Orchestrate Your Future

Leadership is about attitude. Check your attitude at the door.

Literally.  Attitude is everything.  Before you step into your next meeting or walk through the door of your office, check your attitude.  Are you relaxed or are you stressed out?  Are you tight-lipped because you’re still irritated by that last phone call with opposing counsel or are you ready to smile?  Are you already smiling?  

Whatever your attitude, good or bad, it's your choice.  Leaders are expected to do a good job of controlling their emotions and attitudes.  Here’s the good news; you can make a conscious decision to change your attitude at any time.  As a leader, it’s your job to model the kinds of attitudes and behaviors you want to encourage in your team.

Look at the culture of your office, is it positive or negative?  Whatever the culture, environment or mood, it is a reflection of the leadership.  Understand that, as a leader, you are being watched – all the time.  Everything you do matters.  Everything. 

You set the tone for your office.  So, make a conscious choice to set a good tone.  In the words of Winston Churchill, "If you can’t laugh, smile.  If you can’t smile, grin.  If you can’t grin, stay out of the way until you can."

Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison for his stance against apartheid in South Africa, knows the value of a smile.  During his run for president of the ANC, his election poster was simply his smiling face. According to an article in the current issue of Time Magazine, "There were a thousand things Nelson Mandela was bitter about, but he knew more than anything else, he had to project the exact opposite emotion."

Mandela's experience is a powerful lesson for all leaders.

Click here to read Mandela's 8 Lessons of Leadership at Time Magazine online.

Just Do It!

If you’re like most attorneys, you’ve attended your fair share of seminars.  Not just CLE seminars, but seminars on Practice Management, too.   You may have even read a book or two on time management or client development.  You probably have a pretty good idea of what you’re supposed to do to better manage your time or attract good clients.  Heck, as the saying goes, it’s not rocket science.  You know what you need to do.  You just don’t do it.  And you are not alone.

So, why don’t we do what we say we want to do?  Why don’t we take the actions we say we want to take?

In his book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, executive coach Marshall Goldsmith explains that in is thirty years of coaching fortune 500 executives he has learned one very powerful lesson: "There is an enormous disconnect between understanding and doing. . . . Most of us understand, we just don’t do."

Having all the information in the world on a topic doesn’t mean that we’ll act on it.  According to Goldsmith, people don’t change or improve without follow-up.  See if this is not true in your own life.  Have you ever started an exercise program only to drift away from it after a few days or a few weeks?  Have you ever promised yourself you’d start eating better . . . tomorrow?  Follow-up is the key.  So whether you’re goal is to change your diet or your practice, find someone to be your coach, your accountability partner.  And then, just do it.

Giving Recognition Can Pay Off as Much As Pay

Do you know that, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, the #1 people leave their jobs is because they do not feel appreciated on a day-to-day basis?  And according to a 2007 Gallup Poll, most employees have not received any recognition in over a year!   In his book, How Full is Your Bucket?, Tom Rath explains that giving sincere recognition to employees creates what he calls "engagement."  Employees who are engaged are happy, productive, successful  - and typically stay in their jobs. 

While the idea of engagement may sound very warm & fuzzy to attorneys, it’s clear that engaged employees can make a huge impact on the firm’s bottom line.  A recent Time magazine article reported that Royal Bank of Scotland found that a 10% increase in overall leadership effectiveness resulted in a 3% boost in customer satisfaction and a 1% reduction in employee turnover.  That translates to $40 million saved in costs to retrain workers.

OK, so maybe your firm isn’t as big as Royal Bank of Scotland.  But if you could increase client satisfaction AND reduce employee turnover AND benefit your bottom line by creating more engaged employees, why not give it a shot?
 
The good news is that creating engaged employees will cost you nothing more than time, attention, and your sincere desire to start catching members of your team when they are doing something right.  

Click here to check out How Full is Your Bucket? at www.Amazon.com.

Worth Reading

My friend, Debbie Foster, President of InTouch Legal, sent me a link to the following blog post at The Positivity Blog – 16 Things I Wish They Had Taught Me in School. 

Great stuff.  Simple stuff. 

Why is it that so often the most valuable stuff is the simplest stuff?   

Take a few minutes to read it.  It will be time well spent. 

Get Your Inbox Under Control

"Most people haven't realized how out of control their head is when they get 300 e-mails a day."  David Allen

Is that you?  Maybe it's more like 400, 500, 1,000?  An out-of-control inbox is a problem for almost every attorney I know.  It's impossible to function with that kind mess in your inbox.  So, what can you do to stop the madness?!?!  There are a couple of simple strategies you can start with. 

First, make it a habit to deal with your email when it comes in.  Either delete it, delegate it, defer it to a later date, file it, or do it if it takes less than two minutes.  David Allen's Two Minute Rule applies not only to email but to every task you are faced with throughout the day.  If it takes less than two minutes, do it.  Period.

Second, create folders for all of your clients, and move your client related emails to those folders.  Attachments to emails should be saved to a client file on your server.  Simply leaving them as an attachment to email in your inbox is dangerous because no one else has access to your inbox. 

Third, create an Archive Folder where you can place old emails that you don’t  necessarily want to delete.  Use the Archive Folder – you can create sub-folders, too – to get those emails out of your inbox.

To really crank up your productivity, download the Getting Things Done Add-In for Outlook from David Allen and Netcentrics.  The GTD Add-In toolbar will be added to your Outlook toolbar.  One of the coolest features of this add-in is that it allows you to automatically save the emails you send to the appropriate Outlook folder.  No more looking through your sent items for the email you sent to a client two months ago.  No more filling your inbox with cc's to yourself.  With GTD you can send a copy of the email directly to the client folder when you send the email.  This one feature alone makes the GTD Add-In a "must have" for most attorneys.

Click here to download a Pocket PC Magazine review of the GTD Add-in.
Click here to download a free trial copy of the GTD Add-In.

What Makes Clients Love You or It's the Relationship, Stupid

Have you ever thought about what makes clients like (or love) you?  [Translate: Are so impressed with you that they become your best marketers?]  I had an experience recently that really highlighted this for me.  It was with a furniture repair shop – specifically the Furniture Workshop in St. Petersburg, Florida. 

One of the legs of my coffee table had come loose, and though we tried to fix it, ultimately resorting to Super Glue, nothing worked.  We looked for another table & couldn’t find anything we liked nearly as well.  So, a couple of weeks ago I plopped the table in the back of my SUV and took it to the Furniture Workshop.

I was met by the owner, Russ Sines, who was instantly warm, funny, and friendly.  He explained that the workshop had been opened by his father in 1935.  Within moments, I knew that he would do a wonderful job repairing my table.  And in the few conversations we’ve had over the past week about the fee and when the repairs would be completed, Russ made me laugh every time and think to myself, "Why can't all the businesses we deal with be this wonderful?"  Russ knows the value of relationship.  He knows everything matters.  You can't sustain a business for 73 years without being really clear about those things.

The table will be ready tomorrow.  I know it will be perfect.  But the thing is, I'm looking around the house for other pieces I can bring to him.  I'll miss just chatting with him.  And you can bet I'm telling my friends about him.

Have You Set Your Goals for 2008?

In is book What They Don't Teach You in Harvard Business School, Mark McCormick reported the results of a study that tracked Harvard MBA graduates from 1979 to 1989.  In 1979, the graduates were asked whether they had set clear, written goals for the future and made plans to accomplish them.

Here’s what the study found:  Only 3 percent had written goals and plans for accomplishing them; 13 percent had goals, but they were not in writing; 84 percent had no specific goals at all, aside from getting out of school and enjoying the summer.  These statistics may not surprise you.

However, these may.  In 1989, the graduates were interviewed again.  The 13 percent who had unwritten goals were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84 percent who had no goals at all.  And the three percent who had written goals were earning, on average, 10 times as much as the other 97 percent of their classmates! The only difference between the groups was the clarity of their goals. 

So where do you fit?  Have you written down your goals for 2008?  If not, what better reason do you need?  Go for it!

Eight Irresistible Principles

A client sent me the link below yesterday, and I have since forwarded it to so many folks, I thought I'd just post the link here.  If you need a reminder about what's really important – and especially if you think you don't – watch this video. 

www.eightprinciples.com

Get Ready to Lose It in 2008

The holidays are here.  Oh, the food, the egg nog, the parties.  Oh, the tight-fitting clothes.  Oh, the New Year’s Resolutions to lose those holiday pounds.  Been there, done that. 

For most of my life, I was a yo-yo dieter.  Lose it, gain it, lose it, find it, find more of it.  You know how that goes.  (That’s me to the right a few years ago.) Like so many others, I struggled with weight my entire life, until a few years ago when I made a decision to change not just my diet, but my way of life.  It’s worked.  I’ve lost about 65 pounds and have been able to keep it off.  You can, too.  You just need to make the decision to do it. 

Here’s what I suggest.  Enjoy the holiday season.   Then, make the decision to change things in 2008.  Then, as the saying goes  . . . just do it.   

Need some motivation?  Check out the story in this month’s ABA Journal about Mark Leventhal, the D.C. attorney who has gone from overweight attorney to personal trainer.  Click here to visit the ABA Journal online.

If You’re Not Growing, You’re Dying

With Thanksgiving right around the corner, now is a great time to reflect on where you are and where you’re going in your life.  The book The Laws of Lifetime Growth is a great place to start.  It’s a quick, but invaluable, read. 

Constant and never-ending improvement is the key to ultimate success in any area of your life.  This book will give you a new perspective on how to tap into your natural abilities to do just that.

As Stephen M.R. Covey says in his latest book The Speed of Trust, "If you’re not continually improving your skills, you’re quickly becoming irrelevant."  Don’t do that to yourself.  Get and stay relevant!