Post # 100… Discussing my own work/life balance

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I’m astonished to be hitting post #100 this morning.  How time does fly!

I’ve been thinking lately, with something between amusement and horror, about my own work/life balance.  One of the things I’ve learned as a coach is that I very often end up working with people who face the same issues that confront me.  No idea why that is, but I’ve observed it repeatedly.  Lately, work/life balance has hit at the top of that chart.

I thought it might be helpful to be open about my own work/life balance challenges just so you readers will be aware that I’m not writing about work/life balance from a white, fluffy cloud somewhere in the sky that allows me to observe the issue without ever being embroiled in it.  Some days, I wish that were the case!

Because this is a me-centric post (using self as an example), I’ve taken the unusual step of breaking the post here.  If you’d like to know more, read on.  And otherwise, see you in Wednesday’s post!

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Tomorrow — it’s always a day away.

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What word holds the most promise for both positive change and hopeless atrophy?  Tomorrow.

Lawyers are, by nature, planners.  We also tend to be pessimistic and, therefore, risk-averse.  Those tendencies conspire to incline us to create great plans for career or business development — and then to let them sit on the shelf, unexecuted.  Whether that’s because we don’t believe the plan will work, because we want to perfect it before putting it into practice, or just because we get busy with other things, the end result is the same: nothing.

Although this is similar to garden-variety procrastination, there’s a difference.  I suppose everyone has procrastinated at one time or another on a work-related task, but generally those tasks either reach a point when they become critical or unnecessary.  Procrastinating on professional development (and here I use that phrase broadly to refer to both career development and client development) rarely becomes critical, and it never becomes unnecessary.  Instead, professional development plans hover in the background, waiting, waiting, waiting….

This phenomenon goes back to Stephen Covey’s quadrant-based time management concept.  I’ve discussed this previously here. Clearly, the professional development tasks under consideration are Quadrant II activities.

A few tips to get your plan into action:

1.  Set a weekly time to review and revise your plan.  Though it’s counter-intuitive in some ways (aren’t we talking about action here, not reviewing and revising?), setting a dedicated time that you’ll spend on your plan sets you up for success.  This is your time to work on your plan and to select the tasks that you want to implement during the week.

2.  Put one professional development task on your “to do” list every day or so.  This doesn’t have to be difficult.  Choose a small task, whether it’s attending a networking event, drafting an outline of an article, or reviewing advance sheets.  Urgent, important tasks may knock these off your list on some days, but if that’s a daily occurrence ask yourself why.  Are you procrastinating, or are you genuinely focused on more pressing matters?  What do you need to do to ensure that you’re moving toward your ultimate professional development goals?

3.  Schedule a quarterly review of your overall goals.  Keep your eye on what you want to accomplish.  A quarterly review will allow you to track your progress and make any needed corrections.

4.  Create accountability.  Whether you ask your spouse to help you stay on track, join a mastermind group, or hire a coach, it’s important that you have a person who will hold you accountable.  The ideal partner will be able to cheer your successes, help you to learn from your failures, and assist you in holding your professional development plan as a dynamic plan that changes as your goals and opportunities change.

If you think you don’t need an accountability partner, review these statistics from the American Society for Training and Development, measuring the likelihood that a person will reach a goal at different points of commitment:

Hear an idea: 10%

Consciously decide to adopt an idea: 25%

Decide when to do it: 40%

Plan how to do it: 50%

Commit to someone else that you’ll do it: 65%

Have a specific accountability appointment with the person you committed to: 95%

5.  Be rigorous in your expectations of and commitments to yourself.  Lawyers generally exhibit high levels of self-discipline, though less so when the target of the discipline is self-improvement.  (We’re not alone in that, by the way; I’d suggest that many professionals exhibit the same behavior.)  I’m not suggesting perfectionism; everyone will fail at some point, and there’s often more learning in failure than in success.  This is about being committed to yourself and your career.  Erase the word “try” from your vocabulary: as Yoda said, “Do, or do not.  There is no try.”

New associate influx: 10 tips for settling into a firm successfully

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As we enter the second full week of September, it’s probably safe to say that the vast majority of new associates have arrived at their law firms.  Beginning is almost always a wonderful time: expectations are high (as are hopes and fears) and just about everything seems possible.  That phase doesn’t last long when it comes to any kind of employment, unfortunately, but with dedication, it’s possible to move from the honeymoon to a solid day-to-day lifestyle with a minimum of angst.  Although I’m targeting today’s post to brand new lawyers, it’s applicable as well to anyone starting a new position.  With no further ado, here are the top 10 tips to maximize your success as a new associate.

1.  Find a peer mentor, and preferably more than one.  I don’t mean an assigned mentor; I mean someone more senior than you who can teach you the ropes.  For a new associate, you’re looking for someone who’s been there for a couple or three years at a minimum, someone who exudes camaraderie rather than competition.  This is the person who’ll be able to warn you about which partners will load you with nonbillable work, which will give you an incomprehensible assignment that requires tons of interpretation just to identify the question, and which really have an open-door policy.  Your peer mentor is the one to ask all of the critical but embarrassing questions.

2.  Establish a great working relationship with your secretary.  Eight times out of ten, the secretary paired with a new associate knows significantly more about practice than the associate, and she (to stick with the prevalent gender for secretaries) certainly knows the firm much better.  Take your secretary to lunch as soon as possible and get to know her.  Don’t pander or patronize, but if you can get your secretary on your side, your life will be far more pleasant.  When she asks how you’d like things handled, I’d suggest you ask for her recommendation since she likely has more law firm experience than you do.

3.  Accept every invitation you can.  Whether it’s a formal firmwide luncheons or a casual invitation to get a cup of coffee, go. You will be spending most of your time with your colleagues, and your personal satisfaction as well as your career advancement will depend, to some extent, on the relationships you build.

4.  Ask questions, using good judgment.  Unfortunately, in law firm life, there is such a thing as a stupid question.  That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask it, but it does mean you must consider who’s an appropriate person for various questions.

5.  Spend plenty of time at the office in the first few months, so you get a feel for the rhythm of the office and the people with whom you’re working.  Although you’ll want to adhere to your own rhythm to some extent, if you discover that the senior associate you’re working with prefers to work late and likely will want your help then, life will run much smoother if you’re able to adopt that schedule as your own.  At a minimum, you’ll want to know his preferences so you can let him know, for instance, that you usually leave around 7 PM but will stay later if he needs you to do so.  You will be able to shift into your own schedule in time, but knowing how the office operates will allow you to do so intelligently.

6.  Be sure you maintain a life outside the office.  High achievers frequently take on new challenges with a gusto that leaves little room for anything else.  When you start to think that you have to spend more time at the office just because there’s more work to be done (excluding deadline-based work and assuming you’ve put in enough time to meet or exceed your billables), remember that the office existed before you came on board.  Decide what time is yours — time to exercise, to go out with friends, to relax — and guard it zealously.  You will have to cancel your plans at times because of the press of business, but do what you can to avoid that.

7.  Aim for excellence and don’t allow yourself to be paralyzed by fear.  Legal practice calls for perfection.  Any mistake has the potential to prejudice a client’s interests.  There’s no room for carelessness in practice.  However, no lawyer is perfect and mistakes do happen.  When they do, move through the mistake to the solution as quickly as possible, and make sure to keep the lawyer who’s supervising your work aware of the problem and the solution.  It’s easy to get sucked into a constant state of high adrenaline, checking and rechecking to be sure no mistakes exist, but living that way leads to burnout remarkably fast.

8.  Take charge of your career from the beginning.  It’s a little counterintuitive when you’re just starting to work for a law firm, but every lawyer has a responsibility to manage her own career.  In the early years of practice, you have the opportunity to become well-versed in your substantive area.  Use the time to read the law broadly.  Spend time making sure you enjoy the area in which you’re working, and give thought to what you need to do to improve your knowledge and skills.  If you’re so inclined, investigate pro bono opportunities.  They may be your best chance to get particular kinds of fast-track experience, most notably courtroom experience.  Your key asset for the rest of your professional career will be the skills, knowledge, and judgment that you develop.  Give attention to maximizing that asset.

9.  Develop good in-office habits.  Pay attention to the habits you develop.  It’s easy to be busy and to allow your desk to pile up with papers, books, yesterday’s coffee, and so on.  Don’t allow it.  Decide whether you’ll clear your desk daily or weekly (any less frequently than weekly and you’ll spend too much time hunting for papers you’ve lost on your desk), and stick to your schedule.  Complete your time sheets as you’re working and don’t leave the office until you have that day’s time sheet ready to submit.  Get in the habit of getting up from your desk and walking every hour or hour and a half.  Be sure you drink plenty of water, not just coffee.  All of these habits, and many others, will pay off throughout your career — and there’s no time to form good habits like the present.

10.  Have fun.  Practice is hard, and law firm life is demanding in many ways.  Connect daily with the intellectual challenges, the moral imperative, or whatever made you decide to become a lawyer.  Practice can be a wonderful career, and it’s important to stay mindful and to be attentive to the path you’re on so you continue to move toward your professional goals.  Exercise your sense of humor.  It’s often in vogue for associates to complain about practice, and unfortunately those complaints are often merited.  Keep your eye on what’s right (while seeking to correct what’s wrong) and stay attuned to your satisfaction with the law, your firm, your caseload, your clients, your specialty, etc.  Enjoy as much as you can.

So, to the new associates: welcome to your career.  It’s going to be a long road, marked with many challenges and victories.  It won’t be perfect, but it may very likely be quite good.  If it isn’t, you will have developed marketable skills to facilitate a transfer to another firm, another practice, or another career.  The power of choice is yours.

How do lawyers learn to become rainmakers?

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So often, people talk about “rainmakers” as if rainmakers are born, not made.  Not true.  I’ve never seen a survey of great rainmakers to see whether they believe they were born to develop business, but every one I’ve asked asked tells me that, although there may be some personality traits that they were able to develop to help them land clients, the skills themselves were learned.

So, how do rainmakers learn their skills?

1.  Mentoring.  If there’s a lawyer you know who excels at client development, talk with her.  Ask what she did to learn how to approach potential clients.  What attributes does she consider important for business development?  Which activities work well, and which don’t?  Most lawyers are willing to share their knowledge and experience, but you have to ask.

2.  Develop your own marketing plan and work it.  What steps can you take to market yourself to your existing clients and to broaden your network/external exposure?  If you need ideas, ask your mentor or check any of the many rainmaking skills books that are on the market.  Think strategically and plan your networking events (formal and informal), writing and speaking opportunities, and whatever else may be a part of your plan.

It isn’t easy to balance work and personal life, and adding in marketing may seem like it’s too much.  But planning your efforts, and considering how you might fold in personal interests with networking opportunities, will help you to find time to hit all of the bases.  Don’t over-extend yourself.  Instead, break down the larger tasks (like writing an article) into pieces that you can accomplish each day.  That will help you maintain forward momentum and it’ll also prevent overwhelm.  Be sure to share your plan with your mentor, a coach, or someone who can help you stay on track.  That action alone will significantly raise the chances that you’ll keep up with your plan and see results.

3.  Tune up your attitude.  Two beliefs about rainmaking present challenges: that it’s somehow rude, and that it’s unnecessary.

Some people conceive of client development as the task of getting out, meeting people, and self-promoting.  One image of networking is that of an opportunity to foist a business card on any warm body and a soapbox to tell unsuspecting contacts about how great a lawyer the networking genius is.  ICK!  I don’t know of anyone who would like to interact with someone who behaves that way.  That isn’t what client development is about.  Instead, it’s an opportunity to learn about other people and to develop a relationship.  It’s often repeated that clients hire people, not firms, and it’s human nature to prefer to hire a known entity.  (I take some issue with that, but clients certainly interact with particular lawyers and there’s no question that those interactions can facilitate or retard the decision to retain the firm.)  So, the short-term view is that marketing is a way to become that known entity and to develop relationships; the long-term view is that it’s an opportunity to help potential clients solve legal problems they’re facing.  Focus on that attitude.

Although some lawyers would prefer to focus on doing top-quality and top-volume work, and not on bringing work in the door, that’s probably an unrealistic desire.  As a junior associate, it’s easy to expect to be fed work.  But someone has to bring the work in.  A lawyer’s success requires a stream of incoming work, as does a firm’s success.  Firm “grinders” (who grind out the work but do nothing to bring it in) are in a rather tenuous position because strong legal abilities and good client service are the minimum requirements for practice, and those who have nothing more to offer are weak when times get tight.  This is even more true in today’s highly competitive environment.  As a result, client development skills are critical.

Finally, consider the career satisfaction that will likely result from bringing clients into your practice.  You’re building in the ability to work with clients you enjoy, on the kind of work you prefer, and you’re creating your own success.  That’s hard to beat.

4.  Think creatively.  As noted above, the market is flooded with books that promise great tips on marketing.  Some of those books deliver, some don’t… But you can bet that your competition is reading them as well.  Spend some time thinking about what you can do that’s outside the norm for client development.  Instead of serving as a speaker at a CLE event, can you organize an event?  Can you get involved in a professional association to which your target clients belong?  Can you put together some kind of program that offers tangible benefits to your target audience?  This kind of activity requires planning time and will likely require support from your firm, but if carefully executed, it can pay off.

5.  Never forget your existing clients.  While you’re working on how to bring in new clients, be sure you attend to your current clients.  Always provide excellent service and legal work.  Clients are often willing to sing the praises of good attorneys, and they are always quick to criticize those who fall short.  Whether you serve individuals or large corporations, your clients will talk about your service if a friend or close colleague asks.  Keep in mind what you’d like them to say, and let that guide your practice.

Introducing the “magic wand” for communicating: the DISC

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As I wrote on Monday, the DISC assessment helps people to understand their own behavioral and communications styles, to identify the styles of other people, and to learn how to make that knowledge work for them.  Today, let’s look at what each of the dominant styles tells you about how a person is likely to act and how best to communicate with that person.

What creates communication?  Body language (55% of the message), tone of voice (38% of the message), words (only 7% of the message), and the pace or rate of speech.  The DISC takes account of all of these factors and teaches you how to use each for maximum effectiveness.  Drawing on behavioral insights that date back to 400 B.C., the DISC measures observable behavior to categorize how people act.  Each of the DISC styles brings its own strengths and weaknesses, and none is “better” than the others.

Dominance: If someone is a “high D,” they’ll probably be rather impatient, demanding, competitive, goal-oriented, and quick to anger.  In communicating with a D, you want to focus on the task at hand and present what you need to communicate almost as an executive summary.  If the D needs more, she’ll ask — but don’t hold your breath waiting for that.  And when the D communicates with you, she’ll probably be blunt, forceful, and directive.

Influence:  A “high I” style is a persuasive, enthusiastic, creative person who likes people and is well-liked.  Communicating with an I calls for creativity, flexibility, and energy.  Use lots of examples, analogies, and pictures, and don’t hesitate to let the I know what other people think.  It’s helpful to be informal with an I and to be ready for lots of spontaneity, but be prepared to cope with the I’s dislike of rigid organization.

Steadiness:  The “high S” is loyal, supportive, a team player, someone who doesn’t like confrontation or change.  His pace will be slower and low-key, and communicating with an S requires reflection of that in your own behavior.  The S wants to hear about how a plan of action will create stability and predictability, and he’s unlikely to act without examining all of the options and working to minimize risks.  The S likes personal attention and being part of a team.

Compliance:  Someone with a “high C” style is organized, detail-oriented, and focused on quality.  Communicating with a C calls for lots of data, a thorough presentation, plenty of material that supports what you’re saying, and precision in the communication.  Think of the C as someone who likes graphs, data, and accuracy.  The C will be rather formal, not a “touchy-feely” kind of person, and she won’t be in a hurry to make a decision.

As these brief introductions to the styles indicates, knowing a person’s dominant style of behavior will allow you to tailor your approach to that person and to understand better what’s going on when that person reacts.  For example, the meaning is radically different between a D who’s angry and an S who is; the D will be quick to get angry, whereas anger in an S likely reveals a much deeper issue because the S doesn’t have a short fuse and dislikes confrontation — so you’ll want to take an S’s anger as a much stronger signal than a D’s anger.  Similarly, you can plan an approach based on behavioral style: think brainstorming with an I and PowerPoint with lots of data for a C.

Once you understand your own behavioral style and learn to recognize others, you will have an inside track to clear communication.  Imagine being able to plan your pitch to a potential client already knowing what kind of information will help him decide that you and your firm have the skills and the savvy to provide the services he needs.  Visualize being able to stop acting as a referee between your colleagues or support staff and instead being able to help them understand where the team members are coming from so they can work together more effectively.  Consider how knowing your own style can help you understand how others are likely to see you, what your strengths and weaknesses are likely to be, and how to adapt your own behavior to communicate better with others.  Knowing more about your style could even help you improve your golf game.

This is just a brief introduction to the DISC and to the attributes and communications styles of each DISC-identified behavioral style.  If you’re interested in learning more, please contact me.

Avoid myopic communication

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Attorneys are communicators.  Regardless of our practice area, essentially what we do all day is to communicate, or to prepare to do so.  Whether it’s working directly with a client, attempting to persuade a judge or jury, negotiating a business deal, or coordinating with colleagues or staff, one of the key components of an attorney’s skill set is communication.

Plenty of sources exist to help with the mechanics of communication.  Most large firms have someone either in-house or on retainer who functions as a writing coach, and training programs for oral and written legal communication abound.  But what about the skill of knowing how to approach others to maximize communication?

An example.  Suppose a co-worker knocks on your office door and comes in to talk with you.  Let’s assume for this conversation that you’re both third year associates in the same practice field, so the power dynamic is fairly neutral, and let’s assume that you’re having an ordinary day with no particular pressure.  Consider what your reaction would be if he chats for a few seconds (“How was your weekend?  Did you see the Notre Dame-Tech game Saturday?”) before getting down to the business of his visit.  Would you feel that he was wasting time?  Impatient for him to get to the point?  Or would you consider that normal behavior, a more or less necessary introduction to business conversation?  Would you be turned off if he went immediately to the reason for his visit?  And, turning to the business at hand, would you prefer that he would speak in bullet points or that he’d be more expansive, perhaps with examples?  Would you be irritated that he had come to your office rather than emailing to set a time, or would you welcome the change of pace?  Would you be skeptical about what he was saying, or would you take it at face value?

What if you’re an associate and you need to talk to a partner for whom you’re doing some work… You’ll be prepared to discuss the situation at hand, along with any background information or legal research that will bear on it.  But how should you approach the partner?  Again, should you ask about her weekend or just charge into the meat of the conversation?  How quickly should you talk, and what tone of voice should you use to best relate to the partner?  If she asks a question and you need to look at your notes for the answer, will your communication be dismissed as disorganized or incomplete?

It’s easy to assume the answers to these questions — in part, because lawyers tend to be so sensitive to time pressures that chit-chat and interruptions are often unwelcome.  However, each of us has a different communication style, and attention to those differences will permit more effective conversation.  We all have a different natural rhythm, a more active or passive approach to things, more or less desire for social interaction, an inclination to making faster or slower decisions, a tendency to listen more than speak or vice versa.  Failure to recognize these differences leads to myopic communication, in which we assume that everyone  to communicate in the same way we do… And that leads to less effective communication.

The easy tactic to avoid the trap of assuming that everyone communicates in the same way is simply to recognize that we aren’t all the same and to take that into account when you’re preparing to communicate.  Pay attention to the reactions you get.  Does she always seem impatient, eager to take charge?  Does he need a lot of information?  Does she do well hopping from topic to topic?  Does he flinch if you touch him?  These hints will help you modify your approach so that your style doesn’t hinder your message.  But trial and error, fortunately, isn’t the only way to accomplish this.

I use the DISC(r) assessment to assist lawyers in identifying their communication styles.  The DISC(r) assessment measures the degree of Dominance (how one responds to challenges), Influence (how one interacts with and attempts to influence people), Steadiness (how one responds to change and the pace of his environment), and Compliance (how one responds to procedures and rules set by others) that a person tends to exhibit.  Learning about the DISC(r) facilitates better communication because it increases understanding of our natural tendencies, strengths, and weaknesses.  In addition, learning some of the basic attributes of each of the DISC(r) styles allows us to make an educated guess about the communication style of colleagues, clients and potential clients, etc., which in turn permits us to make modifications to our own communication style to attain the greatest impact.  This knowledge enhances communication and provides a tool for conflict resolution.

Stay tuned for a brief introduction of each of the primary styles.

Search out your peers.

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Just about every lawyer is aware of the conventional wisdom that it’s important to have a mentor.  Law firms often establishing mentoring programs.

But peer groups are something else.  For instance, every law firm associate knows how critical it is to have a more senior associate willing to answer questions that range from how a particular partner operates to what business development expenses the firm will pay.  It’s also helpful to talk with peers from other firms or other geographic regions about issues that range from how to get into a leadership role in a community-based organization and to use that exposure to your benefit in your law firm, how to present a work-from-home request to the partner you work for, etc.  Especially when the group you connect with is truly your peer group — i.e. female associates working in a large law firm, sole practitioners in practice for 5-10 years, lawyers interested in leaving the law — the input from others can suggest new ideas, provide much-needed support, and allow you to participate fully without feeling exposed to your competitors.

So, how to find such a group?  Several alternatives.

1.  There are a number of online communitiesthat you can find by searching.  I’ev read a few but I haven’t participated in any, so I can’t recommend any in particular.  The benefit to these is clear: you can participate anytime, day or night, and there is little risk of having your identity revealed if you’re careful not to post too many identifying details.  Of course, when you read what others have to say, there’s no way to consider the source of the comment, and that may reduce its value.

2.  Many bar associations have groups that will fulfill this function.  Young lawyers’ sections or law practice management groups are fertile grounds for wide-ranging discussions about how you practice and what you want from your career.  You can also join a substantive section for more input on the mechanics of your practice.

3.  Self-selected groups.  It would be easy to start a group of peers with a monthly discussion topic, planning to meet at lunchtime or after work for an hour or so.  The ideal group size is probably 6-12, with rotating leadership roles, and some mechanism for a group check-in on what topics are important to the members and how well the group is functioning.

4.  Groups run by a coach or recruiter.  The benefit of these groups is that they’re run by the same person or the same group of people, so there’s a continuity in leadership and the leader is trained.  The groups tend to stay very much on track because everyone has a demonstrated commitment to the group and the work.  And there’s an opportunity for great self-revelation without being unduly vulnerable, because the group members typically will not know one another outside the group and may even come from different geographic areas.  The benefit of this group is that you get coaching as well as peer interaction, generally for a monthly fee that’s substantially lower than it would be for individual coaching.

If you’re looking for something — help in deciding how to shape your practice, support in working toward better work/life balance, sharing with non-competitors as you work toward making partner, or whatever else might be of interest to you — search out your peers.  Lawyers often tend to be so independent that we reject help from others, but participation in peer groups can bring all sorts of rewards.

And if you’re interested in a coach-led peer group, watch this space.  Within the next couple of weeks, I will be announcing a pilot peer group that I’ll be leading along with two others with substantial experience in working with lawyers — at reduced fees, since it’s a pilot program.

Retreating for professional reflection

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As soon as I finish typing this post, I am going on retreat for the weekend.  I’ve checked into a hotel that has a nice view, a good desk, 24-hour room service, and oodles of peace and quiet.  The high-speed ‘net connection is working here — unlike at my office — and I am preparing to retreat to do some evaluation and business planning.

One of the problems lawyers have with their practices is that we rarely take time to reflect on our goals and our progress toward them.  Instead, we tend to be in fast forward motion, moving forward all the time, but not pausing to ask whether our motion is getting us toward what we desire.  Michael Gerber, author of E-Myth Mastery and related books, argues that entrepreneurs must work on their businesses as well as in them.  It’s the same for lawyers, because even those lawyers who are working at mega-firms are, in a sense, leading their own businesses.  We too must stop and reflect on how our business, our practice, is running.

A retreat is the ideal way to do this evaluation.  Not the typical law firm retreat, replete with meetings and cocktails and chatter, but a private retreat.  A retreat can be enormously useful in as little as 3 hours, though a longer retreat is restorative as well as better suited for deep reflection.  Depending on what you need, both personally and professionally, you might consider retreating at home, at the office, or to a hotel/retreat center.  Consider what you need, both in terms of what creature comforts will facilitate your turning inward and also in terms of what support you need.

What questions should you ask yourself on retreat?  The list is truly endless, but here are some good ones:

1.  How well am I functioning in the office?  What changes do I need to make either in the office environment or in how I prepare myself for my workdays?

2.  What is my business vision?  What kind of practice do I want, and how well am I developing that practice?

3.  Who are my clients?  How is client development working for me, and what changes do I need to make?  What new activities do I need to undertake?

4.  How satisfied are my current clients?  How can I better serve them?

5.  Am I an active member of the legal community?  Am I meeting my own expectations for pro bono work?

6.  Am I maximizing my energy through good self-care?

7.  How is my work/life balance?

8.  What one change can I make in my life or my practice that will create greater satisfaction for me?

As we move into fall and the end of the year, it’s an ideal time for review and revision.  Give yourself — and your practice — the gift of a retreat.  Please contact me if you’d like support in designing a retreat or in helping with strategizing to help you reach your goals.

Passing up good for great

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There’s a key skill for balancing work and life, and it’s one that doesn’t come naturally to many of us.  Cheryl Richardson, author of Take Time For Your Life and Stand Up For Your Life (among others) calls it “passing up good for great.”

As children, we’re taught the old saw that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.  While that’s a valid saying under some circumstances — when we have something that’s perfectly good but are tempted to get greedy and to try for more — it can also be a limiting belief that actually does us harm.  Sometimes, we need to release the bird already in hand so that both hands are free to grab the two in the bush.

It is difficult to hold onto mediocre while reaching for greatness.  So, for instance, if you’re applying for new jobs and you get one offer that’s ok but not great and a response from the other potential employer saying that you’re a terrific applicant, you’re on the very shortlist, but they haven’t yet decided… You cannot accept job #1 and have any expectation of later accepting job #2.  By the same token, if you’ve been saving for a vacation, you can’t spend your vacation fund to go away for a weekend and still expect to go to Europe as originally planned.  Another saying fits: you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Right.  What on earth does this mean for work/life balance in practice?

Work/life balance requires surrender of part of one area — whether it’s time spent on work or time spent on personal matters — in favor of the other.  You may choose to work less and play more, or vice versa.  You may decide to arrange your children’s school, activities, and transportation so you can be at work between 7 AM and 7 PM.  You may decide to forego a vacation this year so you can be on a prestigious trial team.  The catch is that whatever decision you make will require you to give up something so you can have something else.

We humans don’t generally like giving up anything we want.  We want it all, and we want it all now.  Maturity requires us to recognize that perhaps we can have it all (though that too is open to question), but we certainly can’t have it all at the same time.  The single most useful skill for deciding how to arrange this work/life balance is the ability to pass up good for great.  Learning that skill requires that we be able to recognize what’s good and what’s great, to identify appropriate time frames to help with the good/great evaluation, and to guard our decisions zealously.

Recognize what’s good versus what’s great.

This judgment will be different for each person.  I might decide that being able to attend my child’s soccer games regularly is good but having a prestigious position that will pay enough to let me easily pay for their private school is great.  I might decide that having a $200K income that requires 70-hour workweeks is good, but having time to volunteer 20 hours a week in my community is great.  Each good/great decision informs a life decision, because if I accept good and forego great, I will be unhappy.

When you look at a decision — be it the big ones I’ve mentioned or small ones like whether to go out for dinner or to stay in and relax — you can recognize what’s great by the internal voice that says yes!  When you consider an option and get an “eh, that’s fine” gut response, that’s your sign that you haven’t yet found great.  Good versus great is more than a pro/con list; it requires you to engage your values, your priorities, and your desires.

Decide what standards will guide you.  These standards must honor your values and ensure your integrity.  Although these standards are intimately related to your values, they’re more like facilitating principles.  For instance, if one of your top values is family, you might have a standard that says that you will not accept any work situation that intrudes on your Sundays.

Identify appropriate time frames when evaluating good versus great.

Sometimes what’s good versus what’s great will depend on duration.  For instance, you may decide that the opportunity to chair a bar section for a year is great even though it requires you to cut back on business development activities and to stop singing with your church choir.  If your commitment to the bar would be three years, you might decide that it isn’t a great opportunity.

When considering opportunities that are not time-limited by their own terms, good decision-making may require you to put some time limits on them.  For instance, you may decide that you’ll accept a demanding position for a year but no longer or that you’ll try a new networking group for 6 months and then reevaluate.  The key is to determine the length of time that an option is great, or at what point it may slide back to just being good.

Zealously guard your decisions.

Once you’ve identified good versus great, and especially once you’ve begun to act in conformity with that decision, do whatever you must to put boundaries around your decision.  You will have an opportunity to revisit your decision; while reevaluation is often worthwhile, be sure not to fall into the trap of accepting good when you’ve identified great.

When you decide to pass up good for great, you accept quality over quantity; you develop a high degree of selectivity about what you allow into your life and how you choose to spend your time and energy; and you refuse to settle for less than what’s best for you.  It takes practice to give up something that’s good, especially when great isn’t immediately in front of you.  Practice with small decisions (if you’re tired, is good vegging out in front of the TV, or is it getting extra sleep?) so that you’re well-trained when the big ones present themselves.  Spend some time deciding on what your guiding principles are.  Finally, think about other areas of your life or your practice where you might pass up good for great.  If this skill seems conpletely foreign to you, consider requesting support, whether it’s from colleagues or from a coach.  Difficult though it is, the skill will serve you well.

Time management skills: is a task urgent or important?

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One of the top concerns for most lawyers is time management.  We all have so much to accomplish in so little time, and it often seems that we’re always trying to cram more activities (whether professional or personal) into the non-negotiable 168 hours we have each week.  Most of my coaching clients bring time management issues to the table at some point, and the high levels of stress that many lawyers face derive largely from time pressures.  One distinction, “urgent” versus “important,” can form the basis for effective time management.  Let’s dig in.

Urgent vs. important is a simple distinction that applies equally to the substance of a lawyer’s work as well as to practice or career management.  Stephen Covey has written about time use and devised a four-quadrant chart to help us judge where we spend most of our time:

QUADRANT I: Urgent and Important:  Crises, problems, deadline-driven projects.

QUADRANT II: Not Urgent, but Important:  Preparation, problem prevention, planning, relationship building, values clarification, true recreation (“re-creation”).

QUADRANT III: Urgent, but Not Important: Interruptions, some phone calls, some meetings, some email.

QUANDRANT IV: Not Urgent, Not Important: Junk mail, spam, busywork, trivia, “escape” activities, mindless web surfing, etc.

Where do you spend most of your time?  While it’s undeniable that Quadrant I requires attention and Quadrant III calls for attention (though the call may be illusory), Quadrant II is the critical zone.  That’s where the real work that truly moves us forward gets done.

For instance, suppose you’ve decide to leave your current job.  Quadrant I may demand you update your resume, call a recruiter, and set up a job agent on a job search website.  Quadrant III is returning a call from a recruiter who has the perfect position — except that it’s in Salt Lake City and you have no desire to live there — and it’s most interviews.  (Note that in this example, it’s hard to evaluate in advance whether something is important or not!)  Quandrant IV is browsing all the legal jobs in the U.S. on a website — things that may look like they’re related to your job search but really do nothing for you except waste time.  And Quadrant II is where you spend time when you stop to think about what exactly you want in your new job: firm or in-house?  Small, medium, or large firm?  Should you work with a recruiter?  What geographic location suits you best?

Quadrant II yields the strongest results.  That’s where the real work happens, where we’re able to engage in analysis that will help move us forward.  It may be helpful or even critical to spend time in Quadrant I; we all spend some time in Quadrant III, but we can be aware of that time and choose to limit it; Quadrant IV is best avoided because it’s neither productive nor refreshing time.

Question for reflection: both in practice and in your career/practice management, where are you spending your time?  Are you visiting Quadrant II enough?

According to a 2001 article published in the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly:  “Lawyers are good subjects for coaching because they are results-oriented professionals. But like most busy professionals, it is hard for lawyers to consistently focus on things that are important, but not urgent. In addition, while attorneys may get good training in “lawyering” in the early years of practice, they are less likely to get any consistent and focused training on how to develop their professional and personal lives. A law degree can still open up a lot of doors for you, but real career satisfaction takes both hard work and planning. Having the degree, and working in a good law firm, are not enough.  Many of us do not take the time to reflect on what we really want. Some of us do not know what steps to follow to get what we want. Still others know the steps, but cannot figure out how to rearrange their professional and personal lives to make room for these important, but not urgent, activities. A coach can be the key ingredient in making things happen.”  Do you need a coach?

I’ll close with an example.  I worked with a client I’ll call Sheri, who was having a great deal of trouble getting everything done that she needed to in the office.  She found herself staying later and later, then going in earlier and earlier, and before long she was exhausted and angry that her personal life had disappeared.  We started with the urgent/important distinction and looked at the kinds of tasks on her “to do” list through that lens.

Sheri decided to cut Quadrant IV activities completely and to get better at identifying Quadrant III activities so she could eliminate as many of those as possible.  And then she looked at the Quadrant I tasks she’d listed to see whether any could be delegrated or otherwise handled.  And then our focus shifted to Quadant II.  Sheri developed a schedule that guaranteed her planning and strategizing time (pure Quadrant II activities) and found that by spending time on those tasks, she was able to prevent problems and facilitate the orderly accomplishment of important aims.  Her stress level decreased, as did the number of hours she had to spend putting out fires.

Sheri was delighted to discover that working out qualified as a Quadrant II activity, and she planned a half-hour walk or visit to the gym five days a week.  As a result, she began to feel better physically, which also decreased her stress level and increased her energy so she could get more work done in the hours she had available.  By further focusing on categorizing tasks in the quadrants, minimizing time spent in Quadrants III and IV, and maximizing the time she spent in Quadrant II, Sheri developed work habits and a daily schedule that allowed her to get her work done, to feel good about it, and to have some time and energy for her personal pursuits as well.