1. Business of Law
February 14, 2013
© 2013 Bloomberg Finance L.P. All rights reserved.
Diversifying Your Portfolio
of Leadership Skills
By Susan G. Manch
While writing my newly published book, Learning From Law
Firm Leaders, I had an opportunity to speak with 31 successful
law firm leaders1
to try to identify the distinct skills and traits
that effective leaders possess. The leaders interviewed could not
have been more varied in their paths to or roles in leadership.
They included chairs of AmLaw 50 Global firms and managing
partners from smaller regional firms; committee, practice group,
and office leaders; newer leaders and more senior ones preparing
to cede their leadership roles to others. I gathered broad and
varied perspectives and yet definite themes emerged in those
hundreds of pages of notes. In the end, five core competencies
surfaced, representing distinct dimensions of leadership identity
that can be useful to aspiring and current leaders. Let’s explore this
diversified portfolio of the skills that together define effectiveness
in leadership.
Knowledge and Skill Mastery
The first thing I noted about all of the leaders profiled in the
book is that they began their paths to leadership by simply being
respected lawyers in their firms. The quality of their legal skills
and the depth of their substantive knowledge established the first
element of credibility they needed to gain followership amongst
colleagues. While law firms may entertain the idea of having a
non-lawyer executive at the top, having walked in the shoes of the
firm’s partners (and done so successfully) remains an important
element in the effectiveness of leaders in most firms today. In a
competitive marketplace, it has never been more important to
be a master of your area of expertise and someone whose value
is apparent to clients and colleagues.
When I’m coaching an aspiring leader, I encourage the person
to begin with a 360° assessment on all five of the leadership core
competencies discussed in this article. Yet, some of the most
interesting information derives from the questions regarding
knowledge and skill mastery. These interviews are a useful tool
to collect insights from senior, peer, and junior colleagues that
they are unlikely to volunteer on their own.
Openness to Learning
To develop strong leadership skills, it’s not enough to simply be
a legal expert and facile developer and manager. Emerging and
current leaders have to be open to refining other skills, such as
consensus building, strategic planning, forecasting, fostering
positive culture, and decision-making. The leaders I interviewed
described how much they relied on learning to help them meet
the challenges that leadership roles present. Without a growth
mindset, leaders can become rigid and wedded to precedent,
believing that if it’s worked in the past it’s bound to keep on
working. They also may underestimate the adaptability of the
organization. That kind of thinking is unlikely to prevail when
markets and clients demand innovation and flexibility. Openness
to new ideas and broad perspectives also supports the level of
inclusiveness leaders need to walk the walk on diversity objectives.
Retaining a growth mindset regarding professional development
provides aspiring leaders with a tangible return on investment
as they watch their greater knowledge and skill mastery add
increasing value to client matters.
Communication and Interpersonal Style
The leaders I interviewed were all very effective at relationship
building. These are not individuals who seized power of their firms
by caveat. While they pursued different paths, all were encouraged
by their colleagues to take on increasing responsibility for leading
their firms. Being an effective communicator whose word can be
Originally published by Bloomberg Finance L.P. Reprinted with permission.
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2. 2Business of Law
trusted is at the heart of gaining followership. In order to lead,
colleagues must believe what you say and trust that you will work
for the best interests of the firm as a whole, not yourself. Without
strong personal connections with a broad group of firm members,
leaders can’t possibly be effective. This doesn’t mean leaders
need to be “glad handers” or everyone’s best friend. Rather, they
need to commit the time needed to really know their colleagues
and communicate with them regularly. Many personal styles
work well as long as the common thread is positive relations and
honest communication.
Mentorship
One of the ways leaders can signal selflessness is to invest time
in helping others succeed. It’s more than succession planning,
although building a pipeline of talent ready to succeed you is
indeed a clear sign of leadership. Some of the most impressive
mentoring comes about when a senior lawyer chooses to devote
time to helping a more junior colleague who is not directly involved
in his or her practice. In a program our Diversity and Learning
& Development teams are piloting at Bingham, we asked some
of our most successful partners to mentor midlevel associates
of color to ensure that these developing lawyers had powerful
mentors and role models. These partners are simply the busiest
lawyers in the firm and people associates might never approach
as mentors, but each of them took on this responsibility with
gusto and devoted many hours to working with their mentees.
For several of the associates, their mentors’ guidance was career-
changing. Mentoring is a skill but also an art, and these highly
successful partners showed that they had mastered both elements.
Vision
In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins writes, “No matter how
dramatic the end result, the good-to-great transformations never
happened in one fell swoop. There was no single defining action,
no grand program, no one killer innovation, no solitary lucky
break, no wrenching revolution. Good to great comes about by
a cumulative process―step by step, action by action, decision by
decision.”2
Sometimes we believe only those with a grand vision
or strategy can be true leaders, but in reality vision emerges
over time. The track record a leader develops for making good
decisions, dealing fairly with people, and guiding the firm through
challenging times creates the vision. To lead, partners must be
able to see these patterns, but also able to break free of them
when it’s needed. They need to be able to rise above the minutia
of every day practice and the stranglehold of “how things have
been done” to see where the firm or practice group or team is
headed and where it needs to go. Vision requires curiosity as
well as knowledge. We can be tricked into thinking that a grand
vision is more than it really is. Often, having a true vision for the
group you are leading emerges over time, piece by piece, and in
unassuming ways. Effective leaders have a gift for being able to
“see” further than others and with a clearer lens.
* * *
These five competencies are not exclusive and individual leaders
should adopt their own definition of competencies they find to be
important in carrying out their leadership accountabilities. These
five competencies are a good start however because we know they
work in practice. The leaders profiled in Learning From Law Firm
Leaders demonstrate these competencies, among others, giving
aspiring or current leaders a path to follow. For lawyers aspiring
to be future law firm leaders, the critical take-away is that the key
to success is not one-dimensional. Effective leaders demonstrate
competences across broad elements of behavior and strive to do
so with consistency.
Susan G. Manch is the Firmwide Director of Learning & Development
for Bingham McCutchen and the author of four books, of which
Learning From Law Firm Leaders is the most recent. She can be
reached for questions or comments at susan.manch@bingham.com.
1
Sandy Chamblee, Steptoe & Johnson, LLP; Carla Christofferson, O’Melveny
& Myers; Lewis Collins, Butler Pappas; Steve D’Amore, Winston & Strawn;
Kenneth Doran, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher; Debora de Hoyos, Mayer Brown;
Ellen Dwyer, Crowell & Moring; Tom Fitzgerald, Winston & Strawn; David
Foltyn, Honigman; Kent Gardiner, Crowell & Moring; Jeff Haidet, McKenna
Long; Tim Hester, Covington & Burling; Kim Koopersmith, Akin Gump; Gerry
Lowrey, Fulbright & Jaworski; Mike Lucey, Gordon Rees; Phil Malet, Steptoe
& Johnson, LLP; Bruce McLean, Akin Gump; Howard Merton, Partridge
Snow; Wayne Mason, Sedgwick; Ann Miller, Law Offices of Ann Miller; Mike
Nannes, Dickstein Shapiro; Steve Pfeiffer, Fulbright & Jaworski; Jim Rishwain,
Pillsbury; Sandra Seville-Jones, Munger Tolles & Olson; Peter Shields, Wiley
Rein; Tricia Sherick, Honigman; Herb Stevens, Nixon Peabody; Barton
Winokur, Dechert; Chris White, Cadwalader; Dick Wiley, Wiley Rein, and Jay
Zimmerman, Bingham McCutchen.
2
Page 165, Harper Collins Publisher, New York, 2001.