Leadership Style for Lawyers - Leading Women Lawyers

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Leadership Style for Lawyers

Your ability to be leader is important both inside and outside the office. The secret is to recognize if you have a “default” leadership style, then aim to increase your flexibility by consciously adopting different styles to maximise your impact and effectiveness.

A common characteristic of leaders is their ability to win hearts and minds due in part in how they communicate and build rapport with everyone they meet.

Leadership plays an important part in every lawyer’s life whether you recognise it or not. Your ability to persuade and influence, are the key skills which makes the difference between a client accepting your advice or deciding whether they will instruct you in the first place. In days gone by the mere fact that you were a solicitor, attracted professional status and respect (my father appointed one of his solicitors on the basis that they played golf together and he was a jolly good chap! - Sadly his ability to do the job and understand the wishes of his clients was not a criteria!!) – Nowadays clients are more demanding and more likely to challenge your advice.

The secret is to increase your flexibility to deal with different situations both with your clients and also colleagues. Daniel Goleman in his book “New Leaders” identified the following styles of leadership -

Visionary – sets a clear direction
Coaching- connects with what the client actually wants
Affiliative – builds harmony
Democratic – discusses the options, values peoples inputs- this style builds “buy in” or consensus
Pacesetting – Can be challenging. (Especially needed if you are up against tight court timescales and your client is not responding to your requests!!) If poorly executed this style can produce negative results.
Commanding – good in a crisis. Can generate a negative reaction if over used! This tends to be the default position of many law firms when dealing with their staff. The danger is that people become frightened of decision making and making a mistake – they experience “analysis paralysis”. Many law firms want their lawyers to be “tigers” in the courtroom but “sheep” in the office, and are upset when their management is challenged.

Goleman found that Leaders who mastered four or more of the positive leadership styles have the best business performance.

Action steps

Review your leadership style. Do you have a default position when dealing with colleagues and clients? How can you become more flexible?
Study the stars in your firm – can you spot their leadership style?
Review your natural style when networking. Aim to combine affiliative, democratic and coaching

Until next time and best wishes

Jane Wintringham

Leading Women Lawyers, Develop4choice, 20 Thornfield Road, West Park, Leeds LS16 5AR, United Kingdom
Tel 0113 305 3604 | Email: info@leadingwomenlawyers.co.uk