LEADERSHIP, MENTORING AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: THE JOB SATISFACTION TRIAD©

Happy and productive lawyers, those who are "high value added/hard to replace," have mastered the leadership, mentoring and professional development triad. Unhappy and unproductive lawyers have often missed the connection between the pure practice of law and creating a long term career. As individual lawyers, missing this connection means years of malcontent. For law practices, the missed connection produces mediocre businesses that have difficulty surviving.

Leadership. Leadership is a set of skills that can be taught and learned. Beginning lawyers can be trained to be leaders of their support staff team mates. Associates can lead a larger team of support staff, colleagues and clients. Partners need skills to lead even larger teams, including firm management responsibilities and community service.

Often, when we think of leaders, we consciously or unconsciously covet the military model of barking orders to weaker underlings: "I’m in charge here and the sooner you figure that out, the better!" This model relies on the "need to know" system, using superior knowledge and the lack of information to keep people in place. This style shows up in abusive authority, poor delegation, dictatorship in decision making, poor listening skills and egocentric behavior.

The military model is ineffective with lawyers and particularly ineffective with younger lawyers. Lawyers want recognition and praise, managerial time, opportunities to learn new things, fun at work and rewards for a job well done.

Participatory, facilitatory, democracy, and flat organizational characteristics are more effective leadership styles for lawyers. Each is based on the integration of personal goals with the success of the enterprise: the "win/win."

No matter which style you choose for yourself and for your practice, recognize that learned leadership skills serve lawyers and their practices effectively to support the first leg of the three-legged stool that is the job satisfaction triad.

Mentoring. Successful lawyers tell us that mentoring is one of the most personally and professionally rewarding activities of being a lawyer. Generation X, women and minority lawyers tell us that effective mentoring is essential to their professional growth. Yet, lawyers agree and lament that far too little effective mentoring is going on in our law practices. Given our universal agreement that mentoring is desirable, why aren’t lawyers doing more mentoring, more effectively?

The easy answer lies in the challenging nature of law practice economics. Most firms are driven by billable hours and a first level analysis suggests that mentoring is a cost, not a profit center. This is the short term view.

The long term view is that mentoring increases profitability and career satisfaction for both the mentor and the mentee. An effective mentoring relationship can relieve partners of the recurring problems of lack of qualified junior lawyers to work efficiently and cost effectively. Mentees can relieve partners of the mind-numbing work that is below their level of ability, leaving partners free to further develop professionally.

Mentoring can be taught and learned. It doesn’t have to be overwhelming for either party. Formulate your program objectives and parameters; implement your program and manage it; train partners and associates on effective mentoring techniques; provide ongoing support, monitoring and program evaluation; prepare written guidelines; provide mentoring incentives; match mentors to mentees; market the program and integrate it with your other professional development activities.

Partner mentors who are encouraged to think of their mentees as replacements so that the partners can move upward improves job satisfaction for all lawyers and provides the second leg of the triad.

Professional Development. The most satisfied lawyers are life-long learners. The art of goal setting and choosing creativity are aspects of professional development, career building and career design that can and should be learned. Creating models for defining and developing ideal clients, as well as drafting marketing plans for generating business the lawyer wants to do that will serve the needs of the firm and provide professional satisfaction to the lawyer, is the third leg of the job satisfaction triad.

Managing a law practice requires not just knowing the right thing to do, but doing it! In the past thirty days, have you: