Ensuring lawyers perform at their best is essential to the success of every law firm. However, the very nature of law and lawyers can mean this doesn’t always occur. Innately competitive, risk-averse and driven to perfectionism, lawyers can often possess traits that may affect their ability to recover from the demands of legal work. Resilience training is a popular option to help lawyers work together better and drive stronger performance. Steven Colligan, Director of FrontTier, specialises in delivering resilience workshops and developing team capability. Steven will be leading a workshop on building more resilient legal teams for The College of Law New Zealand. In this in-depth interview, Steven provided his top tips on how leaders can help teams become more resilient, and why it’s so essential to help lawyers hit their peak potential.
Why is building resilience so important for lawyers?
Resilience may not be the first trait that comes to mind when hiring a lawyer. Indeed, resilience is often considered a soft skill, coming a distant second in preference to technical knowledge and client-side experience. However, it’s becoming an increasingly useful tool to help counter some of the more counterproductive aspects of legal work.
“Resilience is about the ability to recover from setbacks, adapt well to change, and keep going in the face of adversity,” said Steven. “It is often misunderstood. It’s not about how we endure, but more about how we recharge. We do not have an unlimited supply of resilience. We need to work at building our resilience and how we recharge.”
Learning how to effectively recharge is a core part of what Steven does for lawyers in his training. It’s essentially antidote to the ‘survival of the fittest’ mentality so prevalent among lawyers.
“The concept may be foreign to lawyers who come from a culture of ‘toughen up, endure, push through, do more, and have perfectionistic tendencies – to be first, be right, and to win,” Steven said.
“Building resilience is achieved by being reflective – stopping, pausing, sharing, collaborating. Being honest, vulnerable and trusting your team and your leaders is essential. However, these acts might be considered weak and counterproductive in a profession that rewards output, financials, billable time, winning and losing.”
Trained to critique, learning pessimism
Undoing these unforgiving worldviews around what it means to succeed and fail, to be tough or weak, is central to what resilience is all about.
“Lawyers are trained to look for critique, to look for flaws in arguments,” Steven said. “Rather than accepting, lawyers are critical. This can lead to learned pattern of pessimistic thinking which has a direct correlation to anxiety and depression.
“Lawyers are 3.6 times more likely to suffer from depression than the rest of the employed population,” Steven said.
As a result, Steven works closely with lawyers to develop a more adaptive pattern of positive thinking.
“This can include giving more positive constructive feedback and celebrating successes more often,” he said.
What can leaders do to help lawyers build their resilience?
“Resilient leaders play a vital role in the performance of a team,” said Steven. “As leaders, their own level of resilience directly impacts the behavior, culture and output of the team.”
First and foremost, it is vital that leaders attend to their own resilience first. From there, they can set the vision, purpose and direction for the team.
“Leaders can encourage autonomy and flexibility wherever possible,” said Steven. “One of the key roles of a good leader is to help employees find a sense of meaning in their work.”
This can help teams work better together and push through major tasks.
How can ‘team resilience’ be developed in legal teams?
According to Steven, the concept of team resilience has been proven to positively correlate with team performance.
“Furthermore, compared to less resilient teams, teams with a high level of resilience are likely to come up with more flexible and adaptive responses to adversity. In addition, they tend to use setbacks as challenges or opportunities for growth. This has been well documented by recent academic studies.”
A resilient team is one that wants to work together to find a solution, rather than focus on setbacks. This kind of team is one willing to own a project and push it through to conclusion. Encouraging resilience in an individual is often challenging enough; encouraging resilience in a team often means ensuring not only buy-in from all team members, but also that the dynamics of the team contribute to a sense of energy and positivity towards the team’s common goal.
“A team that has vision, direction, shared responsibilities, ownership and mutual trust can overcome obstacles present and common to any project. This creates a high-performing culture,” said Steven.
It is up to leaders to set the tone and foster the right environment to allow a team to become a resilient team.
“To build team resilience, both the team leader and the team itself must set, understand and focus on the vision and purpose of their common goal. Throughout the project, the team must be encouraged to focus on the positives, and focus on opportunities to learn. Leaders can help this process by creating a culture of trust and shared ownership.”
Taking action to build team resilience and drive performance
Investing time and training into building team resilience can have a lasting impact.
“There is strong academic evidence to suggest that resilient teams are more committed, engaged and proactive. This makes them more likely to deliver greater performance in all domains,” said Steven.
However, to achieve this, it is imperative to implement action-planning after the workshop.
“Beyond the workshop, action planning is vital to ensure the learnings become embedded in the team’s behaviours and actions,” Steven said. “In essence, this means the leader and the team develop and implement appropriate behaviours, communication pathways and processes that support and sustain the key strategies required to develop a resilient high-performing team.”
Interested in participating or finding out more? Visit The College of Law New Zealand for more information on the Building a Resilient Legal Team workshop.
