What Comes Next: Supporting Succession in Law Firms

Firm leaders often think extensively about retention methods for their teams. The focus is generally more on retention than succession planning. While retention is important and should always be the goal for your top talent, we would be remiss if we didn’t also consider the succession plan for the key members of our teams, especially your leadership team. The ultimate goal is to always retain your best players but to be prepared and have a plan for their eventual departure. Unfortunately, attrition is a fact of life, and preparing for inevitabilities in business separates great leaders from good ones.

An effective coach always has a plan for who they will put in the game if one of the starting players needs to come out, right? Your team members may eventually retire, or they may legitimately need to move on elsewhere in order to follow their career goals. You may even find yourself needing to support their decision to move on from your firm. So as much as you may wish to and attempt to retain them, you also need to make sure you have a plan for their departure. In this week’s blog, we’ll examine the concept of succession planning as it applies to your team, especially your leadership positions.

What’s the problem?

So why aren’t firm leaders better at succession planning with their teams? It often boils down to the awkwardness of it. Questions that can make us squirm can come up like:

Whose job is it to initiate a plan for succession?

Do you, as a firm leader, bring it up?

When is the right time to implement a succession plan?

Are your team members expected to bring it up to you?

Team members may be hesitant to come to you and tell you about their potential to ever work elsewhere. That’s understandable. Certainly, they would not want to jeopardize their position and future opportunities with you and your firm. On the other hand, firm leaders may feel it is an awkward topic to broach because they don’t want team members to feel they lack confidence in their ability to succeed. So, the whole topic becomes the elephant in the corner of the room, ignored… until it’s possibly too late.

What is even more unfortunate is that there might be more growth opportunities for your firm’s leadership team than they realize. If you don’t take the time to plan out what your organization’s future looks like, and include your leadership team in that vision, they may be operating under the assumption that the best growth opportunities for them lay elsewhere.

How to fix it

You need to be proactive in discussing career plans with your team. Remove the stigma and the awkwardness, and try to be supportive. Being familiar with the career goals of your top leaders will give you the edge. You will have the opportunity to see if you can accommodate that path within your firm. If their career goals truly cannot be accommodated within your firm, you will need to reach a place of understanding, support, and compassion with that team member. That simple act of grace and generosity is often paid back to forward-thinking leaders exponentially in time. By working to get ahead of potential issues and problems, you create more time to build your 2nd string players up and equip them to take over eventually or recruit new leaders into your firm.

Switch the mindset- instead of thinking, “Is my 2nd string player ready to step up?”, you’ve got to proactively think, “What do we need to do to get this player ready?” If you have been supportive of their succession plans, then your incumbent team members are more likely to lend a helpful hand in preparing their successors for the role. You should always be thinking about the eventual successor for your key positions. Make a habit of continuous planning so that you are never caught off guard.

So how do you remove the stigma and make the topic of succession more comfortable to discuss openly with your team? It helps if you have created a culture of openness and trust amongst your team with a positive growth mindset. But it boils down to your ability to look at the process objectively. It’s easy for our personal feelings and our own goals to cloud our thinking process during these hard conversations. You will need to balance having empathy for your team members and their desires with being able to make clean, objective decisions for your firm.

The takeaway: There is a human component to this process that has to be balanced with strategic business decisions.

You will need to step back and look at the whole situation objectively. You will need to candidly and carefully answer two critical questions:

What is in the best interest of your firm?
What is in the best interest of the team member?

If the answers are two different things, then we have to be able to find a way to work together and allow all goals to be achieved. To decide if retaining this team member is truly in the best interest of your firm, you have to be able to evaluate whether or not the actions you will need to undertake in order to retain them are actions that are in the best interest of your firm. If not, what are the actions you can take that would be in the best interest of both the team member and your firm? The journey is about finding the space that honors both vital needs.

Planning ahead now pays dividends later

Aside from having a plan in place to keep key positions filled, what are the benefits of succession planning with your team? It will allow you to be more intentional in promotion and training investments. Too often, our operational decisions are guided by necessity. We make decisions based on what we need, not what we want. We offer promotions to fill a seat. We offer training to fill a gap. Planning your firm’s organizational structure out in advance, including future growth, will allow you to make proactive, strategic decisions on where to focus your recruiting and training budgets.

As with anything, it can be hard to take the time to focus on long-term planning when the short-term day-to-day tasks seem to consume our attention. But, planning for your firm’s future leadership needs instead of just being content in your current setup will give you the edge by keeping your team foundation strong through the years.

The Recipe For Success: How to Increase Job Satisfaction & Engagement

I’ve gotten a lot of questions over the years about job satisfaction, specifically for attorneys. Finding new associates is an increasingly difficult task. You want to find good talent, and then when you do, you want to KEEP that good talent! Going one step further, you not only want to keep them, but you also want to bring out the best in them. You want them engaged, motivated, and productive. But this doesn’t just apply to attorneys, it applies to your entire team at every level!

Job satisfaction is so important for your team. When your team feels high levels of job satisfaction, you will not only see decreased turnover and increased engagement and productivity, but you will see increased client satisfaction and a more positive working environment at your firm. A satisfied team is a happy team, which creates a better working environment for all!

So, what is the secret recipe for high job satisfaction? Well, as usual, there is no magic pixie dust, but there actually IS a recipe that I can share with you! It’s called the Job Demands- Resources (or JD-R) Model. Simply put, this model lets us break down what the demands of a job are and weigh them against the resources an individual has available for meeting those demands. By applying this model to various positions, we can work to equalize demands versus resources, which will lead to higher job satisfaction.

According to the JD-R Model, stress and burnout occur when job demands are high and job support is low. The good news is organizational support, and other positive job factors can mitigate the impacts of high-stress workloads and increase job satisfaction.

We all seem to know an individual who works in a very high-pressure role, but instead of getting upset at the high demands, appears to thrive in that environment. Odds are this individual works for a highly supportive organization that provides the resources they need to meet the high demands of their position.

When an individual works in a position with high demands but not enough resources to meet those demands, they are more likely to become stressed and even burned out. Their overall well-being will suffer. When the resources they have are sufficient to meet the demands of their position, they will be more satisfied and productive at their jobs. Therefore, the JD-R is a simple recipe for creating a high-satisfaction environment for your team.

The model defines job elements into two categories:

Job demands are the physical or emotional requirements of the position. These include factors such as: deadlines, workload, negative environment, emotional involvement, and work/ life role conflict.
Job resources are the available organizational or social support systems an individual has to meet requirements and goals. Resources can include factors such as coaching and mentoring, strong work relationships, recognition/ praise, and learning and development.

Resources include both organizational and personal resources. An individual that receives resources from both their personal life and their employer will benefit the most. However, as an employer, you may have a hard time providing personal resources to your team, and it is important to remember that one team member may have more personal resources than another.

Start by looking at each position individually and identify the specific demands of that position. Some demands can be easily met, such as:

Is a specific piece of software required?

Did you provide the needed software?

However, consider the demands comprehensively! Ask yourself critical questions like:

Does the position frequently have high pressure deadlines?

Does it require a lot of overtime?

Are specific skills or certifications required for the position?

Are the position objectives clear or unclear?

Is the workplace environment unpleasant?

Can the job be emotionally draining at times?

Is the position fast paced, or can it be monotonous?

Then consider the resources an individual will need to truly meet the demands of that position. At Vista, we constantly discuss the critical concept of: Tools, Training, and Expectations (TTE). Take the time to properly evaluate the TOOLS your team needs, because it may be more than a working phone or computer. Ask yourself questions like:

Do they have the autonomy they need to handle their jobs?

Do they have coaching available to them when needed?

Is there anything that can be done to make the work environment more pleasant?

Are they offered the opportunity to take a break and recharge as needed?

Do they have help and support from co-workers or assistants?

Is there sufficient reward for their work?

Be proactive in making sure your team has balance between the demands they face and the support they need to meet those demands. And remember, some team members may have more outside support than others. Although typically you should apply this model to each position, if you have a team member who is struggling, it can be a good idea to apply the model to them as an individual as well.

Using the JD-R model to increase job satisfaction should be done collaboratively with your team. It’s a good idea to consult your team on the demands they face and any deficiency in resources they perceive. This does not mean I am advising you to offer them anything they ask for; this means I am advising that you communicate openly with them, so that you can be sure you are familiar with the specific demands they are feeling in their positions. The goal is to get a deeper understanding of an individual team member’s needs.

Various studies show that up to 40% of American workers report feeling job burnout. Unmanageable workloads are reported as one of the main reasons for this burnout. Having a demanding, out-of-touch, unsupportive manager compounds the problem and leads to turnover. Hopefully, you can utilize this model (recipe) as a method of increasing job satisfaction and protecting your firm against that turnover. Acknowledging common obstacles and pitfalls and making strides to improve the working environment and professional lives of the team members at your firm will go a long way to realizing great success and individual potential.

Let’s Do This: Developing a Change Mindset Within Your Team

You want your team to learn and grow. You want your firm to evolve and develop and get better and better. You, the leader of your firm, have a vision for what you want to see your firm achieve in the future. But, to get there, everything cannot stay the same as it is now. Change, growth, and evolution must happen.

You will need to embrace the latest technology.

You will need to hire the best new talent available.

You will need to continue to refine and develop new workflows and processes.

You will need to develop new strategies and approaches.

You will need to evaluate new problems and market shifts.

Have you ever been here?

You approach your team with a new idea, a new method, a new system… you are excited! But there it is…that dreaded deer in the headlight look from them. Then you begin to feel the silent groans, the words they are thinking even if they aren’t saying them to you… “Ugh…more change. Why do we have to change the way we are doing things? The way we are doing it now is working. It’s fine. Why mess with it?”

They fear this change will be for the worse, won’t work, or will create more work for them. They are comfortable with how things are now. They are GOOD at the way they are doing things now.

Where do these feelings come from?

Your team remembers. If every time they turn around, there is another change, they will grow weary of it. Or worse yet, if you’ve tried to change things in the past, and it didn’t work out, they will hold onto that failure and its aftermath for years and years.

Your team may be skeptical, too, if changes have been approached cavalierly in the past with little to no thought put into how they will affect the team and firm as a whole. These kinds of events create the mindset that change won’t be successful in your firm no matter what they do.

Creating the change mindset

If your team doesn’t commit to change, your chances of success severely diminish. What do you need to do in order to get that precious buy-in from your team? As Vista Consultants, we see adversity to change amongst teams frequently. We visit firms that have asked for our help. They WANT change. Yet, their teams resist. Here are a few things you can do to help gain that buy-in from your team:

Start by embracing failure!

Seems a little backward perhaps, but try to remove the stigma around failure. As Thomas Edison once said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” I do sincerely hope it doesn’t take you 10,000 tries to get it right, but if it does, it does! Set the tone that when something doesn’t work out, it was a mere stepping stone, not a true failure. It was a learning opportunity, and as a team, you are not deterred. One of the biggest and best ways to get your team to feel good about trying something new is to take the fear of failure out of it or at least lessen it. We are going to keep taking that shot until we hit the target, and we are going to take that shot together as a team. When a team member is truly resistant to change, they may simply be afraid of letting you down. Share your own failures and successes, and make sure they know that you are all in this together- as a team.

Promote a learning culture within your firm.

I will recommend a learning culture for many reasons, but as far as change goes, your firm culture should never allow stagnation. Your culture should promote continuous learning and growth in all aspects. Set the tone that lifelong learning is the foundation of your firm’s success. Help your team let go of the notion that you, they, or anyone has mastered the best method of doing anything. A key element of a learning culture is the understanding that there is ALWAYS room for innovation and improvement. Your team wants to feel successful in their work. In order to embrace change, they must first be willing to admit that their way wasn’t necessarily the best way- that takes courage! Redefine your firm’s definition of success from that of becoming an expert, to that of continuous growth and improvement.

Communicate, Communicate, Communicate!

If you just throw out a big change to your team, and they don’t understand it, getting that buy-in will be a much bigger challenge. Explain the why behind the what. If your team is smart and inquisitive, they will want to know and understand why the change is necessary and what the goal is. They deserve to know that. If there is confusion regarding the change, make sure it is alleviated. Properly explain what is happening and give them insight into the bigger picture. Effective communication can be accomplished by group meetings, or you can utilize team leads or department heads to help with passing along key information. Department heads can not only explain the change, but help their team understand how it directly affects them, and what they do in that specific department.

Support your team.

Make sure they have the tools and training to be successful. It’s never enough to create a change and just run with it. Stop and look back to evaluate success. Continue to communicate and solicit feedback from your team on how they perceive the change is going. If you need to adjust- adjust! Change should be collaborative. If you want your team to hear you out and give you that buy-in, then stop and hear them out as well. If they need additional training or equipment to be successful, make sure you are providing that to them. Make sure you are truly setting them, and your firm, up to be as successful as possible. It will be difficult for them to ever embrace change if they feel unsupported by firm leadership during the adjustment.

Get ready

These simple tips can help shift your firm’s mindset towards change. Developing a culture that embraces change rather than fighting it can make your firm more productive and successful. When your team lets go of fear for fear’s sake, you will notice an environment where innovation, passion, and dedication thrive. That’s something every organization seeks out. Now, you know where to find it.

Retention through Connection: Using Mentorship to Strengthen Your Firm

Training, coaching, and mentoring can all be powerfully effective ways for you to help grow your firm and your team. You want your team to be their best, and by investing in them and providing opportunities for them to increase their skill level and excel in their positions, you will ultimately increase their motivation, productivity, and overall commitment to you. Effective mentorship is directly related to higher retention of your key performers. It sounds like a no-brainer, doesn’t it? So why do mentorship efforts at so many firms fall short of reaching these desired outcomes? The answer is that, generally, firm leaders don’t understand what mentorship truly means or how to design an effective mentorship program.

First, let’s talk about the difference between training, coaching, and mentorship. Are they interchangeable terms? No! But they each have a critical place in the plan for developing your firm.

Training is specific and skill oriented.

Training should have a plan, a time frame, and set outcomes. Training should also have specific measurements in place to evaluate success. Training is generally instructor-led.

Coaching is less specific but still skill-oriented.

Coaching is broader, longer in term, and typically should be more collaborative than training.

Mentoring entails building a long-term relationship between the mentor and the mentee.

Mentoring is more than skill building in a specific area; rather, it is meant to provide the mentee with a larger, global understanding of how to be successful. A great mentor relationship may span an entire career.

Mentorship has key purposes that play a specific role in law firms and for attorneys. While young lawyers can be trained on the formal rules governing legal practice, mentorship can familiarize them with the informal rules that will guide their daily decision-making. Mentorship guides young attorneys in their ethical acculturation. This is more obviously beneficial to the mentee (the protégé); however, it is beneficial to you as a firm leader as well when you consider your own need to have your new associates develop into strong, successful, well-rounded representatives of your firm and your firm’s core values.

The cost of getting it wrong

Improperly designed mentorship plans can actually have a potentially detrimental effect on your team. For a mentee, having a perception that their mentor failed them can be very detrimental to their job engagement. A bad mentorship experience can even weaken the mentee’s chances of overall success. The mentee can be left with feelings of resentment toward their mentor and toward your firm in general. In addition, studies have shown that a failed mentorship can be equally detrimental to the mentor. The mentor may feel a deep failure personally. In return, they may suffer from a loss of confidence and even creativity in their own work.

How to get it right

If you want to institute an effective mentorship program at your firm, there are a couple of things you can do to help ensure its success. Keeping these points in mind will help you accomplish the goals you wish to achieve by instituting a mentorship plan.

Willingness: Both parties to a mentorship relationship must be interested and willing to be a part of the relationship. A mentor should want to be a mentor. A mentee should want to have a mentor. Start by building a collaborative and learning culture within your firm. Set the expectation that knowledge sharing and cultivation tie to your core values. In the end, if both parties are not willing participants in the process, then you will not be set up for success.

The benefits of the relationship to the mentee may seem obvious, however, many potential mentees may be very resistant. A mentee must feel they are in a place of needing mentorship. It’s important to introduce them to the idea carefully and thoughtfully without belittling them or making them feel inadequate. Additionally, some potential mentors can be resistant to the idea of taking on their role. What’s in it for the mentor? Just a bunch of added responsibility, right? There are some benefits for the mentor as well. More responsibility could potentially come with more compensation. Additionally, the recognition alone of being chosen as a mentor can be very motivational to a team member.

Personality fit: When pairing up a mentor with a mentee, consider their individual personalities. Do they have anything in common? There needs to be a good personality fit to help them build a solid relationship. Hopefully you are hiring for your culture, and hopefully your team members all share your firm’s core values. Bringing in the right personalities to your firm to start with is the foundation for this fit.

Nevertheless, for this tighter knit relationship to work, it must be a good, natural personality fit between the mentor and mentee. Consider what they may have in common, what their individual communication styles are, and their complementary strengths and weaknesses. If you know they simply won’t gel, consider a different pairing.

Common goals: What is the goal of this initiative? You should all have outlined goals. What do you, as the firm owner/ leader, see as the potential benefits? What does the mentor hope to gain? What does the mentee believe they will garner from the relationship? These goals should not only be determined in the beginning, but they should be communicated openly.

If there are competing goals, you are setting the plan up for failure. Work towards creating a set of common goals to which all involved can aspire.

Leadership skills: You just hired a new associate. You decide to pair them up with your most experienced and successful trial attorney. This individual is such a great attorney, undoubtedly, they will make a great mentor, right? Unfortunately, not always. Being great and successful in your own job does not automatically equivalate to being a great teacher or leader.

If you are considering designing a mentorship program within your firm, take the time to pinpoint who you would like to place into the mentor roles. Then, take some time to develop them as leaders first. This is such a crucial step that is often overlooked.

Access: Does everyone at your firm get a mentor? Just certain positions? Does your team know the answer to these questions? If you design a mentorship program within your firm, make sure it is equitable. In a recent study done on the importance of mentorship in the early stages of career development among attorneys, it was noted that significantly fewer female attorneys reported having had a mentor than their male colleagues.

Those findings could be significant on many levels, however, at minimum, it provides an example of the need for equitable access to any mentorship program that you design for your firm. Failure to do so could not only carry legal consequences but cause significant harm to your firm’s culture.

By keeping these points in mind, you will be much more likely to develop a successful mentorship plan for your firm. Developing key performers and ensuring they stay loyal and committed to you and your firm is presumably one of your top goals. Having a highly effective team is a key to success. In order to be the best, you must have the best team, so integrating training, coaching, and mentorship should be among your firm’s top priorities.

Best Practices for Maternity and Paternity Leave

Many employers have added paid family leave policies to their benefits packages as a way of staying competitive in the hiring market and attracting new candidates. This has become increasingly common among the highest-ranked US employers. Offering some form of paid family leave can make your firm more attractive to potential top-tier candidates. Additionally, paid leave policies can increase employee retention. Studies have shown that when paid maternity leave is given, women are more likely to return to their positions after giving birth. Regardless of whether you decide to offer paid leave to your team, you should still have a plan in place regarding what to do when one of your employees requests to take family leave.

Does your firm offer paid maternity or paternity leave?

Families come in all shapes and sizes now so many employers have opted to use the broader term, “parental leave” to cover any paid family leave they offer. If you decide to offer a paid parental leave package, you will need to clearly address the parameters of this benefit and ensure that you are offering it equitably to all employees.

Be familiar with FMLA!

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) of 1993 is a federal policy that allows some workers to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave due to certain familial situations. However, depending on the state you are in, there may be even more restrictive state laws that could apply to your firm. For example, there are currently 10 US states that do mandate some amount of paid parental leave for certain employees. So, in addition to being familiar with FMLA, don’t forget to check your state laws to ensure compliance.

We highly recommend that you seek legal guidance regarding these policies to ensure your firm is in compliance. Designate one person in your firm to serve as the point person for FMLA. If you have an HR manager, they are a natural choice for this responsibility. However, if you don’t have a team member who is responsible for HR at your firm, you should still designate one person to be your FMLA expert. Laws are ever-changing, and it will be easier for your firm to stay compliant when one person is tasked with this responsibility. If you leave this task up to individual supervisors, you are asking for confusion and errors. While individual supervisors can work with your FMLA expert to handle issues such as work coverage, it’s still important to have a primary point person who has been handed the responsibility of ensuring your firm is in compliance with FMLA. Your FMLA expert should also be familiar with any short and/or long-term disability plans your firm offers. They should be prepared to educate team members on how those plans can work with their FMLA or parental leave requests.

Whether or not you decide to offer paid leave depends on your business model and your local laws. However, when one of your team members requests to take leave under your policy, a state guideline, or under FMLA, you will need to have a plan in place so that you, your employees, and your firm are prepared to accommodate the needed time in a fair and consistent manner.

When team members do take extended time off for maternity or paternity leave, or for medical reasons, it’s critical, as employers, to approach these instances thoughtfully, intentionally, and carefully.

Here are some important considerations:

Make a plan for your team member’s leave. You should develop a plan for your team member’s absence well in advance of their leave in cases where that’s possible. While FMLA requires advance notice, when possible, sometimes these types of absences are unforeseeable. If you are able to develop a plan ahead of the leave, make sure you know key details like when the leave is expected to begin. One of the biggest concerns employers have about family leave is who will cover the responsibilities of the team member that is on leave. If possible, plan a gradual exit that includes collaborating with the team member that is appointed to cover their work. This is especially important if you are considering bringing in a temporary employee who may be less familiar with your firm. But acknowledge that unexpected events happen and have a backup plan in place in case that gradual exit isn’t possible.

Make a return plan. Ultimately, you want to ensure your team member’s return after their leave. Your goal should be to make the return as easy as possible on the employee and on your firm. Offering a gradual return to work can be a great way to accomplish this. Consider letting them return part time and gradually build back up to full time hours again. This will allow for a much smoother and less stressful transition for all. When a team member returns from maternity or paternity leave, their role conflict has the potential to be at an all-time high. As their employer, you may be able to help minimize that conflict and ensure their successful return if you plan ahead.

Communicate! I cannot stress this enough. Sometimes when a team member requests family or parental leave, you may be forced to make tough decisions. Perhaps you may be forced to hire a replacement or to transfer the team member into a position where the absence will be less disruptive. These moves can be very concerning and upsetting to your team members if they do not understand the plan. Ultimately, you want to retain your team members. You have invested in these individuals, and you are a team. Ensure that you communicate with them, and that they understand the plan for their position while they are out. They need to know that their position is secure for them to return to at the end of their leave.

Keeping these best practices in mind can ensure that you will not only be compliant with applicable laws but also be prepared to handle the inevitable requests for leave. It is important to remember that your team members need to integrate their work and personal lives. If you work as a team with them to handle any needed work absences you can not only increase team member loyalty, but you can ensure that your firm will continue to operate efficiently during family leave absences.

Leading with Compassion

What is compassionate leadership?

Compassionate leaders not only see their employees as integral parts of their organization, but they also view and recognize them as individuals. They recognize the needs of their employees in their entirety, not just as they mutually fulfill the needs of the business. Compassionate leaders are influencers, not authoritarians. Their leadership style is focused on encouragement, and they rarely (if ever) make demands of their team. They understand and respect their team and provide a leadership style that supports and empowers them. They inspire team members to unite towards a common goal through messages of hope, commitment, and passion that they demonstrate every day.

Why is compassionate leadership important?

Your team wants more than a paycheck from you! Today’s hiring market is competitive. If you want to attract the best, you must be the best. Top talent is seeking a workplace that will offer feedback on their performance, provide professional support, and allow them room to grow and develop. A recent Gallup poll asked 13,085 US workers what the most important factors were to them when considering a new job. Of the top six responses, one was a pay increase, however the others all involved issues related to their overall wellbeing: work life balance, the ability to work to their strengths, job stability, and inclusive policies. Being a compassionate leader will allow you to meet these expectations and provide an attractive workplace for new talent.

How can compassionate leadership be practiced?

There are so many ways to show compassion to those around you, and compassion does not always fit into a one size fits all box. As mentioned earlier, you need to see your employees as individuals in order to be a compassionate leader, so you will need to recognize those individual needs. Here are a few tips to help you do that:

1.) LISTEN

Listen to your team members. Start by letting them speak. Give them a safe space to voice what they feel and what’s important to them, without any fear of retribution. Be okay with hearing the good and bad.

Engage in the conversation with them. Hear them out. Remember, though, that productive communication is two-way. Afterwards, follow up and take action! Check in on them from time to time to show that you heard and remember their thoughts and concerns. If there was action needed, don’t forget to take that action. That simple act alone lets the team member know how important they are to you. Be honest when action cannot be taken immediately or at all. You can still hear out their concerns, even if an immediate fix isn’t possible. Studies have shown that the simple act of voicing concern and being heard is impactful.

2.) BE PRESENT

Compassionate leaders are in touch with their organization and their team. When you are working with your team members, try to really be there in that moment with them. Focus on one thing at a time and minimize distractions. When your team members speak to you, make sure they feel like they are your priority at that time. Put your phone down and ignore your email. This is possible if you time block your day appropriately. This will allow them to feel like they are your priority in that moment.

Being present also means recognizing our thoughts and feelings about a situation. So again, lead by example. If you are cognizant of your own feelings, you will be able to show your team that you recognize their feelings as well. A useful tool for all leaders is mindfulness, and that comes with practice. It’s a skill you can hone, just like any other. Being in touch with your own feelings means slowing down to recognize your thoughts, taking deep, slow breaths, and doing a “self check” on a regular basis. There are many guided meditation tools that can help you as a leader be more present and mindful.

3.) SHOW GRATITUDE

Showing gratitude towards your team for their contributions can raise their morale, increase engagement, and raise overall productivity. Recognizing their achievements with frequent notes and messages can have a tremendous effect on your team. Understand that some people respond better to private praise and some respond better to public praise. A compassionate leader, that is in touch with their team member’s individual needs, should seek to understand which form of praise an individual will respond best to.

In addition to individual praise, compassionate leaders can show gratitude to their team as a whole. Recognize success in a way that lets your whole team know that their contribution counts. Make sure team members at all levels feel that you see them as an important piece of the success. In fact, just being compassionate and recognizing them is an important way of letting your team members see and feel your gratitude.

4.) COACH AND DEVELOP

Coaching and development is a key component of compassionate leadership. A good coach celebrates success and recognizes areas ripe for improvement. Your team members have needs. Those needs include the ability to feel competent and successful in their work. Ensuring that they can meet that need will make you a compassionate leader.

In addition, they might have higher career aspirations. Showing that you not only recognize those aspirations but are also committed to helping them achieve their goals will make them feel like a valued member of your organization. Have honest conversations with your team members about their career trajectory and the timeframes involved.

When things don’t go right with a team member, a hard conversation must be had. Having laid the groundwork as a compassionate leader will help you connect with that team member at that moment and navigate the difficult conversation. Compassionate leaders are able to run a highly effective business, while not losing touch with human connection in their organization. Coaching in the workplace has a direct correlation with higher work performance and team member confidence. If you want to have high expectations for your team and expect them to meet those expectations, you’ve got to equip them for success.

Compassionate leadership can help you achieve high productivity from your team, but it allows you to accomplish that goal in a way that empowers, not belittles your team. Having high expectations isn’t enough if you don’t provide the motivation and guidance your team needs. In order to be a compassionate leader, you must also live up to those same expectations yourself. Ensure that you are leading by example. Practice what you preach and set the tone for compassion throughout your organization. Keeping the four elements above in mind will help you on that path.

The Top Five HR Issues You’re Not Handling Correctly

Our work environment is ever-changing. Recent years have clearly shown us that we must be ready and able to adapt to constant changes. Management teams, including human resources managers, have a growing responsibility to keep up with the changing needs of their team, the industry, applicable regulations, and their workplace. That’s a big task, and you may be surprised how easy it can be for organizations to inadvertently allow their HR practices to become outdated. In this article, I’ll outline five critical HR issues you may not be handling correctly:

#1. Insufficient onboarding processes.

Every business should have an onboarding plan in place for newly hired team members. This plan should go well beyond a new team member’s first day and should encompass relaying your firm’s mission and vision, providing access to standard operating procedures, connecting new team members with seasoned mentors, and supporting them throughout their journey with your firm.

Also, don’t forget about internal hires! They still need to be onboarded! New hires, lateral position transfers, and newly promoted team members all need to be formally onboarded into their positions in order to be successful in their new roles. Every single team member should be provided with a job description and scorecard. They need to be familiarized with their department and their place on an organizational chart. There should be a formal announcement made regarding all new team members. This helps to set the right tone, excite your team, and show the new team member that you’re thrilled to have them on board. Provide all new team members with a formal training plan to ensure their success. If a team member is moving into a leadership role, their training plan should include training focused on effective leadership tactics.

#2. Failure to really listen to employee concerns.

Too frequently, HR Managers fail to pick up on red flags brought to them by team members. While having an HR Manager or HR point of contact is a great first step for many law firms, it alone is insufficient. Take the time and effort to ensure you have created a truly safe place for team members to report issues.

If team members do not feel comfortable reporting or discussing concerns, then small issues can turn into even bigger problems before the management team becomes aware of them. When your team members have an issue, they weigh the risk against the reward of reporting it. Minimize the risk and increase the reward so that you can be sure issues are brought forward timely. If your team perceives a risk in reporting concerns, they will wait until the issue is big enough to tip the scale before reporting it. Worse yet, instead of coming to you, they may report the issue elsewhere, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). How can you create a safe space? Don’t listen just to document. Although documentation is important (more on that later), you should be listening to understand and resolve. Even when team members are reporting issues with which you do not agree, or they seem simply burned out and need a safe space to vent, a great HR Manager should still hear and understand all issues and seek to resolve them.

#3. Improper payroll structures.

Pay increases should not be automatic; they should be structured and merit based. What is the value that this employee is creating within the team? Team members should understand the expectations their supervisors have of them and understand the benchmark for salary increases. Additionally, consider doing a compensation analysis for each position in your firm to ensure you are paying all team members within the correct pay range.

You need to ensure you are paying your team members fairly for their position in your market. The highest performing team members should be paid the highest within their position’s range. Those paid at the lower end of the range should have a clear understanding of what they must do in order to increase their salary. All team members should understand the pay range parameters for the position they hold.

#4. Unfamiliarity/noncompliance with Federal Labor Laws.

Do you really understand the federal labor laws, and are you in compliance? Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) all set out laws your firm should be aware of and in compliance with.

Did you know that the IRS estimates that 90% of all employers (who self-administer their plans) are out of compliance with COBRA? These laws are updated frequently with the parameters often changing. Do you truly understand these laws well enough to make sure you are complying? If not, seek out legal advice. These laws can be a minefield, and failure to comply can result in penalties of thousands of dollars a day.

#5. Failure to document.

We know we need to document performance problems; however, many employers wait too long to document these issues. You let the little things slide until they aren’t little anymore. Then, you scramble to get the documentation you need to take disciplinary action. This rarely works.

Hold regular employee performance reviews and be honest but fair in those reviews. In between performance reviews, communicate with your team members frequently about performance and document conversations. Notate all issues, improvements, wins, and losses, both big and small. Build your team members up when they perform well and provide constructive feedback when you identify areas needing improvement. This allows you, the management team, to accurately weigh high performance against low performance for each team member. Furthermore, if you are considering promoting team members into higher positions from within, then you need the documentation trail of your team member’s high performance. Document key elements like performance, attendance, training, and skill-building, and any thoughts/ concerns brought forth by the employee. Bottom line: document, document, document!

Getting HR right is a monumental task. The leadership team at your firm needs to be supportive and proactive in that endeavor, and your HR manager should feel like they have the tools and training they need to succeed in their vital role within your law firm. Eliminating these critical HR issues will position your firm for ongoing success, increased morale, and heightened team engagement.