Do You Really Want to Be a Leader? Find Your Motivate to Lead and Unleash It

Leading is “difficult and dangerous work” according to Ronald Heifetz, Marty Linsky, and Alexander Grashow, authors of The Practices of Adaptive Leadership. It’s taking charge of making a difference, to paraphrase the recent television ads for American Express. But, making a difference in what, with whom, to what end, and through which actions? Leaders constantly rely upon their motivation to lead. The clearer the motivating forces are to the leader, the easier it will be for her to use her motivation to drive her leadership initiatives forward.

If you want to find your motivation to lead, start by answering these questions:

1. What is the current context in which you are trying to lead? By “context,” I mean what is happening in your external environment (economics, client needs and wants) and internal environment (law firm, practice group, self), which, through your leadership, you will attempt to change?

2. Who are you trying to lead (self, other individuals, group)?

3. Where do you want to lead them?

WILL Registration Winding Down

The Women in Law Leadership Academy is still accepting registrations, but not for long. Early bird registration ends March 26th. The program is targeted for women 4 - 10 years out of school. I'm class of 2007, but I'm still going to try and go. Here's why:

• Carolyn Lamm, ABA President and Partner, White & Case LLP
• Michele Coleman Mayes, Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Allstate Insurance Company
• Lynn Laverty Elsenhans, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, Sunoco, Inc.
• Mary E. Snapp, Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, Microsoft Corporation and Chair-Elect, Minority Corporate Counsel Association
• Hilarie Bass, Global Operating Shareholder, Greenberg Traurig, LLP
• Pamela A. Bresnahan, Partner, Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP
• Gail A. Lione, Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary, Harley-Davidson, Inc.
• Mary B. Cranston, Firm Senior Partner, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, LLP
• Julie M. Howard, President & COO, Navigant Consulting, Inc.
• JoAnne A. Epps, Dean, Temple University James E. Beasley School of Law
• Marcia Devins Greenberger, Founder and Co-President, National Women’s Law Center
• Mary L. Smith, Senior Counsel, Civil Division, U.S. Department of Justice
• Sara Lipscomb, General Counsel, U.S. Small Business Administration
• Judge Judith S. Kaye, Of Counsel, Skadden, Arps and Former Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals
• Judge Barbara M. G. Lynn, United States District Judge for the Northern District of Texas
• Judge M. Margaret McKeown, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• Judge Norma L. Shapiro, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
• Carrie J. Hightman, Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer, NiSource Inc.
• Thomas L. Sager, Senior Vice President and General Counsel, DuPont
• Kellye L. Walker, SVP, General Counsel and Secretary, American Water
• Catherine Lamboley, Retired Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Shell Oil Company
• Carol Ann Petren, Executive Vice President, General Counsel, CIGNA Corporation

Yup, they're all going to be there.

Leadership, Power, and Politics: How Can You Obtain the Power to Shape Action in Your Organization?

Law firms, governmental agencies, law schools, corporations, not-for-profit agencies, industry groups, and small businesses are organizations. Organizations are systems of government; they are “intrinsically political,” says Gareth Morgan in his classic book, Images of Organization. What does this mean for you?

Assessing Your Leadership Skills

The following is a leadership skills inventory to help you understand yourself
better and think about how to capitalize on your strongest skills and strengthen your weaker ones. This inventory should be used after reading the first two articles of this series. It incorporates the concepts from those articles. Click here and here to read those articles. This inventory does not assess your leadership style or personality, two views of leadership, which I believe have a cultural bias that favors white men over women and minority lawyers. This inventory is adapted from the skills inventory created by Peter G. Northouse in his 2007 book, pp. 65-66, Leadership, published by Sage Publications, Inc. and combines additional skills required to be a successful builder-leader.

Instructions: Consider each item and then decide which response on the scale describes you best. If you ask a colleague to evaluate you, you will get another perspective on your skill set.  Use the responses to think about and list your leadership strengths and weaknesses. For whom or what are you exercising leadership (for yourself, your group and/or your entire organization)? How often do you lead in the various ways measured by this instrument? Consider opportunities to demonstrate your strengths to the decision-makers in your organization and lead outside of your organization.

Scale 1= Not true 2=Seldom true 3=True as often as not true 4= More often true than no true 5= Frequently true

1. I set goals for myself, my group, and/or my organization.

2. I regularly collect data to assess a situation, analyze that data, and decide upon appropriate goals.

3. I know how to do a SWOT analysis and do so for myself, group, and/or organization.

4. I regularly create action plans for myself, group, and/or organization.

5. I regularly implement action plans for myself, group, and/or organization.

The Skills for Leading in the Current Legal Landscape Are ...

Any woman who graduated from law school and passed a bar exam is capable of developing all the necessary skills to lead her organization. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise. Do not buy-in to the idea that you need charisma or a particular temperament. Do not let anyone convince you that you must be magically endowed with the right leadership traits or style. Good leadership flows from continually learning and refining the right set of skills for the unique context of your law firm, practice group, in-house law department, law school, or other legal organization.

Leadership is a process with three components: leader(s), follower(s), and goal(s). Leadership is goal-driven. Simply put, leadership skills are what enable leaders to identify the right goals and then develop and implement action plans to achieve those goals.

In my last post, I explained why women lawyers have an inherent leadership advantage for today’s legal landscape. It’s a complex landscape. The best way to lead in the face of complexity is with elegant simplicity. Here it is. There are only four skills that you need to worry about. I’m going to identify the four skills (other than the obvious need for technical excellence as a lawyer) and explain them. Let’s begin.

Skill #1: Identifying Goals

Goals fall into two categories. There are goals, which are necessary to solve problems and goals, which are intended to cause growth. An easy to understand and quite useful process for identifying goals is the B-school SWOT analysis. A leader must be able to think about her group, organization, system, and herself and be a first-class noticer of
internal Strengths and Weaknesses and external Threats and Opportunities. She must then be able to analyze the circumstances and decide upon and implement an action plan.

Is there a weakness that needs a solution? Is there a threat that is really an opportunity in need of innovation? Regardless of the type of goal, an action plan is the series of steps; which, if chosen appropriately and executed properly, leads to an intended goal. As you should have guessed, if they teach this in Business School then you, too, can learn this skill and with practice, hone it.

It’s helpful to have diversity of perspective to improve the process of noticing problems and opportunities and diversity of thinking to improve analysis and decision-making. Diversity rests in diverse groups, not in individuals. This brings us to the next leadership skill.

After the jump tips on leading diverse groups, understanding system dynamics, and leading through shared learning...

Law Students: Apply for ABA Law Student Division Leadership Positions

1Ls and 2Ls: As you start the spring semester, consider applying for a leadership position with the ABA Law Student Division. There are over 100+ elected and appointed positions available. This is an amazing opportunity to gain leadership experience on regional and national levels by representing more than 50,000 law students.

We've put the major deadlines on our Ms. JD calendar to help you out. The first deadline is January 15, so start working on those applications!

Click here for a flyer about the elections and here for more information on the requirements for each position.

Women Supervisors: The Danger of Micromanaging

Lately, I’ve started to wonder if women are more likely to be ineffective managers than men. I think, after mulling it over for a few days, that women (who we already know have to work harder to get into positions of power) might have perfectionist complexes that go past the objective and into the subjective, which might make them difficult to work under.

For example, I have a friend who has been complaining to me about his boss (a woman). He says that she likes to be kept “in the loop” on everything he does, including minor emails, and that she will often correct him in front of others or send clarifying emails following his emails that mostly say the same thing he said but in different words. (i.e. he’ll send out an email that says “We’re meeting in the conference room at 10. Please bring your case materials” and she’ll send an email that says “Just to clarify, all the members of the team will be meeting. Please bring your drafts of the memo.”) He can’t stand his boss. At first, I thought he was just chafing to work under a woman or that, if anything, this particular woman was a bit of a micromanager.

I had the issue in my head though, so I started noticing things around my own office. Last week, I had to get a few documents approved by one of my female supervisors, and she made me go back and forth with several minor, subjective changes (i.e. I wrote “individuals” and she wanted “people”). I thought of my friend and started to wonder whether female supervisors feel the need to vouch more for their employees than male supervisors, which then leads to a painful degree of micromanagement. In my case, the document was not that important, and I was actually signing my name to it, so my supervisor wasn’t publicly linked to it at all. Why, then, the need to have me make several superficial wording changes?

Why Do We Need Women's Bar Associations?

Elizabeth K. Peck is President and Co-Founder of the Finger Lakes Women’s Bar Association and the Director of Career Services at
Cornell
Law
School in
Ithaca, NY

Why Do We Need Women’s Bar Associations?

I asked myself this very question 18 months ago.   Back in October of 2006, along with 300 other women attorneys in my area, I was invited to breakfast by the Women’s Bar Association of the State of
New York (WBASNY) to discuss starting a new chapter of the organization.  Honestly, I had no interest then in a “specialty bar.”  What I did have, however, was interest in meeting local attorneys.  Much as I had tried, I hadn’t yet connected with lawyers in my community.  Tapping into this network was important to me because I am a career counselor at a law school in rural
New York.  Each year a small number of my students want to stay in our lovely hamlet to practice law after graduation.  Without contacts among local lawyers I couldn’t serve their needs as well as I wanted to.  In small communities, if you want to find a job, you’ve got to know people.

So, I went to breakfast.  I listened to the pitch.  I ate luke-warm eggs.  Nothing.  Then, I just happened to meet the right person at the right time.  On the sidewalk outside the restaurant, I struck up a conversation with a young woman attorney working for a local firm.   “Ah ha!” I thought.  “This is exactly the kind of person I’d like to get to know.”  I quickly realized that helping to start this new organization would connect me to the very people I had been yearning to meet.  So, after 20 minutes of chatting in the October sunshine, we’d decided to start a new bar association.

And, to make a long story short: we did.  Six months after our initial meeting, the Finger Lakes Women’s Bar Association was born.  I am, to this day, continuously surprised at our success.  Our little chapter grew from 25 to 60 members in a year.  (In fact, although we are a women’s bar association, we are open to all and quite proud of our sole male member.)  We have held meetings, social events and continuing legal education courses.  Our members have learned of the sacrifices of the suffragettes, listened to the wisdom of an early NOW president, and come up to speed on the continued struggle for women’s equality in the world of college sports. 

And because our bar association is a chapter of the state-wide women’s bar, we have also witnessed the immense power that women, singly and collectively, can have.  At the state-level, WBASNY (yes, it is an ungainly acronym) gives voice to the needs of women, children and families before the New York State Legislature.  With a paid lobbyist and very committed volunteer members, our organization analyzes legislation pending in Albany and advocates for those bills which will best serve the people of
New York, especially those people who are women, children or members of families. 

This is all very nice, but get back to the original question: so, why a women’s bar association?  Don’t co-ed bars do the same things?  Well, yes and no.