Lawyers as Leaders is a series of articles dedicated to helping lawyers become leaders of their organizations and firms.
There is a saying that a leader without followers is just a person taking a walk. Unfortunately, many lawyers consider themselves leaders without fully understanding the time, dedication, and long-term commitment true leadership requires. As lawyers assume leadership and managerial roles in their firms or legal departments, they should take six steps to ensure their teams trust their leadership and are motivated to accomplish the team’s objectives and goals. These steps are:
- Understand the Why. As a leader of a team, you must understand the team’s mission. In other words, why does the team exist and what is its purpose? Are you preparing a company for bankruptcy or drafting the annual report? Managing the blocking and tackling of daily legal issues or dealing with ‘bet the company’ litigation? These are extreme examples where different and varied skill sets, temperaments, expertise, and levels of strategic thinking will be required. Unless you, as the leader, understand the goals assigned to the team, you will not be able to educate your team on why accomplishing these goals is important, and why each member is integral to achieving it. Always remember–if you don’t the understand the why, you (and your team) can’t be expected to develop the how.
- Listen. It is rare a leader gets to build his or her team from scratch. Rather, leaders are typically assigned teams to manage. When assuming leadership of a team, one of your primary tasks must not only be to understand the professional experience and expertise of each team member, you must also get to know each team member personally, specifically what excites them about their current job, and what will motivate them to execute the action items the team has been asked to accomplish. The most effective way to obtain this information is simple—ask questions and listen. Schedule no less than 60 minutes with each team member and ask them about their career path, interests (professionally and personally), strengths, weaknesses, and short and long-term goals. The information you get from taking the time to get to know each individual team member will provide a treasure trove of invaluable information regarding how best to motivate and inspire each member of the team. Exceptional leaders understand that the same approach will not work for everyone. For example, a lawyer on your team who has been practicing law for thirty years should require a different level of engagement and oversight than a lawyer who is just a few years out of law school. It is your job to appreciate these differences and see what each team member needs from you and the organization to stay motivated and engaged.
- Get the Right People into the Right Roles. Once the strategic goal has been established and you have made the time and effort to get to know each member of your team, it is your job to set up each team member for success by ensuring each has been tasked with responsibilities and expectations that are consistent with their experience, expertise, and abilities. Do you have somebody on your team that likes to focus on the ‘big picture” and has a strong strategic mindset? If so, the best role for that person may not be proofreading a 10-K. Indeed, if you ask the strategic thinker on your team, who is not detail-oriented, to address such a detail focused task, any failure by that person rests with you. Every goal, no matter how large or small, requires different skill sets–personally and professionally. Your team may have members who are nimble and thrive in every situation and members who can only do one thing at a time (and only when asked). It is your job to not pile all the work on your stars (or only those that remind you of you), but to identify how best to delegate and assign the work that needs to get done to those best equipped and suited to get such work done. In other words, while it’s important to assemble the right team, it is even more important that each team member has the right role in advancing the team’s success. For example, while the strategic thinker on your team may be indispensable if you need to develop the team’s long-term goals, he or she may bring less value if the task at hand is reviewing detailed and dense memoranda or case law. An effective leader understands where each member will thrive, and that the more diversity of skills, thought, experience, background, and knowledge the team has, the greater the opportunity for success.
- Stay Out of the Way. Once each team member has been assigned a task that is commensurate with his or her experience, expertise, and temperament, your job as a leader is to get out of the way and let them accomplish their goals. Micromanaging the team will not only breed frustration and resentment, it will negate all of the effort you dedicated to finding the right person for the right role. Assuming you have followed the steps described above, each team member has been set up for success because each understands the goals of the team, their assigned tasks, and, as importantly, that the tasks they were assigned align with their particular needs and abilities. If that’s the case, there is no need to micromanage since you’ve positioned each person to the best of your ability. Furthermore, if any squabbling occurs between team members, you should strive to let these team members resolve their differences on their own. If you jump in at every opportunity to address challenges or resolve discord, members of your team will never acquire the necessary skills they need to become true leaders of the organization.
- Engage in Collaborative Decision Making. As the team executes its goals, they may run into obstacles, including office politics, where they need your guidance or a helping hand. When team members seek you out, do not begrudgingly or curtly share your views on how best to resolve their problems. While the easiest thing for you to do is to quickly solve each team member’s problems and move on to the next issue, this would be a disservice to the team and each member’s professional development. Rather, you want to engage in a collaborative dialogue where you help each team member manage and resolve issues on their own. An effective leader guides a team member to solve his or her own problems by asking questions and highlighting false assumptions and blind spots. Take time so each team member feels comfortable and confident that every decision the team makes, especially when managing through internal and external roadblocks, is a collaborative and thoughtful decision.
- Be Humble and Inquisitive. No leader has all the answers and those that think they do are typically not effective. Your team will have insights, observations, and recommendations outside of your expertise. That is OK and should be celebrated. To extract the most value from this certainty, you, as the leader of the team, should create an open dialogue with each team member where each feels absolutely comfortable sharing where they disagree with you and where you may have a blind spot. These are awkward discussions to have, which is why you must encourage each team member to always to be forthright and direct. If every single member of your team doesn’t feel you will be receptive to constructive feedback, your leadership, and ultimately your team, will suffer the consequences. For this reason, on a regular basis, you should check in with each team member and pressure test if they are receiving the appropriate resources and support from you to accomplish the team’s goals. If the answer is no, it is your job to adjust responsibilities, resources, and possibly your attitude, accordingly.
