Have you ever done a Google search for quotes on lawyers? They. Are. Horrible. This quip is fairly typical:
‘It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.’
As the role of the general counsel in today’s modern corporation continues to evolve, the roles and responsibilities they are expected to fulfil has expanded exponentially. Chief among that growing mandate has been an expectation that the GC is not only an expert in their trained profession, but an effective manager and business partner.
Continue reading “Myths and millennials – separating buzzword from bunk”
The recent launch of the GC Powerlist: Ireland Teams, hosted in association with McCann FitzGerald in Dublin, was attended by a host of companies operating across the country including Ulster Bank, Facebook, EY, An Post and Ryanair.
I have responsibility for global diversity for Mastercard. Our chief diversity officer reports to me, along with a team of four professionals. The origin of that comes straight from the top – Ajay Banga our CEO believes diversity should be the responsibility of someone with a global business leadership role. He doesn’t want diversity to only be viewed as an HR function. Then, people put it in a box and think about it in a partial or nice to have way, rather than as the core business enabler it can be. We wanted to create a context where diversity and inclusion is driven in partnership with HR, but as a truly strategic function of leadership.
Although the interactivity of the online database allows users to draw their own conclusions, The Legal 500 has sifted through the millions of data points to draw out some poignant in-house and law firm findings.
That the role of the general counsel is becoming an increasingly senior and integral part of today’s businesses will be nothing new for readers of GC Magazine. From GCs and partners through to CEOs and politicians, the importance of the role to modern business – from major corporates through to emerging companies – cannot be understated.
Continue reading “GC Roundtable – business leader/business partner/lawyer?”
GC: Lawyers get very focused on their professional qualifications, but as they rise through the ranks – particularly to the general counsel position – their role becomes increasingly management focused. A common concern we hear is that they may feel ill-equipped to deal with this shift. Conversely, there can also be a desire not to let go of being a lawyer. With regards to your work in this area, what practical measures would you suggest to help balance these conflicting desires?
Herminia Ibarra (HI): A good place to start is the fact that the requirements for people aspiring to join the c-suite have changed a lot over the last ten years, with professional management and business qualifications becoming a smaller and smaller portion of it. What really matters now is having broader business acumen as well as possessing the requisite soft skills – essentially being able to speak about what is happening between your discipline and others. Recent research by Boris Groysberg with the head hunter, Heidrick & Struggles, shows the requirement for different c-suite roles is much more similar than you might think. Today’s general counsel may have many more in common with the CMO, CFO or even the CEO than with the legal track. This becomes increasingly salient as organisations become more collaborative with regards to putting together strategies and plans from different perspectives. The actual need for this has become increasingly clear.
In my research, what I tend to focus on is how to make that transition, drawing less from your technical skills and more from management skills when you are still not so confident with those. How do you practically find ways to develop those leadership skills to move more in that direction?
A key tactic is to start redefining your day job and to think about it more broadly, then get involved in things outside of your immediate area. It really is about becoming comfortable getting outside of your competency; a lot of people are clinging to this core competency as an identity, but frankly, what gets you here won’t get you there. But for many, the alternative is not satisfying because they don’t feel good at it; it can be amorphous when you have been trained in a very distinct profession and subsequently need to move away from that.
GC: In your book, you speak a lot about getting out of your comfort zone and finding your authentic self, this struck as me as having parallels with challenges some in-house counsel face regarding just being seen as the lawyer – particularly in regards to trying to be more strategically involved as part of the c-suite. What steps can in-house counsel take to move beyond just being seen as the lawyer when interacting with the board and senior executives?
HI: You may think it’s just about external perception, but those perceptions can manifest internally and influence how you see yourself and impact on your confidence, so it is a bit chicken and egg. Part of the issue with external perception is that reacting to it can initially feel like more style than substance; it’s more about how you are expressing ideas and your point of view – but that can lead to feeling you are faking it – the classic authenticity trap. If you are used to playing the role of the lawyer, you are naturally inclined to be cautious – it’s how you’re trained – you won’t go out on a limb unless you know exactly what you are talking about. As a trusted adviser moving into a business role, you have to go out on a limb more – ‘my gut tells me this’ – being increasingly reliant on your point of view rather than falling back onto content expertise. To get comfortable with a more point of view orientated approach, look at how other people do this and how they frame it. This is where building a network of connections outside of your normal network can be invaluable.
For in-house lawyers, a key is spending more time with non-lawyers, talking to people who are not lawyers. Conversely, people who are not lawyers will be happy to get your point of view – you become more useful, you start to understand how they see things, what they find useful and how you can help them.
GC: I really like the fact you speak about the move to leadership as a continuous process, not a conversion. What advice would you offer for those who might struggle to maintain this mindset and keep on track?
HI: Being in contact with people who are different from you is key. Presumably, your organisation has a feedback process to allow lawyers to see if they are being effective. Ask: In the last year, what has changed? How have I grown? If there isn’t such a feedback system in place, it might be time to start one. I am not a huge advocate for lots of reflection time, but you do need this at some points in the process to facilitate development as a leader. This is where your network, particularly those outside of your usual people, becomes particularly important.
GC: We hear a lot about how the workplace may change over the next twenty years with the increase of technological advances such as artificial intelligence – how might this impact the way managers need to lead in order to remain effective?
HI: I think it will change the way people think about what they are there to do. Any area where you have codified content, AI will soon take care of that. But most in-house lawyers aren’t there to do that. Collaboration, particularly across departments, is fundamental; Heidi Gardner’s recent research at Harvard Law School on law firms has shown that the more lawyers collaborate and get involved in projects that cut across legal areas, the more they are able to bill, which in practice means that both they and the firm can reap the financial benefits.
The same will be true of in-house lawyers – the more significant it is, the more bespoke a matter, the more it needs thinking and interaction. That won’t change with the rise of AI; the things that AI can do easily – that’s not what you want to be known for and what your team want to be known for. Apply your skills to a context that’s a moving target, no one has substituted people for doing that kind of thing. With the rise of new ways of working you need to be careful that you cooperate; operating in silos, whether legal or otherwise, can be a huge issue in organisations.
GC: In your research, writing and teaching, you are constantly thinking about the role of the individual in the organisation – from your perspective, what are the most interesting potential developments we may be looking at in the near future?
HI: This whole issue about how do we get people to collaborate more effectively is really on the radar. The value of it is very clear, but because many companies still default to being in silos and we still value the individual so much in terms of things like compensation, it’s a challenge to move to a more collaborative mindset. Some of the new ways of working like holacracy are too complex to really implement and not so effective in practice. But people are starting to find ways to shift out of the command and control mindset and empower people. You have to find home-grown ways for each company and its culture – the bottom line is that there is no off the shelf system that can do that for you.
I’m not a lawyer – I’m a race car driver. But before that, I was the general counsel of a Fortune 500 company for a dozen years. Prior to that, I was an in-house counsel for almost a decade. Before that, I formed and ran a small investment bank/business broker and international consultancy. And before that that, I was a lawyer, spending about half a decade with BigLaw and a year as a Federal District Court Clerk.
Continue reading “Shifting gears – maintaining relevance through revolution”
Since the advent of the global financial crisis back in 2008, the emphasis in Europe has been on repairing those economies worst hit. During this period, some states have felt the impact of the economic crisis worse than others and the priority for those has been initiating reforms designed to stimulate their domestic economies, while putting the single market back on the path to prosperity.
This year has been a testing time for France both politically and economically. With the country remaining in a state of emergency after the series of terrorist atrocities, which have plagued the nation for the past two years, in addition to a dwindling economy with stagnant growth, political capital is at an all-time low. That’s far from an enviable position for a government struggling to reform and in dire need of finding ways to stimulate the domestic economy and tackle unemployment. Continue reading “GC Powerlist: France”