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...
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