, was a Type O, as is Queen Elizabeth II and Charles, the Prince of Wales.

Education.  Moving on to nurture.  Some contend that a lawyer's law school affects how he/she approaches and resolves issues. Noam Scheiber of The New Republic contrasts the differences between the chaotic early days of Clinton's presidency with Obama's smooth and "brutally efficient" transition, concluding that part of the explanation for the difference "lies in the elite institutions that socialized them -- namely Yale and Harvard, their respective law schools."

According to Carolyn Elefant in the Legal Blog Watch, "Scheiber contrasts the rigor and competitiveness of Harvard Law School with the somewhat more relaxed environment at Yale. At Yale, class attendance wasn't required, and professors engaged students in broad policy discussions. By contrast, Harvard classes focused more tightly on legal issues. Likewise, at Yale, the law review conferred little prestige, because anyone could join, whereas at Harvard, law review participation depended upon grades and a writing competition. As a result, Harvard Law review editors like Obama stood a good chance at a coveted Supreme Court clerkship."

Brian Lauter at The Shark goes further to say that it is college that provides "the more formative experience. Personal identity, at least partially formed during the college years, guides the way we approach decisions and situations" -- including one's choice of law school.

Ultimately, Elefant agrees "that our personalities matter much more than where we attend school -- undergraduate or law school. Had Bill Clinton attended Harvard, he probably would have chafed against the rules and formalities with his less-disciplined personality, but I doubt that Harvard would have changed him. Likewise, if Obama had gone to Yale, it's not likely that the relaxed atmosphere would have encouraged him to drop his work ethic."
 

What's Different About the Obamas.  Of course we have more information about the Obamas than just that they are lawyers, what schools they went to and their handedness.  Some of the other information out there can help us piece together a more specific read on their personal work styles. 

First, the fact that both Obamas left the traditional law firm track makes them more likely to be exceptions to the average lawyer profile rather than the rule.  Lawyers who are high on extroversion, sociability, compassionate decision making, and optimism are often the ones most uncomfortable in law firm culture and the first ones to go.

Continue Reading...

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This is the time of year when many of us take stock of our direction and goals and make plans to step up our effectiveness.  This particular year, 2009, many lawyers are facing an extremely difficult once-in-a-century marketplace for which no one has been truly prepared.  So we may also find ourselves questioning our ability to successfully grapple with the challenges ahead.  

How to acquire the skills that will improve your practice and advance your leadership in such a disorienting environment?

The old adage of two heads being better than one is born out by the data available on the results of coaching.  According to a January 13, 2009 article by Susan Letterman White in The Legal Intelligencer, "a research report by Diane Coutu and Carol Kauffman in the January Harvard Business Review found that coaching is a business tool most often used to develop the capabilities of high-potential performers or facilitate leadership transitions," and one which produces quantifiable benefits. "The Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology has reported that coaching leads to higher interview ratings for individuals. Telecommunications Weekly reported in November that a change program, which included coaching, improved customer satisfaction by 10 percent and call resolution rates by 56 percent at Motorola. And according to a 2008 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, coaching of university faculty improved the writing process of professors who were under pressure to publish."

As Ms. White states, "coaching is to a lawyer what organizational development is to a law firm; they both foster intentional change toward particular goals through a collaborative process. The goals are those that move the client to a higher level of professional effectiveness...Most importantly, a good coach is paid to ask the right questions."

In addition, a good coach is one who listens.

Sheryl Axelrod of Hepburn Axelrod & White, a Philadelphia firm, was quoted in the article as extolling the benefits of coaching in a law firm context. "We worked with a coach who had an uncanny ability to not only listen to our needs, fears and desires for our firm, but our own internal dilemmas and concerns about each other."

Of course, after listening, a coach must also be able to help coachees arrive at and implement beneficial changes.  And those changes are sometimes unexpected.  In the Hepburn Axelrod case, "one of our partners...reach[ed] the difficult decision to leave the partnership."

But the proof is in the pudding.  "The result of the coaching is that our firm, on our own, and our former partner, on his own, are each thriving in a market in which most firms are doing worse, not better, than the year before, " Axelrod said.

Quantitative evaluations of coaching are rare, but those that have been done demonstrate conclusively its effectiveness and bottom-line contribution.  In an evaluation by MetrixGlobal of an executive coaching program provided by the Center for Performance Excellence in 2004 to Booz Allen partners and principals, results indicated that "all leaders readily applied what they gained from their coaching experiences to make significant strides in self-development, while over half (53%) made significant improvements in their relationships with peers and team members and some  leaders (19%) went on to significantly improve client relationships; gaining greater clarity about how their behavior impacted clients and being better able to respond to client issues."

Of eight business areas senior leaders expected executive coaching to impact, "two were found to be positively impacted by at least half of the leaders who were coached: teamwork (58%) and team member satisfaction (54%). Three other areas were selected by 31% of the leaders as having been impacted: quality of consulting, retention and productivity."

Monetary benefits were rigorously documented in this evaluation. "The total monetary benefits were $3,268,325 with four impact areas each producing at least a half million dollars of annualized benefit to the business: improved teamwork ($981,980), quality of consulting ($863,625), retention ($626,456) and team member satisfaction ($541,250). Given a total, fully loaded cost of the coaching of $414,310, the ROI was 689%."

Coaching can provide to all lawyers the simple but valuable assistance of a supportive yet out-of-the-law-firm-box perspective that can be critical when steering through dangerous waters--and that can positively impact the bottom line. That perspective can help you become a more effective  partner, develop individual business, expand your expertise, master management responsibilities and otherwise plan and implement the next step in your career (whether you are motivated to do so proactively or reactively).

At RRR, we offer confidential high-performance coaching programs of six to eighteen months that are tailored to your objectives and your schedule.  Contact us for a consultation on how we can help you achieve your goals in 2009.

Happy new year!

 

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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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At the meeting of the American Bar Association's Law Practice Management section today in Tucson, Arizona, Muir was presented with the 2007-2008 Law Practice Magazine Edge Award for Bronze Feature Article for her article in the July/August 2007 issue of the magazine entitled "The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in Law Firm Partners." The Edge Awards are sponsored by Edge International, and each year recognize excellence in writing for the magazine.

 

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The American Bar Association has announced that Ronda Muir's cover article in the July/August 2007 issue of Law Practice magazine, entitled "The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in Law Firm Partners,"  has been awarded the 2007-2008 Law Practice Magazine Edge Award for Bronze Feature Article. 

The Edge Awards are sponsored by Edge International, and each year the awards recognize excellence in writing for the magazine.

Muir will be presented with the award at the Tucson, Arizona October 16-18, 2008 meeting of the Law Practice Management section.
 

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The keynote speaker at the opening of the 2008 International Conference on Emotional Intelligence this week was Jim Kouzes, coauthor of the award-winning best-seller The Leadership Challenge, executive fellow at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University, and, according to The Wall Street Journal, one of the twelve best executive educators in the U.S.

What did he have to say that is of interest to the legal world? At a time when we are struggling, in spite of the economy, to retain both young lawyers and more senior attorneys with books of business, Kouzes revealed what makes people committed to their organizations: values.

According to Kouzes, the first step in earning employees' commitment is the clarification of organizational values. His research indicates that people who are clear about their organization's values (and also their personal values) are significantly more committed to the organization than those individuals who are clear about their personal values but unclear about the organization’s values.

All leaders must, therefore, he contends, be crystal clear about what they stand for.  The lynch pin for making this approach effective, however, is that leaders must be credible—the troops have to sincerely believe that their leaders not only say their values, but also do what they say.

Tony O'Reilly, CEO of H.J. Heinz, said it this way:  "Nothing energizes an individual or a company more than clear goals and a grand purpose. Nothing demoralizes more than confusion and lack of content."

The concept of "organizational values" are often viewed with suspicion by lawyers, who smell something akin to partisanship or other lack of objectivity.  Values are not one of those protected statuses under Title VII.  You can legally proselytize (and hire and fire) "what we believe in."  But you have to start out knowing what that is.  And living it. 

Ahhh.  There's the rub.

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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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Of the gallons of ink dedicated to analyzing the eye-popping follies of Eliot Spitzer, by far the most trenchant view is contained in the March 14 New York Times OpEd piece by David Brooks. Permit me to quote whole sections of his article.

"Our social structure seems to produce significant numbers of people with rank-link imbalances. That is to say, they have all of the social skills required to improve their social rank, but none of the social skills that lead to genuine bonding. They are good at vertical relationships with mentors and bosses, but bad at horizontal relationships with friends and lovers.

[In school,] they rack up great grades and develop that coating of arrogance that forms on those who know that in the long run they will be more successful than the beauties and jocks who get dates.

Then they go into one of those fields like law, medicine or politics, where a person’s identity is defined by career rank. They develop the specific social skills that are useful on the climb up the greasy pole: the capacity to imply false intimacy; the ability to remember first names; the subtle skills of effective deference; the willingness to stand too close to other men while talking and touching them in a manly way.

And, of course, these people succeed and enjoy their success.

They treat their conversational partners the way the Nazis treated Poland. They crush initial resistance, and the onslaught of accumulated narcissism is finally too much to bear.

[But] then, gradually, some cruel cosmic joke gets played on them. They realize in middle age that their grandeur is not enough and that they are lonely. The ordinariness of their intimate lives is made more painful by the exhilaration of their public success. If they were used to limits in public life, maybe it would be easier to accept the everydayness of middle-aged passion. But, of course, they are not.

And so the crisis comes...

These Type A men are just not equipped to have normal relationships. All their lives they’ve been a walking Asperger’s Convention, the kings of the emotionally avoidant. Because of disuse, their sensitivity synapses are still performing at preschool levels.

So when they decide that they do in fact have an inner soul and it’s time to take it out for a romp ... . Well, let’s just say they’ve just bought a ticket on the self-immolation express. Some desperate lunge toward intimacy is sure to follow, some sad attempt at bonding. Welcome to the land of the wide stance."

 

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On February 12, 2008 Muir is scheduled to discuss with students at Northwestern University's Business Institutions Program how to improve decision-making.  Based in large part on the information contained in "Promoting an Effective Board or Management Group," the discussion will explore, among other subjects, optimal personality traits for good decision-making and how to avoid extreme decisions.

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In a report released October 1^st, Catalyst, a New York consultancy, found that Fortune 500 companies with at least three women on their boards strongly outperformed those companies with fewer or no women. Based on a study of four years of corporate results, the correlation was found to be so direct that the more women who serve on a board, the better the bottom line. 

The companies with the highest percentage of women on their boards had equity returns 53% higher, returns on sales 42% higher and returns on invested capital at least 66% higher than those companies with the least number of women board members. Higher returns kicked in once at least three women served on the corporation’s board, the study found, with companies having only three women board members raising each of those returns an average of 5% over corporations with fewer women.

Why would female board participation produce such concrete financial results? Various consultants and academics speculate that women are better able to understand the customer base, particularly of consumer goods companies, and that showcasing women on the board helps attract and retain women employees throughout the company. 

Another reason may well be women’s often strong collaboration skills, empowering them to better resolve conflict and move boards through the thorny discussions necessary to make and carry through critical decisions.

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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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According to Steve Davis, it all went pretty smoothly and quickly: negotiations in July and August, a preliminary agreement the last week of August, votes last Wednesday, September 26, and on Monday of this week, he became chairman of Dewey & LeBoeuf, the newest megafirm in the global law firm firmament, with 1300 lawyers, 26 offices in 12 countries, and a billion dollars in revenue.

So what accounts for this dramatically better outcome, compared to the Dewey/Orrick debacle-in-the-making that first hit the press last year this time? 

For starters, Davis credits the two firms’ long-standing familiarity with each other. No East Coast/West Coast mystique to decipher and reconcile in this case: the two firms were only two floors apart at 140 Broadway for years and had dealt with each other on myriad matters. With good relationships long established, people at both firms, Davis contends, “quickly understood the underlying strategic rationale” for a combination. 

Davis also believes Dewey & LeBoeuf enjoys another advantage that other recent megamergers did not. Both Dewey and LeBoeuf had high concentrations of lawyers in the same key markets—New York, London and Washington D.C. That’s an advantage? The beauty of the Dewey/Orrick merger was thought to have been little overlap, promising to produce that far-flung “globalness” instantly. Overlap, Davis contends, works in the firm’s favor. Unlike the “Noah’s Ark” that some combinations are left with—two of everything, with 1 in LA and 1 in Boston--Dewey & LeBoeuf’s geography is more likely to force the people and cultures at each key location to mesh.

D&L's executive committee of 22 is composed of 11 partners from each firm, and includes Morton Pierce, Dewey’s Managing Partner, with Davis in the chairman’s seat. After the Dewey/Orrick talks failed, Pierce’s management style was the subject of some bruising commentary, with particular notice given to the fact that he billed 3300 hours that year. See our February 7, 2007 entry “Talking to the Troops.” 

So what will management at Dewey & LeBoeuf be like? Davis is often described as managing “like a CEO,” a role which, perhaps in a reflection on the famous independence of lawyers, one LeBoeuf partner characterized as an “elected dictator.” 

Continue Reading...

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One of the requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley rules for publicly traded companies is that they demonstrate that they are promoting an "ethical culture" in the workplace.  What does that mean?

"The Manager's Book of Decencies:  How Small Gestures Build Great Companies" by Steve Harrison, chairman of Woodcliff Lake, N.J.-based Lee Hecht Harrison, the employee outplacement arm of Adecco Human Capital Solutions, a division of Adecco SA of Glattbrugg, Switzerland, is an attempt to answer that question.

Mr. Harrison's contends that an ethical culture is the result of many small, and sometimes large, gestures made over a long period of time, with the driving force coming from the top.

"Being decent isn't about being nice... or spending more money-- it's about treating people fairly," Harrison claims. He also believes that good role models at the top have certain common traits. Those Harrison acknowledges as outstanding role models are Colgate-Palmolive Co. chairman Reuben Mark, Nucor Corp.'s former CEO Kenneth Iverson (who died in 2002), Campbell Soup Co. president and CEO Douglas R. Conant, Southwest Airlines Co. chairman Herbert Kelleher, and Dial Corp.'s former president and CEO, Herbert Baum. 

These five leaders exhibit what Harrison calls a high level of "moral intelligence," which is marked by humility and honesty during both good times and bad.

If employers can pay attention to the issues that matter to their employees, "like finding some kind of fulfillment in the job they come in to day after day...then they're on their way to creating a culture of decency which is critical to attracting, retaining and engaging employees."

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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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Behavioral science is not often invoked in the halls of law departments, but maybe it should be.  Two recent articles highlight the importance to a GC's success of understanding why people think and act as they do.

General counsel are in the position of having to reconcile two jobs: being both a business partner in the management of the company's business and the guardian of the company's integrity.  One aspect of their work requires creativity, risk-taking and far-sightedness.  The other requires careful scrutiny of every corporate action in the short and long term for potential regulatory, liability and just plain reputation pitfalls.  Achieving high productivity with high integrity might strain even Superman's talents.

An article in Corporate Counsel by Ben W. Heineman Jr, former GE senior vice president-general counsel, entitled "How GCs Can Avoid Being Caught in the Middle" recites some of the recent scandals that attest to how difficult that balancing act can be:  the fraudulent financial practices at Enron, the pretexting at Hewlett-Packard Corp, and the wave of options backdating.

Perhaps what chilled GCs to the bone most recently were the guilty pleas by Purdue Pharma L.P., its president, GC and former chief medical officer to misleading the public about the drug OxyContin's risk of addiction.  They have agreed to pay a total of $634.5 million in fines.  Rather than relaying focus group concern about potential for abuse, Purdue Pharma gave false information to its sales representatives that the drug was less addictive than other painkillers.

Heineman mentions a number of attributes that can help GCs successfully straddle their two roles.   Vis-a-vis the other corporate managers, the GC must have the ability to stand his/her ground on clear illegalities and to make sure he/she has enough time to assess those situations that are not clear cut.  And GCs must be able to take those stands in the pressure-filled environment of a board meeting where the CEO is likely to be a ferocious skeptic and many board members will side with the CEO.  See our July 18, 2007 entry on Promoting an Effective Board about the importance of personal attributes in good decision-making.

The Texas Lawyer article "It's All in Your Head:  Cognitive Theory Can Help GCs Lead Organizations to Better Decisions" by Michael Maslanka, a managing partner at Ford & Harrison in Dallas, contends that a GC's real power--the ability to influence decisions-- comes from understanding the way people think, which requires tapping into cognitive science.

Maslanka lists a number of biases that people in general and managers specifically can suffer from if they aren't on the alert: 

• The bias that there is only one cause when something bad happens
• The tendency to focus on conclusions and generalities instead of specifics
• Hardwiring that makes it easy to believe accusations and hard to disbelieve them
•  A confirmation bias, which only admits facts that support our beliefs (and further reinforces our belief bias)
• Overreliance on what is first heard
• Resistance to change that can only be overcome with practice, practice, practice

Maslanka encourages GCs to be open to all possibilities and to question rather than dictate.  Heineman also points out the importance of maintaining within the law department a culture that welcomes, even requires, lawyers to raise concerns about financial, legal, ethical or reputational issues.  We refer to this as a "culture of dissent"-- one that invites concerns, follows up on them and does not punish anyone for raising them, but rather praises them.  See our March 16, 2007 entry on the article Handling Conflict and Dissent in Law Practice (and Life).

While it may not be mind reading, being cognitively aware of your own personal attributes and biases, as well as others', can help steer you toward that Superman performance to which all GCs aspire.

 

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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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Oddly enough, where it is most needed, Boards and other management groups may be the last frontier for achieving enhanced performance management. 

Historically, the perceived advantages of relying on a managing group, instead of one individual, include access to the group's collective wisdom –"several heads are better than one"–as well as the ability to spread an increasing management workload over a number of people. 

A recent Center for Creative Leadership study identified an additional advantage. Effective management these days requires the resources of several people, rather than the lone hero, in order to meet the global challenges of collaboratively connecting across boundaries of all kinds—geography, language, culture and expertise.

Avoiding "Extreme" Group Decision-Making

Yet there is a well-documented propensity for groups to drift toward "extreme" decisions, that is, a committee often makes a decision that none of the individual members of the committee, acting alone, would make. These group decisions can be extreme by being either extremely risky or extremely conservative, and you see lone Directors routinely disavowing their cohorts’ actions after the fact. There seem to be a number of reasons for this tendency:          

Diffusion of Responsibility. An individual's part in a group's decision evidently weighs less heavily on him/her than an individual decision would, the implication being that not as thorough an evaluation of the issues is made when the decision is attributed to the group.

Ignoring the Lone Voice. Often groups do not properly take into account the most relevant expertise in the room.   Most small groups tend to make decisions based on the information all members share about a topic, overlooking important facts that one or several people bring. Although management committees are usually looking for creative, out-of-the-box strategies, a solitary opinion is often taken lightly or ignored in the flow of debate within the group.

Social Pressure. The more bonded the group, the more committed they are likely to be to reaching a decision, particularly one that pleases most of the members, even if a decision should be delayed or a less pleasing one would in fact be best. 

Competition. When committee members agree on the parameters of an issue, individuals may try to one-up each other by suggesting more and more extreme solutions, then promoting their solution as the best.

Stress. Groups under pressure act very much like individuals under stress, only more so. They often procrastinate, calling for further information, or become committed to bad decisions primarily to protect themselves and each other against criticism. This effect may account for the popular notion that committees tend to "split the baby," resulting in a less controversial solution that does not in fact work very well.

Seeing What Others Say

The impact of psychological factors on group decision making may go even further, to actually alter each person’s perceptions. A study using advanced brain-scanning technology shows that, in effect, group members often in fact see what the group tells them they see. In an exercise involving mentally rotating images of three-dimensional objects to determine if the objects were the same or different, subjects were assured of an incorrect conclusion by confederates and then agreed with those wrong answers 41% of the time. The brain activity of those who went along with the group was markedly different from those who took independent positions. When subjects concurred with wrong answers, activity increased in the area of the brain devoted to spatial awareness, meaning that their actual perceptions were being influenced. Those who made independent judgments showed activity in the region of the brain associated with conflict management, signifying an emotional toll for going against the group's perception.

Based on the results of this study, one of the potential major advantages of a group decision—"several heads are better than one"—can disappear if the group successfully, even if unintentionally, co-opts individual insights. The most problematic aspect of these results is that not only does the group lose the "lone voices," but also the lone voices lose their very awareness of their differing perspectives. The change in their perception makes them incapable of raising their idiosyncratic flags.

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Ronda Muir, Senior Consultant, led a two and a half day retreat at the end of May for UNICEF's 22-person Armenia office to help them better serve the country's children.  She was engaged to improve teamwork, communication and conflict resolution and to assist in the office's preparation for upcoming reviews and its transitioning to potential structural and policy changes. 

Through the use of individual and team MBTI work style reports, personal conflict style assessments, emotional intelligence tests and a confidential office-wide survey, Muir assisted the team in identifying personal and office strengths and challenges and in determining strategies for improved communication, conflict management and change management.

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Should lawyers “do the right thing” in addition to “being right”?  A favorite cartoon depicts two lawyers at a desk evidently discussing strategy. One lawyer says to the other: “Is it right?… Is it fair?  Get a grip, Carlton—we’re a law firm!”

Integrity

In an interesting study issued recently, the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence found that financial advisors who demonstrated high levels of “moral and emotional competency” nearly doubled the S&P 500 return on their client portfolios in the years 2001 through 2004, delivering an average return of 25%. 

Of the various attributes studied, integrity had the single strongest impact on client returns. “Results showed that Integrity was the key behavioral competency which predicted the most positive returns for clients." 

Integrity was defined as acting consistently with what one says is important, in other words “walking the talk.”  An example was an advisor willing to give up a lucrative client rather than compromise his/her principles, such as ultimately recommending that a client seek advice from another advisor because the advisor could not in good conscience implement a plan believed to put the client at significant financial risk.

Ethics

In the process of updating his 1996 book The Honest Hour: The Ethics of Time-Based Billing by Attorneys, William George Ross determined that lawyers in 2007 are significantly more likely than a decade ago to pad their bills with unnecessary hours or bill two clients for the same time. Almost 55% (up from 40%) of associates and partners surveyed report performing unnecessary work, and 35% (up from 23%) say they bill two clients for the same time. The number of lawyers who believe double billing is ethical also rose from 35% in 1996 to 48%, and more than two-thirds of lawyers say they have specific knowledge of bill-padding by others.   

Morals

In a May 2, 2007 Law.com article entitled “From Moral Partners to a Moral Firm”, Gregory S. Gallopoulos, the managing partner of Jenner & Block, suggests that the integrated enterprise model that many successful law firms are adopting now, in which strategy and vision belong to the entity as a whole rather than to individual partners, risks producing a vacuum in the area of firm morals. 

Continue Reading...

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Ronda Muir, Senior Consultant, has been asked by UNICEF's Armenia office to lead a two and a half day retreat at the end of May to help improve teamwork, communication and conflict resolution. Through the use of individual and team MBTI reports and emotional intelligence assessments, Muir will help the team identify personal and office strengths and challenges and determine strategies for improved communication and conflict management in order to better serve the country's children.

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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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Give yourself the advantages that insights from sophisticated behavioral science tools and informed collaboration can produce.  Out of ideas for how to motivate your team?  Can't take another day with a difficult boss or colleague?  Strung out from too many committments and not enough time?  Looking for a meaningful way to both practice law and live your life?

Achieve improvements in your professional and personal life, including progress in leadership and management skills, work/life balance, conflict management, business development and time and resources management. 

Our experienced lawyer coaches use their expertise and assessments to give you the tools to maximize your strengths, raise your emotional intelligence and social IQ, as well as benefit your bottom-line results.  You choose the program that best suits your needs and schedule.

For further information, contact RMuir@RobinRolfeResources.com. 

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Ronda Muir, Esq., Senior Consultant at Robin Rolfe Resources, was featured as a speaker at a conference on Risk Management for the Modern Law Firm, sponsored by ARK Group. The conference was held in Chicago on April 17 and 18, 2007. 

Muir's presentation was on the risks that arise in managing a law firm's greatest asset: its people. She pointed out the ways in which lawyers are different from all other professionals, the challenges and risks that those differences pose to management, and how to use those differences to make good lawyers better. 

Participants raved:

• "Innovative, new information!"
• "Excellent, new material of real value.  I would love even more detail and time on this topic."
• "Great presentation!" 
• "Great speaker!  Knowledgeable and forward thinking."

ARK Group also lauded Muir's participation: "Your involvement was pivotal to the success of the program… and brought a fresh perspective to the agenda."  

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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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Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose
by Rajendra Sisodia, David Wolfe and Jagdish N. Sheth contends that companies with more emotionally intelligent employees have stronger bottom line performance than those who don't.  David Wolfe can be a controversial adviser, and some have suggested that being recognized as a good corporate citizen should be sufficient reward for conscientious organizations, without having to convince themselves that both their individual psyches are above par and that their bottom line improves as well.

Regardless of the sniping, the underlying research makes the FoE claims believable.  High EI clearly hits the bottom line. Ninety percent of top individual performers across industries have high EI whereas only 20% of low performers do. Those who raise their EI are roughly 25% more productive than before.   Insurance agents who score high on EI sell twice as much in policy premiums as agents who score lower. Managers at American Express Financial Advisors who complete a training program focusing on one's own and others' emotional reactions achieve significantly higher rates of growth in funds under management than their untrained peers.

Plus, data suggests that employees who are emotionally intelligent are more likely to access and profit from feedback, helping them achieve more over time.

So the logic of companies who have more emotionally intelligent employees out-performing their lower EI brethren (and sisters) certainly makes sense.

The application to law firms and law departments, where checking one's emotions at the door is standard procedure, is obvious-- more emotional intelligence--whether hired, trained, or promoted-- will not only improve culture but produce bottom-line results.

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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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A recent study conducted by the Center for Creative Leadership found that effective leadership has changed over the last five years. Eighty-four percent (84%) of those polled said leaders today are valued for collaboration skills, such as building and mending relationships, rather than solitary heroics, the standard five years ago. Specifically important is being able to "enhance co-worker relationships." This change is due, according to those surveyed, to the more far-flung demands of leadership, which often go beyond an individual's capability, creating a need to work interdependently with others across boundaries—geographic, language, cultural, and expertise.

Law firm and law departments would do well to take note of this study-- "leader" is often a designation born out of unrelated circumstances-- a lawyer has extra time, was good at revenue production so will maybe be good at this too, or is simply senior, none of which relates to his or her ability to build a collaborative organization that supports individuals and teams. 

In a recent interview, Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ and more recently Social Intelligence, commented on the error many make in choosing leadership:  "Too many organizations are rather naive about the ingredients of leadership and make the classic mistake of assuming that someone who is an outstanding individual contributor would therefore be an outstanding leader. If they're an outstanding individual contributor, keep them as an individual contributor. Give them a raise," he says emphatically.

This study brings that point home in spades.

 

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The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching summarizes its two-year study of the North American legal education system by concluding that "law school provides the beginning, not the full development, of students' professional competence and identity.  At present, what most students get as a beginning is insufficient."

The report recommends "a dynamic curriculum that moves [students] back and forth between understanding and enactment, experience and analysis," integrating traditional classes with clinical approaches to legal education.  Yale Law School, City University of New York School of Law and NYU were recognized for having balanced curricula.

Given the recent changes in a number of law schools' curricula, one commentator asked whether this "problem" wasn't already on its way to being solved.  Others asked why the Foundation had not addressed the perennial questions of improved ethics and relationship training and whether law school could be shortened to two years.

In an essay in the January 8, 2007 edition of the National Law Journal, 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."  He notes that rising legal fees discourage over-the-shoulder training and rising salaries push young lawyers towards early specialization in order to be more productive.  He advocates a third year of broad and interrelated training that heps students learn how to function, as well as think, like lawyers.

Shortening law school to two years would produce a larger number of graduates to feed the maws of Wall Street and perhaps reduce tensions in the retention wars.  But more "personal relations" and "client management" types of course targeted to raising the emotional intelligence and relationship skills of law graduates would be the most direct and dramatic route to both increased attorney productivity and increased attorney and client satisfaction. 

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In a study conducted last fall of managing partners, general counsel, and other legal leaders, Altman Weil identified five key market trends and critical concerns.  It noted that people management was one of the highest priorities on everyone's list, with one partner saying that he goes to sleep "never knowing who might be leaving tomorrow."  The limited pool of quality law graduates, the "free-agent mentality" of lawyers from new associates to rainmakers, Gen-Xers emphasizing work-life balance and achieving diversity were all cited as challenges to people management by this august group. 

To my mind, the other four critical areas identified-- growth, competition, client service and even pricing-- are also each dependent on achieving effective people management.  Growth requires wrestling with "cultural, office and practice integration," competition is felt most dramatically in the "war for talent," with quality people, superior client service skills and strong training and development programs giving firms the competitive edge.   Client service requires superior communication and relationship, among other, skills, and "improved project staffing." (See our entry today on KPMG's success with their staffing model.)  Even pricing is acknowledged as a function of the quality of a firm's work and service-- which general counsel have consistently linked to people skills.  (See our entries Do You Know Why You Were Fired? dated November 8, 2005 and Companies Unhappy with Their Law Firms dated December 20, 2006.)

So why do law firms and law departments not take advantage of the extensive body of expertise available on hiring, retaining, developing and motivating people?  Maybe, as David Maister has suggested, it is the herd instinct that keeps them from going for the glory-- rather go down as a group than risk a "new-fangled" approach.  Interestingly enough, that is what our psychological profiles of lawyers tell us-- that they are risk-averse, often low in resilience, optimism, and emotional intelligence, all of which has helped mire them in an 18th-century business model. 

Here's the question-- which firms will be the real leaders, the ones who actually take the out-of-the-legal-box steps toward addressing these critical people management areas?  Because there seems to be a consensus that that is the only effective way forward.

 

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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 April 1955, Dean of Harvard Law School Erwin Griswold noted, "Many lawyers never seem to understand they’re dealing with people and not solely with impersonal law” -- a comment that unfortunately continues to ring true today, when the legal profession’s reputation suffers from an image characterized by a lack of interpersonal sensibilities. 

One of the first law school courses in the nation to apply human relations training to law was taught by Professor Howard Sacks at Northwestern Law School during the 1957-58 school year. The two-week course, entitled "Professional Relations," was offered without credit. Professor Sacks appealed to other law teachers to join in his experiment, both by offering stand-alone courses and integrating human relations training into the regular law curriculum. But a law review article written by Harvard Law Professor Alan Stone in 1971 noted that "law schools . . . have largely ignored the responsibility of teaching interviewing, counseling, negotiating, and other human relations skills." 

Legal academics continue to take the position that lawyers must learn to be more effective interpersonally. As Vanderbilt University Law Professor Chris Guthrie summarizes it, "Lawyers are analytically oriented, [and] emotionally and interpersonally underdeveloped."

It’s more than just a matter of being “nice.” Our survey of Emotional Intelligence and Excellence in Lawyering shows lawyers who are listed in Best Lawyers in America score significantly higher in emotional intelligence than the average lawyer. There’s excellence in that intelligence.

To participate in our study, see our entry “Emotional Intelligence and Excellence in Lawyering” under the topic Emotional Intelligence.

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