Business of Law

February 14, 2013

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Diversifying Your Portfolio of Leadership Skills

By Susan G. Manch

While writing my newly published book, Learning From Law Firm Leaders, I had an opportunity to speak with 31 successful law firm leaders1 to try to identify the distinct skills and traits that effective leaders possess. The leaders interviewed could not have been more varied in their paths to or roles in leadership. They included chairs of AmLaw 50 Global firms and managing partners from smaller regional firms; committee, practice group, and office leaders; newer leaders and more senior ones preparing to cede their leadership roles to others. I gathered broad and varied perspectives and yet definite themes emerged in those hundreds of pages of notes. In the end, five core competencies surfaced, representing distinct dimensions of leadership identity that can be useful to aspiring and current leaders. Let’s explore this diversified portfolio of the skills that together define effectiveness in leadership.

Knowledge and Skill Mastery

The first thing I noted about all of the leaders profiled in the book is that they began their paths to leadership by simply being respected lawyers in their firms. The quality of their legal skills and the depth of their substantive knowledge established the first element of credibility they needed to gain followership amongst colleagues. While law firms may entertain the idea of having a non-lawyer executive at the top, having walked in the shoes of the firm’s partners (and done so successfully) remains an important element in the effectiveness of leaders in most firms today. In a competitive marketplace, it has never been more important to be a master of your area of expertise and someone whose value is apparent to clients and colleagues.

When I’m coaching an aspiring leader, I encourage the person to begin with a 360° assessment on all five of the leadership core competencies discussed in this article. Yet, some of the most interesting information derives from the questions regarding knowledge and skill mastery. These interviews are a useful tool to collect insights from senior, peer, and junior colleagues that they are unlikely to volunteer on their own.

Openness to Learning

To develop strong leadership skills, it’s not enough to simply be a legal expert and facile developer and manager. Emerging and current leaders have to be open to refining other skills, such as consensus building, strategic planning, forecasting, fostering positive culture, and decision-making. The leaders I interviewed described how much they relied on learning to help them meet the challenges that leadership roles present. Without a growth mindset, leaders can become rigid and wedded to precedent, believing that if it’s worked in the past it’s bound to keep on working. They also may underestimate the adaptability of the organization. That kind of thinking is unlikely to prevail when markets and clients demand innovation and flexibility. Openness to new ideas and broad perspectives also supports the level of inclusiveness leaders need to walk the walk on diversity objectives. Retaining a growth mindset regarding professional development provides aspiring leaders with a tangible return on investment as they watch their greater knowledge and skill mastery add increasing value to client matters.

Communication and Interpersonal Style

The leaders I interviewed were all very effective at relationship building. These are not individuals who seized power of their firms by caveat. While they pursued different paths, all were encouraged by their colleagues to take on increasing responsibility for leading their firms. Being an effective communicator whose word can be

Originally published by Bloomberg Finance L.P. Reprinted with permission.

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2Business of Law

trusted is at the heart of gaining followership. In order to lead, colleagues must believe what you say and trust that you will work for the best interests of the firm as a whole, not yourself. Without strong personal connections with a broad group of firm members, leaders can’t possibly be effective. This doesn’t mean leaders need to be “glad handers” or everyone’s best friend. Rather, they need to commit the time needed to really know their colleagues and communicate with them regularly. Many personal styles work well as long as the common thread is positive relations and honest communication.

Mentorship

One of the ways leaders can signal selflessness is to invest time in helping others succeed. It’s more than succession planning, although building a pipeline of talent ready to succeed you is indeed a clear sign of leadership. Some of the most impressive mentoring comes about when a senior lawyer chooses to devote time to helping a more junior colleague who is not directly involved in his or her practice. In a program our Diversity and Learning & Development teams are piloting at Bingham, we asked some of our most successful partners to mentor midlevel associates of color to ensure that these developing lawyers had powerful mentors and role models. These partners are simply the busiest lawyers in the firm and people associates might never approach as mentors, but each of them took on this responsibility with gusto and devoted many hours to working with their mentees. For several of the associates, their mentors’ guidance was career-changing. Mentoring is a skill but also an art, and these highly successful partners showed that they had mastered both elements.

Vision

In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins writes, “No matter how dramatic the end result, the good-to-great transformations never happened in one fell swoop. There was no single defining action, no grand program, no one killer innovation, no solitary lucky break, no wrenching revolution. Good to great comes about by a cumulative process―step by step, action by action, decision by decision.”2 Sometimes we believe only those with a grand vision or strategy can be true leaders, but in reality vision emerges over time. The track record a leader develops for making good decisions, dealing fairly with people, and guiding the firm through challenging times creates the vision. To lead, partners must be able to see these patterns, but also able to break free of them when it’s needed. They need to be able to rise above the minutia of every day practice and the stranglehold of “how things have been done” to see where the firm or practice group or team is headed and where it needs to go. Vision requires curiosity as well as knowledge. We can be tricked into thinking that a grand vision is more than it really is. Often, having a true vision for the group you are leading emerges over time, piece by piece, and in unassuming ways. Effective leaders have a gift for being able to “see” further than others and with a clearer lens.

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These five competencies are not exclusive and individual leaders should adopt their own definition of competencies they find to be important in carrying out their leadership accountabilities. These five competencies are a good start however because we know they work in practice. The leaders profiled in Learning From Law Firm Leaders demonstrate these competencies, among others, giving aspiring or current leaders a path to follow. For lawyers aspiring to be future law firm leaders, the critical take-away is that the key to success is not one-dimensional. Effective leaders demonstrate competences across broad elements of behavior and strive to do so with consistency.

Susan G. Manch is the Firmwide Director of Learning & Development for Bingham McCutchen and the author of four books, of which Learning From Law Firm Leaders is the most recent. She can be reached for questions or comments at susan.manch@bingham.com.

1 Sandy Chamblee, Steptoe & Johnson, LLP; Carla Christofferson, O’Melveny & Myers; Lewis Collins, Butler Pappas; Steve D’Amore, Winston & Strawn; Kenneth Doran, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher; Debora de Hoyos, Mayer Brown; Ellen Dwyer, Crowell & Moring; Tom Fitzgerald, Winston & Strawn; David Foltyn, Honigman; Kent Gardiner, Crowell & Moring; Jeff Haidet, McKenna Long; Tim Hester, Covington & Burling; Kim Koopersmith, Akin Gump; Gerry Lowrey, Fulbright & Jaworski; Mike Lucey, Gordon Rees; Phil Malet, Steptoe & Johnson, LLP; Bruce McLean, Akin Gump; Howard Merton, Partridge Snow; Wayne Mason, Sedgwick; Ann Miller, Law Offices of Ann Miller; Mike Nannes, Dickstein Shapiro; Steve Pfeiffer, Fulbright & Jaworski; Jim Rishwain, Pillsbury; Sandra Seville-Jones, Munger Tolles & Olson; Peter Shields, Wiley Rein; Tricia Sherick, Honigman; Herb Stevens, Nixon Peabody; Barton Winokur, Dechert; Chris White, Cadwalader; Dick Wiley, Wiley Rein, and Jay Zimmerman, Bingham McCutchen.

2 Page 165, Harper Collins Publisher, New York, 2001.