Leadership for Lawyers

Follow:

Leadership for Lawyers Blogs

Leadership for Lawyers Blog

Blog Authors

Mark Beese

Latest from Leadership for Lawyers

IMG_1006-1024x768.jpg
How do you prepare new managers to be effective leaders? Many corporations have comprehensive training programs for new managers, but law firms have typically not offered specialized training for new staff managers or lawyers who transition from sole contributors to managers of staff, deal or matter teams.  This is beginning to change, with more firms dedicating training and professional development resources for new managers. New managers face a number of leadership challenges when they take…
Image-1-3-17-at-10.27-AM-300x235.jpg
The legal profession, marketing technology, and clients’ buying habits are changing dramatically. Lawyers need to think differently about marketing, lead generation, big data, project delivery and leadership. Here are 10 things that should be on your radar, starting now. 1. Data-driven business development. At the 2016 Legal Marketing Association Technology Conference, JD Supra’s Adrian Lurssen demonstrated how they are using readership data to help law firms identify highly engaged prospects and pursue them with a…
Groupmeeting-300x217.jpg
When I started consulting, I met with an old friend who had been consulting for more than two decades. “You need to communicate the cost of doing nothing,” he advised me. “If firms understood the high cost of not investing in leaders, they will be more likely to start a leadership development program.” Easier said than done. Intuitively, managing partners know that investing in the development of practice group leaders, new and mid-level partners and…
Here are a few books on leadership that I recommend: The No Asshole Rule:  Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’tRobert Sutton The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into ActionRobert Sutton and Jeffrey Pfeffer Leadership Is An ArtMax DePree Committed Teams:  Three Steps to Inspiring Passion and PerformanceMario Moussa The Art of Thinking ClearlyRolf Dobelli Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop …
LAW FIRM PARTNERS, TALENT EXPERTS, AND STANFORD LAW STUDENTS JOIN FORCES TO TACKLE GENDER PARITY THROUGH INAUGURALWOMEN IN LAW HACKATHON  Diversity Lab, in partnership with Stanford Law School and Bloomberg Law, launch the Women in Law Hackathon aimed at advancing women in the legal profession DENVER, March 9, 2016 – Fifty-four top law firms have signed up to participate in the Women in Law Hackathon, a new Shark Tank-style pitch competition aimed at generating innovative…
Do millennials, Gen Xers and baby boomers in the U.S. have different beliefs about what makes a leader effective? While it’s commonly believed that the generations’ preferences are substantially different, research from the Center for Creative Leadership  shows when it comes to leadership, the generations are more alike than different. Read the article here.…
Knowing oneself is the best way to begin understanding others.  That’s why we often start a leadership program with some sort of assessment, such as Myers Briggs, the Change Style Indicator or FIRO-B.  Chris Musselwhite, writes in INC. about the benefits of self-awareness: “It’s easy to see how pretending to know everything when you don’t can create situations that can be problematic for your entire organization. On the other hand, when you take responsibility for…
Chris Musselwhite and Tammie Plouffe created the Influence Style Indicator, which I use to teach influence to lawyers and other professionals  Here is a brief article on the approach. “Effective leadership today relies more than ever on influencing others — impacting their ideas, opinions, and actions. While influence has always been a valuable managerial skill, today’s highly collaborative organizations make it essential. Consider how often you have to influence people who don’t even report to…
Great, and brief, article on increasing influence here: “In 2009 and 2010, Discovery Learning, Inc. and Innovative Pathways conducted research to identify and measure influence styles. They created five categories: Asserting: you insist that your ideas are heard and you challenge the ideas of othersConvincing: you put forward your ideas and offer logical, rational reasons to convince others of your point of viewNegotiating: you look for compromises and make concessions to reach outcomes that…
Persuasion will be the topic for a free one-hour webinar on May 29th.  We’ll discuss why persuasion is challenging in law firms, a model for developing a persuasion strategy and how corporate storytelling can help you be more persuasive.  Register below.  I hope that you can join us. How does one lead without authority or control? How does one bring about positive change in an organization that is inherently risk-averse? How does a law firm…