Leadership and Practice Development
By Cheryl Stephens
email@cherylstephens.com


Leadership in the Law Firm

It is probably obvious that developing leadership skills and practices will serve a woman well both in her career development and in her marketing efforts.

“Leadership is not magnetic personality – that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not ‘making friends and influencing people’ – that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, raising a person’s performance to a higher standard, building a personality beyond its normal limitations.”
Peter Drucker

Leadership is also about performance. Here are some tried-and-true principles of performance enhancement:

Upgrade your traditional skills
Today’s environment requires continual development and diversification of knowledge and skills. Develop a “learning culture” for yourself and others.

Improve your interpersonal skills
Do you know and understand your own behavioural assets/liabilities and how they affect your client relations and those with your colleagues? Do you know how to adapt to the behavioural differences of individual clients or co-workers?

Make a plan for career development
Do you have a clear vision for your career path? Regardless of the requirements of your current position, you need to be preparing yourself to meet the needs of your next position or next firm. Have you surveyed the future opportunities available to you and planned for making yourself eligible for those opportunities? Without a sense of your own direction, it will be more difficult for you to perform well and excel at any stage.

Know how to lead teams
Individuals differ according to their own history but differences in skills and knowledge stem from a person's style of learning and information processing. Prepare yourself to understand and manage such differences in order to avoid communication problems.

Enrich your world through diversity
An open mind is fundamental to leadership. If your experience is limited to people just like you, reach out into your environment to get to know about people of other racial, ethnic, national, or religious communities.


Maintain your equilibrium with a balanced lifestyle
Time must be scheduled for rejuvenation and relaxation. Your inner life must be nurtured. Only a balanced person can give their full potential to their work.


Personal Excellence and Leadership

Successful women leaders practice the following behaviors:
- They make the effort to integrate personal and professional goals and to develop a clear director for their careers.
– They show compassion for others, trust in their intuition and generally excel in social skills. They value communication and conflict resolution as key to their own and the organization’s success.
– They value continuous learning for themselves and others. They view power as infinite – expanding when shared through collaboration and participation with co-workers and team members.
– They see leadership as cyclical not static and hierarchical, accomplished through relationships and networks. They are capable of giving voice to the corporate vision to inspire and empower others.

Develop your leadership ability

Developing the communication, teamwork, people skills associated with leadership is important but some of the best learning comes from associating with people who model leadership behaviour. Your best mentor may not work in the same firm nor even in the legal community. Participate in community groups, women's professional organizations, and the ABA and local bar groups. Attend conferences for networking purposes and make a special effort to connect with women who exhibit the skills you seek to master. Find people with similar interests and like minds then work together on common goals.  ¶ 1:53 PM