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A Puzzle
Leadership for lawyers is a hard nut to crack.
It is a puzzle about how to write about lawyers learning to manage and to lead at work in a way that resonates with you, the practising lawyer.
How do I break through the resistance in the legal profession to talk about the value of a lawyer's work, to both themself and to their legal workplace including what is beyond the performance of technical legal work? So that I can share with you the EQ strategies and insights that can help you thrive rather than survive in your legal career.
I am proposing what can be best described as a self-development EQ strategy. This is vital to implement given the legal profession's "emotional immaturity".
The SmarterKinder strategy is a sophisticated professional development strategy which is more nuanced than simply the development of relevant work EQ skills. The working culture features of individual legal organisations, as they impact working lawyers, is also interrogated and considered on an individual basis using the tools developed in my PhD.
Time for the Profession to Grow Up:
I am back. This time not to be silenced because the legal profession must step up and grow up so as find a better way to support the wellbeing of its people as they navigate their careers. And to care more about what happens to young lawyers in the first five years of their legal working lives and beyond.
To Feel Smarter and Think Kinder about its own people (SmarterKinder).
I will explore this conundrum in my future writing.
After facing into blunt indifference about my PhD research findings, in how lawyers learn to manage and lead at work, and what kind of learning support is most suitable I chose to prove my methodology outside the profession and to build my own resilience muscle.
Self Preservation EQ Development Strategy
My key message is that to thrive rather than survive in your legal career you need to be smarter in how your use your emotional intelligence and think kinder about yourself (SmarterKinder). What do I mean?
The first step is to start with you - to understand that you can make your work better for yourself. And doing this has its own inherent value.
The second step is to decide whether there is a benefit to you and your workplace in sharing this task initiative.
The third step follows when you decide there can be a mutual benefit. It then is important to construct an effective engagement strategy within the existing workplace and organisational culture.
The final step is acceptance of your initiative by the workplace and organisational formal leadership structure.
Facing into the Uncomfortable Truth
The Abstract of my PhD, Hann, D., (2007) Lawyers Practising Learning: Reshaping Continuing Legal Education" states that:
"Lawyers learn at work, a point not adequately recognised by the Legal Education literature. Thus, a workplace, or learning curriculum, for lawyers is often overlooked. There is a concomitant failure to address meaningful workplace learning for lawyers, to improve their operational insight, and to enhance their work-based learning opportunities and well-being. This preferable approach would equip lawyers to become better practitioners and encourage the participation of master practitioners...
This qualitative study investigates the significance of lawyers’ learning at work experiences in shaping their work in managing and leading others and what kinds of educative support will be useful " (piii).
Leaderwork - Lawyers Own Voices and actions when doing the work of leading
Many Legal workplaces do not provide adequate professional development for their lawyers because of a failure to:
address meaningful workplace learning
improve lawyers' operational insight by inadequately understanding lawyers competing roles and dual identity
enhance their wellbeing with better practice professional learning
recognise when self-initiated work improvements are contributing to the benefit of the workplace and the legal profession.
My proposition is that we all undertake leadership type as working professionals. I call this Leaderwork as a means to differentiate it from leadership roles with positional authority. Even here legal organisations can even have a contradictory position, when lawyers do hold official management roles, as discussed elsewhere.
My Professional Development approach is to invite you to step out of your legal workplace for a day, away from your busy complex professional life, and take a deep breath. Next to your 500 kilo Leaderwork guide.
With the help of some highly trained equine guides we can explore your work of leading. Away from the work noise. And the complexity of your own work culture. If your legal organisation is prepared to engage in this exploration then greater insights and organisational outcomes are possible in our work together. If not, that's also fine.
We will use a customised Job Crafting method and tools, Leaderwork Job Crafting Exercise that provides a scaffolding for you to use to recognise and define your own Job Crafting experiences.
Our goal is that you will be better equipped to thrive in your daily work. A focus on Leaderwork can provide clarity about the thinking and people skills you need to move forward in your career: Feel Smarter Think Kinder.
An Equine Experiential Education approach will provide you with hands on experience as you explore and work with your own unique leading style and strengths. The horses will provide instant honest non-judgmental feedback. Horses look for the leader in the herd. We encourage you to experiment, even play around with the notions of what it takes to lead, to be a leader.
Examples of Universal Work Issues
Below is a short introduction to some of the learning to manage and lead work issues lawyers face into which can be explored in our workshops.
We are the Wheels
One senior associate described her dual identity challenge as follows: "we are the wheels as well". Her dilemma in navigating this dual role is compounded by the fact that, for most lawyers who are working in legal organisations, thinking and talking about your work in the context of being a leader (or manager) is not condoned and certainly not encouraged. Neither is the work itself necessarily valued or appreciated. If it is not legal work in the strict technical sense then the work has no status.
So there is a double bind for the lawyer learning to lead other people in the work they do. You are most probably not permitted to see yourself as a leader and a manager. And further your allegiance is expected to be to the technical work of the law first.
"It’s just Mickey-Mouse. It’s just a bit of Mickey-mouse what I am doing at the moment. And that goes to show you how much value they place on organisational development. And things like that. Their concern is work flow, bums on seats in court, getting the work out. Which is right. And they complain that they don’t have much thinking time at all. (L11)".
#Does your workplace consider your management and leadership work to be "mickey-mouse"?
The Real Stuff
A lawyer with a formal management position described the dilemma as follows: "A difficulty is that I find that managers don’t really see themselves as managers. They see themselves first as technicians and lawyers. They are task focussed, generally, not people focussed. Most of them have never heard of what a KRA is or a KPI. They don’t have the business plan or the action plan in mind. They don’t seem to have the big picture in minds in terms of staff development. … and in fairness to them they are the most committed bunch of people you would ever get in the workplace and that’s their problem in a lot of respects because they are committed to the actual minutiae of work that they see anything that is not work related as not having much status. Even the present role I am doing now. Everybody keeps on saying ‘when are you getting back to the real stuff?’ (L 11-7) 0)
#Do you value your management work?
#Do others value your management work in your workplace?
Back Yourself
Back yourself in and jump start the next stage of your career. Join us for a day and share your unique insights and skills.
The Equine (EQ) Link
Equine Experiential Education programs can significantly assist people to draw on their unique strengths and attributes and tap into their job crafting and leaderwork capabilities. Equine assisted Team building exercises can enhance this work.
Deborah Hann
21 December 2023
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