Outside of law, it seems every profession is having a ‘love-in’ on coaching. Maybe Showtime’s Dr. Wendy Rhoades captured the zeitgeist in the TV hit Billions, but a once-in-a-generation health crisis has helped summon a perfect storm for performance coaches, career coaches, business coaches, leadership coaches, and sales coaches the world over.
In law firms though, coaching is still mostly seen as remedial in purpose. The message sent to lawyers: if you have a problem, you are not delivering, then you can have a coach to ‘fix’ it. Not really a vote of confidence, a perk, an opportunity to maximize your productivity, career, practice, leadership skills or make your millions, like Wendy’s traders at Axe Capital.
But it’s changing, and as someone who has passed through pre-law, law school, legal training, internship, mentoring, and speaks daily to Australia’s finest Partners, I have a working theory about why; lawyering favours those who can synthesise complex information, but the relentless pace of change today is ‘running interference’ with a natural tendency towards perfectionism, and hard deadlines. Post-COVID, directly or indirectly I increasingly hear:
““Do I have the skills, mentally, emotionally and physically, to keep up anymore and achieve my ambitions?””
At HPP we’ve partnered with real-life Wendys, lawyers-turned-coaches, who extol 5 key benefits:
1. Performance
Improve + optimise skills.
The heartbeat of every professional career is performance; you want to maximise what you have, leverage off your strengths, work around or improve weaknesses.
Just because you are successful doesn’t mean you can’t find ways to improve, or ways to maintain that success. Essential skills, like business development or leadership, can always be honed or fine-tuned. This is where regularly taking the time to reflect on how you are working and exploring ways to improve can really have a big impact.
2. Wellbeing
Build better habits + routines.
If we are talking performance, then wellbeing is your bedrock. We know that 1 to 3 lawyers will suffer depression in the course of their career, and a higher percentage will experience mental health issues.
For anyone synthesizing complex information, mental health & wellbeing is key. There are some basic things we can do, like exercise, good sleep habits, time for friends and family, or even implementing a gratitude practice, that will also sharpen your mental acuity (i.e. a person’s ability to reason, focus, and recall information at optimum speeds), and a tailored program can be life-changing.
3. Perspective
Create a growth mindset + culture.
There are several iconic brands that have adopted a growth mindset, including Apple, Bloomberg, GE and Microsoft – their CEO’s are now waxing lyrical about how it’s helped the company reframe challenges, reframed the benefits of continuing to learn, driven innovation and improved retention of star performers.
Making coaching a positive part of workplace culture is key, because you can’t always change your circumstances, but you can change your perspective.
4. Confidant
Acquire clarity + focus.
In addition to evidence-based techniques coaches use, a powerful benefit is simply being able to speak your mind to someone without judgement or reaction. Sometimes it’s enough to hear yourself think to find clarity and focus.
I speak to partners weekly who can’t talk to colleagues, friends, husbands or wives, and in doing so provide a perfectly reasonable argument why they can’t talk to anyone about an issue they’re facing at work. A great coach will help you break the vicious cycle, identify a solution, and help you achieve it with clarity and focus.
5. Accountability
Goal-setting + getting.
If we want our career ambitions - or resolutions - to become reality, we have to master the skill of goal-setting. Uncovering your ‘why’, visualisation, planning and accountability are the cornerstones.
Great coaches help you cut through today’s indeterminable noise, reprioritise what matters, and reconnect you to your core drivers. I quote this far too often, but as Jim Rohn said, “Success is nothing more than a few disciplines, practised every day”.
