Coaching Lawyers Helps Improve Business Results

Stephen P. Gallagher

President, LeadershipCoach.us

www.leadershipcoach.us

The future of every law firm rests on increasing the capacities and productivity of its workforce. Law firms are therefore looking for better ways to retain top talent. In recent months, a number of the leading law firms have expanded their use of “executive coaching” as a strategy for developing key individuals. Marshall Goldsmith, a world-renown executive coach, describes the most effective form of executive coaching as being both person-centered and system-centered. [1] It is no coincidence that bringing in outside coaches enables a firm to gain a broader perspective in dealing with the constant struggle to balance the needs of the individual with those of the law firm.

David H. Maister, one of the world's leading authorities on management of professional service firms, has been for years advising firms about how coaching can be an extremely effective tool in improving firm profitability. [2] In David H. Maister’s book, Practice What you Preach, he reported on research he completed on the relationship between employee attitudes and financial success of an organization. Maister’s research findings showed, “that the most financially successful businesses do better than the rest on virtually every aspect of employee attitudes, and those that do best on employee attitudes are measurably more profitable.” [3] It is no wonder that law firms are increasingly turning to executive coaching to help sustain an ongoing dialogue to help key attorneys improve business performance.

Developmental Coaching as a Strategy

Lawyers are familiar with using consultants as an objective party to “diagnose” a condition and “treat” a problem. In consulting, it is generally assumed that the consultant is the “expert” who decides what is and is not working within the organization and then recommends “treatment” (training, downsizing, restructuring, team-building, information technology update, etc.) [4] Coaching on the other hand is more of a partnership, a relationship between a coach and a client than an advice-giving “expert” situation such as one might find in a consulting intervention.

In a law firm, mentoring is another developmental tool by which more experienced practitioners share their wisdom with younger attorneys on a one-to-one basis. Mentoring typically takes place between a more senior/experienced partner and a younger/less-experienced attorney to demonstrate how substantive knowledge can be applied. Mentoring frequently includes issues of enculturation, career growth, political savvy, and personal networking in an organization. Like mentoring, coaching presents clients with an opportunity to engage in a “dialogue of development.”

Coaching is by its nature an inherently reflective process that encourages clients to look back at how they think, feel, and behave. [5] Coaching will establish a climate within which vital, though seemingly intransigent, issues may be brought to the surface, confronted, and then dealt with. In order to be successful, executive coaching must achieve positive change for both the individual and the systems that make-up the law firm culture. This aspect of executive coaching is generally best handled through a mutually defined set of goals to improve the client’s personal goals and professional performance as well as the mission and business plan of the firm.

Business Coaching

Business Coaching is a one-to-one interactive relationship that creates a trusting and collaborative environment in which personal development and performance improvement occur. The goal of Business Coaching should never be in fixing what is broken, but in discovering new talents and new ways to use old talents that lead to far greater effectiveness. For Business Coaching to be effective, the law firm culture needs to provide a supporting environment to allow this growth to take place. Since coaching, by its nature is person-centered and system-centered, successful coaching must achieve positive change for both the individual and the systems that make-up the law firm culture.

Career Coaching

The reasons for initiating any type of coaching relationship can certainly vary from firm to firm, but, frequently, key attorneys are identified for their unique leadership potential. The firm invites these valuable employees to work with a Career Coach to help them master specific skills needed for them to move on to the next level of development.

Most workforce experts agree that the costs to attract, train, and retain a new employee with experience and skills similar to those of the one being replaced is at least twice the former employee’s average salary. Authors, Cathleen Benko, Deloitte’s Managing Principal of Talent and Anne Weisberg, Senior Advisor to Deloitte’s Women’s Initiative write that, “These costs range as high as five times the former employee’s annual salary in organizations that complete primarily on the knowledge and analytical skills of their employees.” [6]

Career Coaching is being seen as an extension of a firm’s life-long commitment to attracting, training, and retaining talent. This form of coaching focuses on helping individuals find greater meaning and purpose in their current duties and responsibilities, while supporting these same individuals in assuming responsibility for their own career development. This type of coaching generally combines group training with personalized coaching to better serve selected groups of attorneys.

Assessing the Success of Coaching

Assessment of coaching outcomes in any organization is difficult, but it is particularly difficult in a law firm setting, because professionals have so much discretion and autonomy. According to Bruce Peltier, Ph.D. author of The Psychology of Executive Coaching: Theory and Application, “Assessment is important because people in the workplace tend to avoid frankness when they deal with each other, especially when they interact with people to whom they report—those who formally evaluate them. The higher leaders get in an organization, the less frank feedback they get. Leaders at the top of organizations rarely get any “negative” feedback at all, and sometimes, because of flattery, they have a distorted sense of their strengths, weaknesses, and abilities.” [7]

In a typical law firm, partners rarely answer to anyone, because quite frequently they have their own unique areas of expertise. This type of law firm governance does not only limit the feedback partners receive, but it also does not support or encourage “dialogue of development” to take place between partners and associates. This is one of the reasons law firms are turning to outside coaches. It is still too early to determine how coaching affects profitability, but aligning coaching client’s personal and professional goals with the firm’s desired business goals appears to be a good place to start.

Stephen P. Gallagher is a developmental coach who works exclusively with attorneys and groups of attorneys. Mr. Gallagher contracts with law firms to coach individual attorneys on an as-needed basis. He also conducts strategic planning retreats for law firms. Stephen lives with his wife of thirty-six years, Nancy in Narberth, PA.

[1] See Goldsmith, M., Lyons, L. & Freas, A. (2000). Coaching for leadership: How the world’s greatest coaches help leaders learn. San Francisco: Josset-Bass/Pfeiffer, p. 62.

[2] See Maister, D. H. (1993). Managing the professional service firm; New York: Free Press; Maister, D. H. (1997) True professionalism. New York: Free Press. Maister, D. H. (co-author, 2000). The trusted advisor. New York: Free Press; Maister, D. H. (co-author, 2001), First among equals. New York: Free Press; Maister, D. H. (2001) Practice what you preach: What managers must do to create a high achievement culture. New York: Free Press .

[3] Maister, D. H. (2001). Practice what you preach. New York: Free Press, p. 1.

[4] Kleinberg, J. A. (2001). A scholar-practitioner model for executive coaching: Applying theory and application within the emerging field of executive coaching. (Doctoral dissertation, The Fielding Institute, 2001), Dissertation Abstracts International, 52(4-A), p. 9.

[5] See Starr, J. (2003). The coaching manual. London: Prentice Hall; Whitworth, L., Kimsey-House, H. and Sandahl, P. (1998), Co-active coaching: new skills for coaching people towards success in work and life, Palo Alto CA: Davis-Black Publishing.

[6] Benko, C, Weisberg, A (2007) Mass career customization: Aligning the workplace with today’s nontraditional workforce. Boston : Harvard Business School Press, p. 23.

[7] Peltier, B. (2001). The psychology of executive coaching: Theory and application. Ann Arbor, MI.: Sheridan Books, p. 2.
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