During my ten years of coaching women lawyers to achieve partnership, I’ve learned many secrets about how to cross this threshold. Women lawyers consistently say that exclusion from informal networks and lack of mentoring are among the most significant obstacles to career advancement. Firms have tried to address this by creating all varieties of mentoring programs: formally assigned mentor-mentee programs, mentoring circles and group mentoring are common. Still, the percentage of women partners in large law firms remains stalled.

I’ve written elsewhere about the multiple barriers to the advancement of women in their firms (See Lawyers Life Coach) From my perspective, one very significant reality is that having a mentor does not guarantee career progress. This is very troubling. As surprising as it may be to those firms that have paid consultants to design elaborate mentoring programs—to say nothing of the costs of the time invested in actual mentoring activities—it comes as an even greater shock to the woman lawyer who has been a dutiful mentee only to discover she is not being considered for promotion.

Not All Aspects Of Mentoring Lead To Career Success

Mentoring may serve many different functions. It can enhance an attorney’s career prospects by increasing her human capital, that is, helping her develop job-related knowledge, skills and abilities. Prior to the establishment of the current law school curriculum, this is how most lawyers were trained. Many of the woman lawyers I’ve coached over the years have found excellent mentors, either within or outside of their firms, to assist them in refining their analytical and writing skills. However, studies of mentoring in law firms indicate that this aspect of mentoring is insufficient to enable women to reach the highest levels of law-firm leadership.¹

Mentoring can also help integrate attorneys into the workplace. Lawyers whose mentors “show them the ropes,” by helping them negotiate the organization and providing insider information about organizational politics, benefit from this kind of support. Given the enormous work burdens and time constraints facing most senior attorneys, this mentoring function is now typically provided by more senior associates. Many firm mentoring programs assign “buddies” to new attorneys to help them more quickly and easily become integrated into the firm. However, there is no evidence that this kind of mentoring is significantly associated with career advancement or compensation.

Having A Sponsor Is Crucial

A third function of mentoring is that of increasing the protégé’s social capital. No less an expert that Robert J. Grey, Jr. (ABA President, 2004-2005) once told me that the most crucial ingredient for career advancement—especially for a woman or minority attorney—is having an advocate: someone with power who will watch the young attorney’s back and campaign for her behind the scene.²

The mentee’s career benefits when her mentor provides a junior attorney access to his network, facilitates her participation in collaborative projects, promotes her to others thereby augmenting her visibility and credibility, protects and champions her behind the scenes, provides challenging and highly noticeable work assignments, brings her along on client meetings and ensures that she plays an active role, and by association signals her legitimacy to decision-makers. A mentor like this functions as a sponsor. Unfortunately, in my experience, I’ve found few law firm mentoring programs that focus on this critical role.

Yet having a sponsor makes all the difference in enabling women to advance to full equity partnership. Among the first questions I ask all the women law firm attorneys I coach is, “Do you have a sponsor?” If the answer is “no” then, assuming her goal is to advance, this becomes a top agenda item. Establishing mentoring relationships with high-level, powerful insiders is essential for women pursuing career advancement in the legal profession.³

Studies of the relationship between mentoring and the career success of women in professional service firms, and law firms in particular, suggest that a senior male attorney is likely to most effectively fill this mentoring role.⁴ If for no other reason than the fact that the overwhelming majority of law firm partners and leaders are men, this is probably not very surprising. However, the gendered culture of law firms also influences the differential effects of male vs. female mentors for the careers of women attorneys. Success in most firms requires the ability to thrive in a highly competitive, aggressive, individualistic, “heroic” culture. Attributes stereotypically associated with masculine behavior are viewed as indicators of potential and “fit.” Decision-makers always have imperfect information about candidates for advancement. In the absence of sufficient, objective information to allow for a rational means of discriminating among aspiring attorneys, having a powerful male mentor signals to the predominantly male leadership that a woman lawyer possesses those sought-after competencies and qualities typically associated with her male peers.

I have often observed this male-sponsorship effect. Yet many women lawyers who hope to become firm shareholders don’t have a sponsor, a fact which constantly surprises me. Research indicates that women with senior male mentors are more likely to advance and to receive higher compensation. In contrast, the career attainment of male lawyers is not significantly affected by having a senior male mentor.⁵

Furthermore, formal mentoring programs are unlikely to help women reap the benefit of this mentoring function. Rather, the voluntary selection of a protégé by a senior male signals to other firm leaders that she possesses those qualities believed to be requirements for success.⁶

Interestingly, the assumption that women do not have access to such mentoring has not been entirely supported by recent research. At least at mid- to senior-associate levels, male and female lawyers may be equally likely to find senior men to mentor them. The disparity in the representation of men and women in the upper levels of law firms may well be occurring early in the career cycle.⁷ It seems likely that high attrition among women and women of color during their fourth and fifth years at firms is in part a response to their difficulty obtaining needed sponsorship. It is possible that senior men only mentor women who seem to be doing well beyond this crucial juncture. Further research is needed in order to determine the best way to guide young women with partnership ambitions. Should we advise them not to expect senior males to sponsor them during their early associate years or to more aggressively seek out such advocacy?

Women Need More Than Sponsors

Either way, women also need to know that while the sponsorship of a powerful senior male attorney is likely to facilitate career advancement, it does not appear to prepare women well for assuming the role and identity of partner, nor inspire the confidence and satisfaction it is supposed to bring. The lack of women at the highest levels leaves many new women partners without a clear picture of how to “act the part.”⁸ Without models for self-presentation, women can become less confident and more anxious. In addition, male mentors typically fail to provide a fourth function of mentoring: the “psychosocial” function, which includes social support, role-modeling and advice concerning role ambiguity and work-family conflict. Research indicates that this function is better served by women mentors.⁹

Unfortunately, the scarcity of women partners can make finding this kind of mentoring even more difficult than obtaining career-advancement sponsorship from a man. In addition, many junior women do not identify with the work-family models offered by senior women. And senior women are often concerned about the risks to their own career of spending political capital on someone unproven. Work and family demands may also place much more burden on their time.

Peer mentoring can address this gap. Sometimes women can obtain this kind of role modeling and support through women’s bar groups or women lawyers’ leadership coaching groups. Since 2004, 6-10 women have been participating on a bi-monthly conference call that I facilitate. They receive coaching, support, advice, models and alternatives to assist them in developing their identity as leaders and their effectiveness in managing others. “Graduates” have gone on to lead practice groups, build satellite offices for their firms, and increase their leadership responsibilities in corporate legal departments. Every one either had already developed a mentoring relationship with a senior male sponsor or used the help of the group to do so. And having grabbed the brass ring, their peers in the coaching group helped them take on and feel confident in their new leadership identity.

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But mentoring is not coaching. At its core, mentoring is person- focused. It is about supporting associate participation and career advancement. Coaching is job-focused. It is about improving associate performance and developing skills. Mentors advise; coaches instruct. Both are equally valuable. The big difference between the two is that mentoring frequently happens in the practice of law while coaching does not.

Coaching can be used to improve performance in just about every aspect of the practice of law: writing, analysis, oral advocacy, time management, leadership, and business development. Coaching is time- and attention-intensive, but the investment of both rewards the coach and the associate. Coaching can be used to correct or enhance performance, or both. Firms often turn to coaching to “fix” a problem. For example, an associate with excellent overall performance may have a specific deficit—writing, organization, communication—that needs to be improved in order to meet firm expectations. In baseball, imagine a Golden Glove shortstop who hits under .200 year after year. Although his manager values the player’s fielding skills, the team needs the player to hit more effectively to be of full value to the team so they hire a batting coach.

But firms can also use coaching more strategically to maximize the performance of talented attorneys who are already doing well. In this scenario, incremental improvement can be very profitable in terms of increased efficiency, increased productivity, and higher quality work at higher rates. Think about the baseball manager who brings in skill-specific coaches to improve his shortstop’s batting average from .300 to .325, make him a smarter base runner, and decrease the number of fielding errors by 50%. That’s how All-Stars are made. Do that with enough players and you’ll have a winning team.

To correct performance, firms often bring in outside coaches who have specific subject-matter expertise and well-developed coaching skills. Sometimes, an outside expert is the way to go. But this is not always the most cost-effective approach. Firms that want to use coaching to strategically enhance performance would benefit greatly by incorporating coaching into the roles and responsibilities of senior attorneys. Of course, coaching is itself a skill that, like any other, must be consciously and continuously developed.

A coach begins by assessing lawyer performance, then uses that assessment to identify specific performance objectives, and finally provides step-by-step instruction and evaluation to achieve those objectives.

Begin With An Initial Assessment To Identify Performance Objectives

If you are interested in coaching a colleague, the most important thing to remember is that you have to begin with who, what and where that individual is now. You have to understand the person’s individual history, knowledge, and experience as well as his or her inherent characteristics and talents. First, find out how others view the individual’s performance by reviewing evaluations and interviewing supervisors and peers. Ask questions that get beyond general descriptions like, “He’s a weak writer” or, “She’s not a persuasive speaker.”

Second, look at any objective data: time sheets, realization rates, billing rates, and work assignments. Third, if possible, conduct your own assessment of the individual’s performance by reviewing work she has written, observing her give a presentation, or running her through a role-play or sample scenario. Finally, walk the individual through a self-evaluation. Most people know their own weaknesses: they know what makes them struggle, and what makes them uncomfortable. At the end of this process, you should have a list of specific deficits or performance concerns that the individual needs to work on.

Because coaching is performance-based, you have to know the expected or desired level of performance. Many law firms have articulated their performance standards as benchmarks or core competencies. If the firm has not expressed these standards, use the interviewing process and your own experiences to articulate what performance is expected or desired. You and the associate both need to understand the goal and how performance will be measured.

Next, work with the individual to set performance goals. Here, you play the coach as motivator. The best coaches help lawyers envision the practitioners they might become. The performance goals should be well-defined and designed to move that particular person to the next level of expected or desired performance.

By comparing the desired performance with the actual performance, you should discover the performance gap.

Fix The Performance Gap In Four Steps

Coaching, which is both practical and experiential, begins after the performance gap is identified.

Step One: Identify the functional problem. To do this, you have to break down and examine the mechanics of the actual and the desired performance.

For example, in baseball, a batting coach working with our shortstop will look at the position of the hands, arms, and elbows; the angle of the bat; the distance from the plate; the balance of weight over the feet; the stance; the visual focus; the hand speed; the cut of the bat through the air; and the follow through. Similarly, a coach working with an attorney on legal writing will look at the person’s knowledge of the law, ability to find and understand the law and to gather and understand the facts, use of authority, expression of the facts, articulation of reasoning, as well as the more obvious details of organization, headings, citation format, sentence structure, word usage, grammar, and proofing.

Once you have identified all of the functional components of the performance gap, prioritize the order in which they will be addressed. Anyone who has ever taken golf lessons knows that it is impossible to fix an incorrect grip, stance, swing, and follow through all at the same time.

Step Two: Show and instruct. Having identified the functional problem(s), describe the problem(s) to the individual. He needs to know what needs to be changed, why, and what the new result will look like. Then, tell him how to change it. Even better, show him how to change it. Following your list of priorities, do this for only one or two functional components at a time.

Step Three: Practice, feedback, practice, feedback. Coaching provides high quality feedback that supports the development of skills. True performance improvement takes time and repetition. Just telling a person she is doing something wrong and telling her how to do it right is not enough to create change. The individual must have opportunities to practice what you teach her. As she practices, you need to keep giving her feedback on what is working and what is not. You also need to solicit her input. Does she understand the instruction? Does she understand how to apply it? Is it comfortable? Does it make sense? Does she think it is working? To enhance the coaching relationship, you need to know what the associate perceives as challenges or obstacles to her improvement, and to engage her in the process.

Step Four: Assess and refine. After the individual has had time to work on his performance, step back and assess. Has the performance gap been closed? Is the individual’s performance meeting or exceeding the desired level of performance? If so, great! If not, figure out why. Go back through Step One. Did you correctly identify the functional components of the performance problem? Did you correctly prioritize them? Then, go back over Step Two. Was the change that you suggested the right change? Did the individual really understand what you wanted him to do? Was he committed to making the change? If not, why not? Is there a different correction that you can suggest, or a different way to explain it? Once you have shifted the instruction, go through Step Three again.

Repeat these four steps until the desired performance is achieved. Once the performance has improved, move on to the next performance goal.

Coaching Has Reciprocal Benefits

Coaching is a strategic tool that maximizes a lawyer’s potential in ways that benefit both the individual attorney and the firm. For the individual attorney, coaching increases competence, facilitates the acquisition of new skills, builds confidence and identifies solutions to specific lawyering skills problems. For the firm, coaching improves relationships, demonstrates commitment to associates, allows more efficient use of attorney talents, and leverages experience for increased productivity and profitability.

From a purely selfish point of view, the benefits to you, as coach, are perhaps the greatest. Coaching can make a good lawyer great. Guiding someone else to a level of true excellence is one of the most satisfying professional experiences imaginable. For every Derek Jeter, Roger Staubach, and Mary Lou Retton, there was a Joe Torre, Tom Landry, and Bela Karolyi. But each of those coaches also coached a slew of other players who excelled at their sport thanks to coaching. Even more importantly, in the process of analyzing and improving performance, great coaches make lasting contributions to their fields in terms of strategies, techniques and standards. This is true in sports and it is true in law. That great coach could be you.

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To navigate the complexities inherent in developing as a lawyer and succeeding in a particular law firm, an associate needs support, guidance, and a human connection with the firm’s leadership. When firms were smaller and partners faced fewer economic and billable hour pressures, mentoring relationships formed naturally. Senior lawyers took younger lawyers under their wing, gave them advice and encouragement, and allowed them to watch how experienced lawyers handled court appearances, meetings with opposing counsel, and client interactions. These relationships helped an associate feel that the firm was supporting her, and was “on her side” in her pursuit of success. Support like this breeds loyalty to the firm and makes the journey through the early years of law practice, with all its challenges and insecurities, infinitely more enjoyable.

Today’s Economic Pressures Work Against Natural Mentoring

As law firms have grown larger, economic pressures have increased. Partners are now called upon not only to bill more hours, but to develop more clients, become active in their communities, and assist in the increasing number of activities required to manage the firm. Inevitably, it becomes more difficult to find time for mentoring young lawyers. This can leave associates feeling unsupported in their pursuit of success. At best, they may feel as if the firm doesn’t care about their individual success; at worst, they may feel that instead of supporting them, it is waiting for them to fail.

Though some mentoring relationships still form naturally, without a structured program it’s often a hit-or-miss proposition as to whether a particular associate will find a mentor. But the advantages this relationship confers are too vital to leave mentoring to chance.

No amount of training, orientation, or department meetings can substitute for the one-on-one contact a mentoring relationship provides. In order to be truly engaged and at their most productive, all workers need at least one human representative of their company’s management who cares about them. Through extensive research, the Gallup organization has identified twelve factors that measure employee engagement and link powerfully to retention, productivity, profitability and customer engagement. These factors in the form of questions—often referred to as “the Q 12”—measure dimensions that leaders, managers, and employees can influence.

Twelve Factors Measure An Employee’s Engagement At Work

In workplaces where employees are the most actively engaged, they answer the following questions affirmatively:

1. I know what is expected of me at work.
2. I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work correctly.
3. I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.
4. In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.
5. My supervisor, or someone else at work, seems to care about me as a person.
6. There is someone at work who encourages my development.
7. At work, my opinions seem to count.
8. The mission/purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.
9. My fellow employees are committed to doing quality work.
10. I have a best friend at work.
11. In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.
12. In the last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.¹

Keeping employees engaged has taken on even greater importance in the recent economic crisis, as engagement is “directly linked to the performance metrics that matter most” in the current business environment. (Ibid.)

Although they may be more highly motivated and independent than average workers, associates need the same kind of support in order to be fully engaged and working at their highest level. In law firms in which no formal supervisor is responsible for a particular associate’s success, mentors provide the crucial link between the young attorney and the firm.

For example, mentors:

• communicate the firm’s expectations
• help associates get the work assignments that allow them to use their best skills
• provide recognition and praise
• show associates that someone in the firm cares about them as a person
• encourage the associate’s development
• listen to the associate’s opinions
• share the firm’s mission and purpose and demonstrate commitment to doing quality work
• talk to the associate about his or her progress
• help the associate obtain opportunities to learn and grow

Those who oppose structured mentoring programs argue that “forced” relationships often don’t work, that the best associates will find mentors on their own, and that associates who can’t find mentors are not desirable in any event. It is true that partners at law firms, like other professional service firms, tend to focus their mentoring efforts on the “A” players.² However, on average, A players constitute only 20% of the professional staff of PSF’s, C players constitute another 10%, and B players make up the remaining 70%. (Ibid.) Even at top-tier firms, B players (also referred to as “solid citizens”) are critical to the success of the organization: if they are mediocre, the firm will be mediocre; if they are high performers, the firm will follow suit. (Ibid.) Given the vital role that B players fill, a firm is wasting talent and its own investment if it neglects to provide the mentoring associates need in order to develop.

Law firm veterans often forget how chaotic the environment feels to a new associate, and how easy it is to become lost in the shuffle. By committing to serve as mentors and provide a personal link between associates and the firm, partners further their own interests in keeping associates engaged, productive, and profitable.

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Coaching, according to the International Coach Federation (ICF), involves “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. Coaches help people improve their performances and enhance the quality of their lives.” In addition, professional coaches are “trained to listen, to observe and to customize their approach to individual client needs. They seek to elicit solutions and strategies from the client; they believe the client is naturally creative and resourceful.” At the core, a coach provides support “to enhance the skills, resources, and creativity that the client already has.” In other words, true coaches don’t provide the answers; they provide the questions and the framework to elicit answers from the client.

Although some lawyers may prefer to work with a coach who is also a lawyer, in reality, coaches who are experts in the art and science of coaching can coach anyone in any field.

It is important to remember that coaches draw out their clients’ innate wisdom by asking targeted questions and facilitating directed thinking—not by relating the situation to their own experience. Coaches help clients achieve change and results by serving as confidential, neutral partners who are objective and non-judgmental. Through their specialized training, coaches learn specific competencies including becoming experts at listening contextually for what is said and done and what is not being said and done.

Now let’s see how coaching differs from mentoring, consulting and counseling. It’s important to respect the differences. If we don’t, we not only diminish the true value of coaching, but we create false expectations as well.

A Coach Is Not A Mentor

According to Merriam-Webster, a mentor is a trusted counselor or guide. YourDictionary.com defines a mentor as a wise, loyal advisor and lists “teacher” or “coach” as alternate definitions. No wonder we confuse coaching and mentoring!

Traditionally, in the law firm environment, a mentor has been someone who advises and guides others based on her own knowledge and experience. Because the mentor has already traveled down a certain path, she can advise you on what to expect as you walk down that path, including the benefits and pitfalls you will experience. A mentor will frequently provide advice or will teach the “mentee” about a certain subject matter or course of action. And although a mentor may ask open-ended questions (a hallmark skill of coaching), the mentor will generally not be trained as a coach and will feel that her primary role is to give advice.

There is no question that mentoring can be extremely valuable, particularly to younger associates in a law firm. However, mentoring differs from coaching in two important ways.

First, coaches are supposed to be objective, and to advise from an impartial perspective. In contrast, a mentor speaks from the perspective of his own experience. As a member or employee of the same law firm, it is actually impossible for the mentor to be truly objective or unattached.

In addition, mentors typically receive little or no training on how to fulfill their roles. They are simply expected to advise and teach from their personal experience and to create relationships with the people they mentor. True coaching, on the other hand, requires training to learn and practice certain core skills that are intrinsic to the coaching relationship, such as how to ask open-ended, powerful questions; how to listen, and to provide structure for accountability.

A Coach Is Not A Consultant Or A Counselor

It is equally important to make a distinction between coaching and two other disciplines: consulting and counseling.

As noted above, coaches do not need to have expertise in a field to help someone in that field. The hallmark of consultants, however, is that they have experience and expertise in a specific subject area. They are then hired to analyze and address a particular issue and to give advice about what needs to be done to remedy a problem or change a situation. They may use coaching skills in their work but only as a tool to complement their other professional skills.

Coaching is also quite different from counseling or therapy. Generally, the therapist-client relationship is based upon the medical model which assumes that the client/patient needs to be diagnosed, treated and/or cured. Coaching operates from the premise that each client is whole and may desire guidance but does not need to be fixed. Therapy also tends to address the current issue by reviewing past factors. Coaching begins with the present and helps the client move forward toward a more fulfilling life consistent with his or her values and vision.

Which Helping Professional Is Right For You?

Let’s examine these different roles by discussing an example from real life. Jane, a third-year associate, has been having a difficult time communicating with Mike, the partner she works with most closely. How might a coach, mentor, consultant and counselor uniquely help her?

Jane’s trained and credentialed coach might ask: “What are the hallmarks of good communication? Whose communication style do you admire? What are the key components of that person’s style? What do you want Mike to hear? What works in your communication with Mike? What doesn’t?” By asking these directed questions, figuring out the answers, and creating a way for Jane to be held accountable, Jane and her coach will develop a personalized roadmap so that she can better communicate with Mike.

Jane also consults Sherry, her mentor—a junior level partner in her firm. Based on her experience with Mike, Sherry advises Jane that very direct, to-the-point email communication works best with him. She also suggests that Jane invite Mike to lunch and ask him questions about some of the clients she serves. This type of conversation, Sherry counsels Jane, will help boost Mike’s confidence in Jane and create a stronger relationship between them.

Jane also hires a communication consultant. Drawing on his expertise, he teaches Jane some of the fundamentals of good communication. He then advises her on how to use those skills in her situation with Mike.

Finally, Jane visits a counselor or therapist, who asks if Jane has always had communication issues, or issues with male authority figures. They then discuss ways Jane can change her future behavior so that it does not mirror her past.

As you can see, coaches, mentors, consultants and counselors all have unique and valuable approaches, and would treat the same dilemma very differently. Each may use coaching skills as a tool but only the trained coach will fully embody the coaching perspective. It is important for the integrity of each of these roles and professions that coaching be called coaching only when it truly meets the definition.

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Any top-performing athlete knows that a split second or single misread play separates a champion from the runner up. That’s why elite athletes strive to know themselves and their game inside and out. Most of the time, they don’t go it alone. To optimize their performance, great athletes and those aspiring to greatness work with performance trainers, or coaches. Solo players like Tiger Woods have at least one; professional sports teams have many.

Much has been written about the attributes of successful coaches and coaching methodologies. But what makes one a successful “coachee?”

Focus On The Flip Side Of The Coaching Relationship

My 7-year-old son Gabe plays Little League Baseball. He’s crazy about the game, and has memorized farm team stats for his beloved New York Mets. But by the end of his playing season this Fall, he started getting frustrated. His friend consistently hit the ball into the outfield. Gabe didn’t. He realized that he needed to work on his batting skills.

An avid baseball fan, he knows that players have coaches and work on their swing every day. He figured if he wanted to improve as a hitter, he needed a coach, too. Coincidently, one of our town’s Little League coordinators is a former pro. He saw Gabe play and offered to give him some private coaching in the off season.

So there we were a week later in the batting cage. Jimmy assessed Gabe’s swing and then gave him a handful of tips on how to hold the bat, stand, drop his head, rotate his wrists and end his swing with his back shoe laces and belly button facing the pitcher. Over the weeks, Gabe took in and practiced everything Jimmy told him and his hitting improved dramatically.

I was amazed at Gabe’s progress. I had played baseball, softball, whiffle ball—you name it—for years as a kid, but never had a clue about the mechanics of a good swing. “If I had known all this when I was little,” I told Gabe, “I would have been a professional baseball player.” Gabe laughed and said (with ample 7-year-old bravado) “No way, dad! You still wouldn’t have had the skill.” And, of course, he was right.

Master The Four Elements Of A Coachee’s Success

In considering the strides Gabe made through coaching, I realized that four key elements combine into a formula for coachee success: honesty, desire, knowledge and action.

Honesty

Whether we want to hit a baseball into the outfield or become a top business generator, we need to be honest about our performance strengths and weaknesses. We have to admit when there’s a problem.

Fortunately, law firms and clients are making it harder for us to remain ignorant or in denial. At work, we undergo regular performance reviews that address our business development record and related partnership prospects. For their part, clients are not letting us drop the ball: If our service is lacking, they let us know by telling us to do better or leaving for one of our competitors.

If our performance is poor, the signs are usually posted. It takes some candor—and at least a bit of humility—to read them. I know this well. Before the miraculous advent of the GPS, I just couldn’t bring myself to pull over and ask for directions while driving; I had to get good and lost first. The same goes for many lawyers, especially those who have achieved a measure of success. It’s difficult to admit that something is off track even when it’s staring us right in the face. This arrogance-fueled ignorance holds us back from our own success.

Desire

Large law firms hire me to help coach senior associates and partners on generating more business. Time and again, I quickly discern that some of my coachees are only there because they feel that they have no choice. Their efforts invariably fall flat because they’re totally disinterested and un-invested in the coach-coachee relationship.

As the poet-philosopher Kahlil Gibran observes, “Desire is half of life; indifference is half of death.” You can’t be a coachee by conscription or with apathy. To change your behavior and improve your performance, you must really want to change. Otherwise, you won’t have the determination and stamina to get to that next level.

Knowledge

With the requisite honesty and desire, look for a qualified coach who will help you to gain the knowledge you need to address and remedy your performance issues.

As with my son’s baseball swing, there are best practices that you must learn to make strides as a business developer and in other lawyering roles. An experienced coach will know how to teach you these practice essentials so you can learn and integrate them.

The knowledge you accrue in the coaching process comes as general and targeted information about the legal marketplace, client expectations and law firm culture. It also takes the form of a defined skill set for you to hone and apply. Depending on your particular needs, these skills include:

Speaking
Listening
Writing
Generating Leads
Marketing
Networking
Following Up

The key for any coachee is to be open to the learning process, which is challenging and time-consuming, but can—and should also be—fun and interesting.

Action

Many people are what I refer to as learning proficient but action resistant. They’re willing and able coachees in the sense that they’re aware that they have a problem that needs to be solved and they truly want to solve it. They’re also adept at gaining the requisite knowledge and skills. But they balk when it comes to acting on that knowledge base.

Although it’s part of a coach’s job to create an action plan that encourages you to get over this hurdle, you can’t be an actor by proxy. Eventually, you have to just do it. This can be scary and daunting, but it’s the reality of being a top-flight performer.

Beyond taking action, you need to be accountable for the actions you take. For this, you need a healthy dose of honesty. You must be willing to look at, and constructively critique, yourself and your business performance. Again, although your coach can help you devise an accountability plan, you have to do the work. To the extent that your success ultimately rises and falls with you, it’s a solo gig that can’t be outsourced. But, you can recruit some teammates. An assistant – onsite or virtual – can help you identify and review relevant statistics and other markers of your business success. If you’re at a firm, you can check with your marketing department or practice area leaders to see what kind of performance metrics you can adopt and adapt for your own use.

Top performers of all walks—elite athletes, lawyers with full books of business, even 7-year-old baseball enthusiasts—understand that they play an integral role in coaching success. They reap the rewards of their honesty and desire to be exceptional at their craft. They gain and sharpen the knowledge and skills they need and, most importantly, put their learning into action on their playing field. Through triumphs, stumbles and all-out failures, they stay accountable for their actions and use them as reference points as they continue to grow as performers and people.

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Delegating well pays immediate dividends through work product that is completed according to the assigning lawyer’s request. It also opens coaching and mentoring opportunities, whether implicit (the lawyer to whom you’re giving an assignment learns by example how she should delegate work), or explicit (you coach or mentor her on some aspect of the assignment).

Avoid Five Common Mistakes

To delegate effectively, begin by eliminating these five common mistakes:

1. Rushing. Many lawyers first define the scope of a delegated project as they’re making the assignment. When you rush into delegating, you’re likely not to get what you need. You end up frustrated over the time you lost rather than saved. In the end you have to do the work yourself (or re-delegate it), with the added stress of bumping into a deadline because of the wasted time.

2. Delegating too little. Lawyers are highly skilled and self-reliant, and too many of us believe that we should be in control of every aspect of our practices. But here’s some news: you are not the Lone Ranger. Failing to delegate costs you time. What’s worse, if you don’t give your staff and junior colleagues stretch projects that challenge and engage them, they won’t advance professionally. They’ll get bored and probably move on to another position; worse yet, you’ll find yourself surrounded by “zombies” who show up at the office every day but are completely disengaged from their work.

3. Delegating too much. The first problem with over-delegating is, of course, that it presents numerous ethical issues. You cannot delegate legal work to non-lawyers without adequate supervision, and you should not delegate legal work to other lawyers without appropriate supervision.

Even when you’re delegating administrative tasks only, over-delegation results in poor practice management. You should not perform the day-to-day administrative tasks required for your practice, but you must be able to do so if you find yourself short-staffed. This doesn’t mean that you should be as skilled as your assistants at everything from filing to document formatting to mail room procedures, but you should know enough to muddle your way through when necessary.

4. Micromanaging. Micromanaging produces problems similar to those encountered with under-delegating, though the problems arise even more quickly and tend to be more acute. Micromanagement undermines the confidence and morale of the person to whom you’ve delegated because it sends the message that you don’t trust his or her judgment. That person may leave or become a zombie as previously described, but more likely he or she will become frustrated and resentful. Micromanagers often have a reputation as being impossible to please, and those who cannot be pleased often find that those who work with them quit trying.

Equally troublesome, micromanagement prevents people who are doing the work from exercising their own judgment and expanding their professional development. Those who are micromanaged don’t have the opportunity to bring their perspectives and ideas to the table, which means that the micromanager doesn’t have the chance to be wowed by what those who’ve been assigned the work could do if only they had the freedom.

5. Not managing enough. Failure to manage results in the same problems that rushing and over-delegation can produce. You may encounter ethical issues that could have been avoided with proper supervision, and you may not receive the work product that you wanted and expected.

Become An Excellent Delegator In Six Steps

Fortunately, learning to become an excellent delegator requires only two habits: forethought and repetition. Think through the key aspects of any assignment and delegate using the answers to six classic questions: Who, what, when, where, how, and why?

Who has the skills necessary to complete this assignment? Consider not only the most capable candidates, but also how taking on the assignment will affect the candidates’ professional development. Depending on the task at issue, if a potential delegate has been doing the task flawlessly for an extended period of time, perhaps it’s time to give her a more challenging assignment and to pass the task on to someone else.

What needs to be done, precisely? What work product do you want to receive? Describe your desired outcome in detail. Phrasing the assignment and the desired result clearly will ensure that the person doing the work knows what you want to receive.

When is the deadline? One of the key problems in making assignments is the temptation to resort to a non-specific deadline. “Friday” is not an adequate statement of the deadline unless Friday at 11:59 p.m. is acceptable to you. By the same token, “ASAP” is subject to so many different interpretations (from “drop everything and do this now” to “make sure this is done today”) that it’s best avoided. Instead, specify the deadline (“Wednesday, no later than 3 p.m.”) and confirm that the person doing the work expects to be able to meet the deadline you set.

Where and How should the project be completed? “Where” is generally less important than “how,” though if you know that research must start in the library rather than online, be sure to mention that, especially to newer lawyers. When you describe how the assignment should be completed, tread carefully to avoid the risks of micromanagement and insufficient management, and consider the experience level of the person completing the work when you make the assignment.

Why is this work necessary? Sometimes it’s beneficial to provide context and background to orient the person doing the work as to how the project fits into the larger picture. Context and factual issues may change everything—from strategy to the answer to a specific research question. Providing the background is not always necessary, but consider it in each assignment so that you’ll be sure to include the extra information when doing so would be helpful.

Ensure That The Plan Is Being Followed

Thinking through each of these aspects of an assignment increases the chances that you will get the work product that you want, when you want it. You might also consider two additional steps to ensure that those to whom you have delegated work understood the assignment correctly and that it’s going according to plan.

First, ask the person to restate, using his own words, what he understands the assignment to be and what kind of work product he expects to produce. Consider how you phrase this request: “Let’s be sure we’re on the same page” sets an entirely different tone from, “Ok, I want to be sure you understand what I want.”

Second, ask the person doing the work to check in with you a few days into the project. You’ll have an opportunity to be sure that the work is going in the right direction and to clear up any questions. And please note that saying, “Check with me if you have any problems” is not sufficient to accomplish this. Instead, arrange a time (even if it’s just a specific morning or afternoon) for a short conversation.

The check-in conversation also offers an opportunity for coaching or mentoring the person to whom you’ve delegated work. If, for example, you asked a junior lawyer to contact a witness and get certain information, you might find that the questions she asked were narrowly drawn and lacked follow-up—as a result, you got only part of the information needed. Rather than giving in to frustration and venting at the junior lawyer, take the extra five or ten minutes to ask questions to help her understand what information she should have elicited and how she should have done so. Asking questions such as, “What information will we need to support our position?” and “What questions might you ask to get to that information?” will ensure that the assignment is completed properly this time and will also help the junior lawyer understand how to approach the next assignment.

Post from: The Complete Lawyer

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