Legal Management

More Candidate for Writing Skills Training?

Simple, clear and concise writing is a challenge for many lawyers, including the Justices of the US Supreme Court. Check this article of the International Herald Tribune.

 

Three Questions to Save Training Money

Do you know precisely what you want to improve?

If your answer is "management" or "communication" or "negotiation", you haven't done your homework yet. What exactly do you want to improve? Exactly what performance needs improvement? What specific behavior do you want to enhance?

Are you convinced that improving it is a priority?

There are so many nice things to learn, but so little time and budget available for learning. It is easy to waste your time while having a good time). But you can have a good time AND make a great use of your training resources. Make sure training will focus on what really matters both for your organization and for the participants. Is there a compelling reason for this training? Is it really important to have it now? Does it efficiently support the strategic objectives of your organization? Is it a "must have", or just a "nice to have"? What do you risk if you don't do the training?

Will better skills lead to better performance?

Sometimes, the reason for poor performance has nothing to do with lacking skills. If I learn to swim, my swimming performance will be zero if I don't have a swimming pool. If I learn creativity, I won't be able to use it and be more creative if my boss is a risk-averse tradition lover who won't leave me any room for innovation. Training is very often a bad solution to a real problem. Don't make that mistake. Make sure the bottleneck is indeed about skills, and not about anything else such as lack of strategic focus, inefficient organization, conflicts among decision-makers, laziness, lack of motivation, etc.

Antoine Henry de Frahan

Definitions of Teamwork and Team Spirit

Teamwork is an action. Team spirit is a mindset that enhances teamwork. 

Antoine Henry de Frahan

Definition of "Team"

A team is:

-     a group of people

-    working together 

-    in a relationship of interdependence

-    to achieve a common goal

Antoine Henry de Frahan

How Much Empowering Do You Want?

When a law firm is ordering a training program for associates, an important question to agree is the level of "associates empowerment" that the law firm is expecting from associates. 

A training program can be designed so as to lead associates to comply with and operate within the existing organisation and processes, without questioning them. But it can also give associates a chance to think critically and creatively about the firm's organisation and processes. When, during a workshop, a question as basic as "How could we improve the effectiveness of our practice group meetings?" is asked to associates, it actually invites them to think critically and creatively about the system. It implies that the system can be perfected. It implies that partners' job in managing the firm is not perfect. It implies that associates are authorised to take a critical distance with the system instead of adhering to it without any questions. It implies that partners should take suggestions into account and act upon them. Are partners fully aware of all these implications? Is this what they want to get, or do they want a training that will actually reduce the critical (and creative) distance that associates might have?

When facing all these implications, some partners will think twice before buying an "empowering training experience" for associates. And maybe rightly so. In other firms, partners are more willing to enable associates to think creatively and critically about the system. And maybe rightly so. What is important, in my opinion, is for the firm to make a conscious decision about the desired level of empowerment that the training is expected to produce.

Antoine Henry de Frahan

Criticisms of Coaching

There are many criticisms of "coaching", at least among French books and blogs. Authors like Vincent de Gaulejac (Qui est "je"?, La société malade de la gestion, Le coût de l'excellence), Roland Gori and Pierre Le Coz (L'empire des coachs), Michela Marzano (Extension du domaine de la manipulation)  or Geneviève Guilhaume (L'ère du coaching) are leading the way. In the blogoshpere, Professor F. Mispelblom Beyer gives an interesting overview of these criticisms. In a short essay, Stéphane Haefliger summarises two important criticisms: the invasion of privacy, and the ignorance of the systemic dimension of performance.

I am not easily finding the equivalent in US litterature and blogosphere. It may be that I am not looking at the right place, or that coaching is more entrenched into US culture.

Antoine Henry de Frahan

People Management and the Art of Conversation

It is striking to see how many people in charge of managing other people are trying to use techniques that work for managing machines and merchandises. It is all about checklists, forms, processes, metrics and tools. As if people were engines or pieces of machineries. These "people managers" are spending enormous amount of time and energy devising PowerPoint presentations, Excell sheets and other documents, lists, tables and flow charts, starting with strategic plans and ending up in detailed action plans. All of this is treating people as if they were inert, passive, unable to engage in a relationship. Too many people live on the illusion that "managing people" is a one-way exercise where the manager is in control while the other person is being controlled. Too many people think that "managing people" is something you can do in isolation. But there is no such thing as "managing people". Reality is that we engage in relationships with other people, or we don't. Some of these relationships deliver productive outcomes, other don't. It is not so much a question of checklists, metrics and tools as a question of ability to engage in a person-to-person relationship. Conversation is at the very core of a relationship. Many managers shy away from just having a conversation with their colleagues about difficult issues. Instead, they hide behind a wall of slides, strategic plans, appraisal forms and action plans. But that is not the sort of things that make a relationship work. Just try to "manage your wife" or "manage your husband" with a strategic plan, metrics, appraisal forms and action plans. In business, those tools may be useful when they come in support of a conversation, not when they replace it. Some managers tend to completely by-pass conversation and believe that professionalism is about removing everything that is typically human, replacing the uncertain outcome of a real-life, real-time conversation between real people by an anonymous, predictable, de-incarnated array of forms, slides, metrics and plans. Of course she should still use, from time to time, strategic plans, actions plans, metrics and other tools in management. But that will never replace a good conversation. Being a good people manager is, before everything else, daring to take the risk and being able to engage in a conversation.

Antoine Henry de Frahan 

Candidate for High Performance? Beware Multitasking

Ever seen the multi-tasking professional? Working simultaneously on a dozen projects, attending a meeting and blackberrying at the same time, typing and calling, a dozen of files open on the desktop, etc. Hyper-busy, hyper-multitasking,... but hyper-performing? No. Just the contrary, actually. A recent study, reported in the International Herald Tribune, seems to show that multi-taskers are lousy under-performers. Doing one thing at a time, paying full attention on one single task the one after the other, delivers much better outcomes, the study says.

Antoine Henry de Frahan

Five Qualities of the Ideal Professional

Expertise: knowing more than your clients - and more than your competitors - about issues that highly matter to your clients. 

Skill: being able to do things that your clients want to have and are not able to do (as well as you), and doing these things better than your competitors. 

Thought leadership: crafting innovative, inspiring ideas. 

Talent: having and nurturing outstanding personal qualities that your clients are fond of. 

Drive: committing, maintaining and sharing a high level of work-focused energy. 

Antoine Henry de Frahan

Managing People: Really?

You see a lot of enthusiasm for training on "managing your personal assistant", "managing your associates", "managing your client", or even the ironic "managing your boss". The enthusiasm, actually, is rather on the side of the supposed manager than on the side of the managed. 

Do you like to be "managed"? How does it feel when someone is "managing" you? How do you think other people will feel when they perceive that you (are trying to) "manage" them?

What is "the other", actually? Is "the other" an inert stuff waiting passively to be managed by you? Or another person craving for respect, just like you?

I think the right approach to people is not to "manage" them, but to enter into a relationship with them. Managing people is a one-sided affair: it's all about the manager managing, and the other person being managed. It is about the ambition and the illusion of exercising control over "the other". On the contrary, relationships, at least healthy and effective ones, are a two-way street. You can only "manage" your own side of the street, that is the way you will engage in the relationship.

My advice: when it comes to people, leave your management toolkit behind. Keep your management skills for manageable stuff. The proper way to engage in a relationship is to to meet, to discover, to learn how to work with, and to respect. Already a pretty ambitious program, isn't it?

I have given and hopefully will keep giving training on "people management skills". But don't get me wrong. The first people management tip that you will learn is that to make relationships effective, the first think you have to do is to stop "managing" the other, and to take the risk of engaging in a relationship that you will never be able to fully "manage", because it takes two to tango.

Antoine Henry de Frahan