Balance between personal and professional goals
Accountability is the natural outcome of a person deciding to take responsibility for something. You cannot hold people accountable; they can only choose to be accountable. Research indicates that, individuals and teams increasingly will be self-directing, self-organizing, and self-regulating (Kilburg, 1991; Stacey 1992, 1996; Tsui & Ashford, 1994; Valliant, 1993), so in order for law firms to survive, firm leadership will need to build a strategy and culture based on a high level of trust throughout the organization. If you cannot convince our young people to hold themselves accountable for what they do, it is unlikely that they will achieve much. In an effort to attract and retain talented young professionals, law firms will need to alter their own leadership and career development strategies.
This new paradigm will need to position firms to attract people who are fully engaged, physically energized, emotionally connected, mentally focused, and spiritually aligned with a purpose beyond immediate self-interests. Full engagement begins with feeling eager to go to work in the morning, equally happy to return home in the evening, and being capable of setting clear boundaries between the two. Full engagement implies a fundamental shift in the way many lawyers will live their lives. Noel Tichy, author of The Leadership Engine (1997), believes that, “the scarcest resource in the world today is leadership talent capable of continuously transforming organizations to win in tomorrow’s world.”
A coach can assist members of the firm’s leadership team by connecting an individual’s thoughts and actions in order to create a balance between personal and professional goals.[1] A coach can help individuals create a vision of the future or an ideal to aspire towards, as opposed to struggling to survive by avoiding problems. Outside coaching may be a way for lawyers to develop new perspectives and skills required to lead law firms under these continually changing conditions. The coach can carefully observe both the individual’s actions and the effect of those actions within the law firm community, while trying to understand both. This can be extremely difficult for a mentor who is a member of the surrounding community.
[1] Thomas G. Crane, The Heart of Coaching: Using Transformational Coaching to Create a High-Performance Culture (San Diego: FTA Press, 2002), p. 115