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I am excited about the upcoming Enhancement Retreat. Not only will it allow me to get out of my pajamas and put on “big-girl clothes” (those who work from home offices will understand the importance of that!) but this year we are doing some things that are new and exciting! I was asked to share what I’m most looking forward to about the retreat, and I honestly could not settle on only one thing. So, I’m going to cheat and say what I’m most looking forward to is the entire Day 2 of the program!

This year, we are allowing team members to have a session of their own away from the attorneys. So, while the lawyers are reviewing in-depth legal technical information (which is usually incredibly interesting to them and puts the team into a coma-like state) we will be “doing our thing” as team members in a different room.

The more I work with attorneys, the more I realize their mindset is drastically different from that of the support team. The overall goal and commitment is the same, but even after 15 years in this industry, the vast difference in perspective still surprises me at times. Having a separate session for team members is going to allow us to explore their mindset and support their needs directly.

We’ll be covering a lot on this day, but the three things I’m most excited about, and that I think will make the biggest difference for team members, are:

1. What is YOUR story and how is this conveyed by the role you fill? So often a firm’s marketing and message revolve around the attorneys and why they do what they do. Today, we will take a look at why team members do what they do, and how that makes a difference for the clients you serve. I know that sounds mushy, and some of you are surely thinking, “I don’t need to know why – I just do my job and I do it well!” But it is important. We spend too much time at work to not connect the dots on what it’s all really for. For example, I’ve stayed in the estate planning industry, in some way or another, for over 15 years. (Ouch! It hurts to count those years up, but considering my 20 year high school reunion just passed, the numbers don’t lie!) By mid-morning every team member will connect with why they do what they do, and what all the effort is for. Sometimes you need to know that to deal with getting through the tough and stressful times.
2. I also cannot wait for the afternoon of team day. We have some incredibly smart and innovative team members across the country in the LWP community. We are going to break into groups based on your role in your firm and lead conversations about how you succeed there. Funding coordinators will talk with other funding coordinators; drafting coordinators will share with other drafting coordinators; client service coordinators will connect with other client service coordinators, and so on. Putting all that brain power and experience together will result is some powerful learning.
3. One of the things about team day that will make a huge difference in the day-to-day life of support team members is the level of detail we will go through regarding the LWP process. Whereas attorneys need to understand it and know how to conduct the workshops and meetings, team members need an entirely different level of detail to be able to confidently do their jobs without chasing their tail all day. What do you print for meetings? What is the follow-up? Where do you find the items you need? What goes in the file? We will even be providing sample client “cheat sheets” so you can see what goes where.

We will cover all these details so you can go back to your firm and reduce the stress and confusion you can sometimes experience when you are implementing a system.

I love that in this retreat, attorneys and their team members will start off together, break apart for a day to receive training for their respective needs, then end together again with a powerful planning day. Members will connect, train and then put it all together in an action plan for 2014 so they can hit the ground running. I’m excited and I hope to see you there.

Are you registered for our 2013 Member Enhancement Retreat? If not, there is still time to invest in your firm, in your team and in your upcoming year. The hotel is sold out but we have made accommodations with another hotel and shuttle services. Click here. Register today.

Laney Lyons-Richardson, Implementation Coach for Lawyers with Purpose, LLC, and author of Don’t Be a Yes Chick: How to Stop Babysitting Your Boss, Transform Your Job and Work with a Dream Team Without Losing Your Sanity or Your Spirit in the Process.

What is the greatest success you’ve had since joining LWP?

We were able to increase our revenues with the support of LWP and by following the LWP systems and processes.  Our success enabled us to add an additional team member.  This addition of another team member is helping us to more fully implement the Referral Management System (RMS), expand our marketing efforts, and keep our promises to our clients.

What is your favorite LWP tool?

Tough question.  My number one favorite is the Asset Protection Analysis Interview that results in the creation of four (4) extremely helpful asset risk/protection documents.  A very close second is the Estate Plan Audit that facilitates a very thoughtful discussion with prospective clients that helps them realize that there are solutions to their estate planning concerns, lets them know that we are very thorough, and instills confidence in our firm.

How has being part of LWP impacted your team and your practice?

We know that if we anchor to the systems and processes we will continue to succeed.  We don’t have to survey the entire landscape and try things to see what works.  We have the benefit of the decades of estate planning experience of the LWP team, particularly including the implementation coaches who have been so very supportive and helped us beyond measure.  Finally, we have the LWP Listserv as well as the weekly Live List Serve, and the LWP members we have come to know at the Graduate Enhancement Retreats that we can confer with to be sure that we are doing the best for our clients.

Do you find your role as a leader sometimes exhausting?

It may be because you are managing, not leading, which is a huge distinction. It’s a slippery slope to be an individual whom provides leadership and direction and one who takes on motivating other people and enrolling them into a greater life – day in and day out. It’s the key difference between managing versus leading.

You might be in a management role, which means you have specific job duties and results to achieve. However, you don’t ever want to find yourself “managing” employees if you are working for an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs are in the business of change that is an absolute. Until you can truly understand and embrace that, you will find yourself feeling like you are “on the hamster wheel” every day trying to manage people and goals that are ever-changing.

People need to manage themselves. You can hold them accountable to the results they are supposed to achieve, but the team needs to come with “batteries included.” It is one thing to train a team member, help them solve a problem, or give them advice. It’s totally separate and not advisable to convince them they want to be on your team. Trying to motivate, encourage learning and find ways to grow while trying to make a moody or negative team member happy and see the positive will simply waste your time and emotional energy.

Running around managing and motivating your team allows you to become their emotional crutch. They will lean on you for inspiration, and when you can’t provide it, they will quit and leave. And when they leave, they leave you with a team of others who you may have neglected and who now see they get more attention and allowance with negative and non-productive energy.

It’s your job to provide leadership (what direction should they be working towards, a common goal and a vision they can buy into) but the team needs to bring their “batteries” to the table. This means coming with solutions to problems, not just complaints, and taking a stand for what the company is about and trying to achieve – for themselves, for their team and for your clients.

If you are ready to stop giving pep talks and start creating an empowered team who comes to work every day ready to solve problems and achieve goals, join us for the LWP Practice Enhancement Retreat. Day 2 has a full team track training day on Performance Driven Solutions – How to Have Control in Your Role, Versus Letting it Control You. Register Today!

In the context of a team, commitment is a function of two things: clarity and buy-in. By avoiding conflict, we allow people to be passive. The result is that they can’t commit if they don’t CARE and they can’t CARE if they are passive. Sometimes in the pursuit of unanimity we seek artificial harmony, and that leads to low levels of commitment.

The roadblocks to commitment:

1. The need for consensus, living our life by committee
2. The fear of failure
3. Lack of communication
4. Mismatched team members
5. A team that fails to commit:
6. Creates ambiguity within the team about direction and priorities
7. Watches windows of opportunity close due to excessive analysis and unnecessary delay
8. Breeds lack of confidence and fear of failure
9. Revisits discussions and decisions again and again
10. Encourages second-guessing among team members

Patrick Lencioni offers these suggestions for overcoming the lack of commitment: “Productive teams make clear decisions and are confident that they have the support of every team member. A lack of commitment usually arises from not hearing all of the team’s concerns before making a decision. There can be no commitment without debate. People will not buy into something when their opinions and thoughts on the matter were not included and discussed. If they don’t weigh in, then they won’t buy in.” This is not as much about seeking consensus as it is about making sure that everyone is heard.

At the end of the day everyone needs to get to the point where they can say, “I may not agree with your ideas but I understand them and can support them.” We call these “honest-while-respectful conversations."

Some of the easiest ways to break through lack of commitment is to create a safe environment with constant communication using your clarify and verify skills (weekly team meetings), deadlines with weekly accountability (weekly reporting), and quarterly firm retreats that result in specific measurable results.

At the end of the day lack of commitment is often a by-product of lack of intentional leadership.

“There's a difference between interest and commitment. When you're interested in doing something, you do it only when circumstances permit. When you're committed to something, you accept no excuses, only results.”

Lawyers With Purpose is offering a two day Asset Protection, Medicaid & VA Summit in Phoenix, AZ, September 12th – 13th. If your interested in joining your colleagues, click here to see what we'll cover. If you practice in today's estate planning environment you won't want to miss this!

Molly L. Hall, Co-Founder, Lawyers with Purpose, LLC, and author of Don’t Be a Yes Chick: How to Stop Babysitting Your Boss, Transform Your Job and Work with a Dream Team Without Losing Your Sanity or Your Spirit in the Process.

I had the opportunity to visit one of our member’s law firms for a few days last week. What I saw was another example of the beautiful relationship that can exist between estate planning attorneys and their key team members. I know, you might be thinking that “beautiful” is an odd word to describe a professional relationship, but that is truly the word that came to mind as we sat at lunch, talking, and I watched a paralegal complete the sentences and fill in the blanks as her attorney spoke.

Not only had she developed that “ESP” that comes with working so closely with someone, but she had that innate sense of care-taking that signifies someone who truly cares about the attorney, the clients and the firm. And the attorney has learned to trust and depend on that. When I think of the alienation many business owners feel, and how unappreciated and unheard many employees feel, the synergy between these two was a reminder of how good it can be.

In over a decade of coaching hundreds of law firms and co-authoring a book teaching team members to take control of their job without losing their spirit and sanity, I continue to realize how special and unique the relationship between a business owner and their support team can be. So often, when we start working with a firm the attorney is frustrated because the team won’t “step up,” and team members are pulling their hair out because the attorney won’t “get out of the way and let me help him.”

The interesting and often overlooked thing is that both sides want the same thing – to grow the firm, reach goals and make day-to-day life less stressful. They just have different perspectives on how to accomplish this, and totally different vocabulary to describe their needs. Both sides end up feeling frustrated and unheard. It’s such a sad thing, because so often the team really cares, but they aren’t articulating it in a way the attorney can hear. The members of the firm I was visiting have learned to listen and really hear one another, and you can see it in the synergy and trust they share.

To see the power of your team’s intentions, try to get past the words and listen for their purpose. Your assistant might be saying something like: “You have to stop giving me documents to print and assemble an hour before the client comes in. You are completely stressing me out!” But you have to learn to listen for what’s beneath that. Why is she stressed? Why does she care if she is doing something at the last minute? Sure, the easy and valid answer is that it causes her stress and disrupts her day.

But there is a lot more to it. I bet you a dollar if you asked her to share with you why this stresses her out, the answer would sound something like this:

It stressed me out because when we do the document at the last minute we often make mistakes. It’s embarrassing when the client’s name is spelled wrong. My attorney is SUCH a good attorney, so I hate when clients think he is careless. I see that he goes above and beyond to protect his clients, often working nights and weekends, but clients don’t know that and they completely lose confidence in him when they see spelling errors and simple mistakes in their documents.

I’m not making up this answer. I’ve heard it time and again when employees are sharing their frustrations about their attorney doing last-minute documents, running late to meetings and such. There is always something beneath the complaint, and it’s usually because they care about the attorney’s reputation. How beautiful is that, to have a support team member who doesn’t just show up, go through the motions and collect a paycheck, but one who truly cares about how the attorney is perceived by the community.

An attorney’s mind-set – and remember, mindset means what is ‘real’ to them, which might not be factually true, but is just as impactful – is often like this:

• Came out of three years of law school as a trained skeptic
• $100k+ in student loans
• Entitled to a six-figure practice because that is what everyone said an attorney would earn
• No training on how to run a business
• No training on how to manage a team
• “Need to think about it” is the tool to defer decisions to defer risk
• Always hears everyone else’s problems
• Works to pay everyone else's salary
• Alienated – can’t talk freely with clients or team and tries not to take it home
• Delegating certain tasks is insulting to their training
• Terrified of not knowing the law
• Constant pressure of cash flow
• Needs your support, but doesn’t know how to earn it, and wishes someone would figure it out
• Is terrified of marketing so hides behind “the law”
• Confuses “busy” with “important”
• Creates confusion and chaos (not intended)

Employees come from a completely different background – typically the more structured corporate environment, which is totally different from working for an attorney entrepreneur. Or, they have the corporate mentality ingrained in them from conversations they’ve had with their parents or their friends on what to expect in the workplace.

The mindset of employees is often:

• Terrified of being fired
• Overwhelmed and underpaid
• Trained from past experience to stay “in the box”
• Unsure of their boundaries
• Do NOT know what you mean by “step up” or how to live the role of the “PAIN”
• Don’t understand the thought process of a business owner or clients
• Live in the PROCESS and system, don’t understand their place in the BIG conversation
• Highly stressed from being at the whim of the attorney’s interruptions
• Unwilling to be honest because the attorney signs the paychecks
• Feel insulted when the attorney gives “drive-by” suggestions for a job they have never done
• Too busy to sit in another meeting
• Will spend the first 15 minutes of every meeting recapping where the last meeting left off
• Aren’t acknowledged enough

You can see how both the attorney and the team member can want to achieve the same result, but communication about it completely shuts the other side down. If we can work past this, and learn to get into the other person’s perspective, powerful communication and movement can occur.

Ask questions and listen for the intentions behind the words. You will be surprised at how much your team cares about you and the firm. You really are on the same page. You just have to learn to speak the same language and get into each other’s perspective.

If you are interested in learning about Lawyers With Purpose and want to see what we have to offer, register to attend our Asset Protection, Medicaid and VA Summit, September 12-13 in Phoenix, AZ. Register now today. Seats are filling quickly.

Laney Lyons-Richardson, Implementation Coach for Lawyers with Purpose, LLC, and author of Don’t Be a Yes Chick: How to Stop Babysitting Your Boss, Transform Your Job and Work with a Dream Team Without Losing Your Sanity or Your Spirit in the Process.

What is the greatest success you’ve had since joining LWP?

When I started with LWP, I was beginning to expand my practice from a transactional practice to focusing in estate planning in general and Medicaid (this was at the start of the recession). While it took time to build the Medicaid practice, LWP gave me the basis of legal technical knowledge so that I could confidently discuss Medicaid crisis planning and preplanning (which most Elder law attorneys do not do) with clients. They then introduced VA planning which allowed me to expand my lines of business even more. With the introduction of Special Needs Trusts into LWP, that will allow me to expand yet again. So, since I started with LWP, I have exponentially grown my practice both in expertise and revenue and can foresee that upward trajectory continuing.

What is your favorite LWP tool?

The Estate Plan Audit. You can see how the clients appreciate the fact that I am asking questions that they never considered. The questions are very pointed, making the meeting efficient; and it generates great discussions which I believe helps set me apart from other attorneys. The client understands that I am here to identify their needs and then address those needs.

How has being part of LWP impacted your team and your practice?

It is not only the legal technical support but also the support to help me build my incredible team. When I was contemplating expanding my team, a conference call with Roz and Molly gave me the confidence to move forward (and they were absolutely correct). They were also instrumental in helping me build a more efficient practice where I can continue to expand my business and revenue without necessarily needing to expand my overhead. But when it is time to expand my overhead, I know that LWP will be there to help me through that process so I can again proceed with confidence.

If you are at all interested in Lawyers With Purpose and how we can help expand your elder law or estate planning practice, please join us in Phoenix, AZ, September 12-13 for our Asset Protection, Medicaid & VA Summit. Register now! Early bird pricing ends today at 12pm EDT.

We have exciting news to share. You may remember our good friend Leon Etienne from being at our booth at national events over the years. Well, we'd like to ask you to help us celebrate Leon by voting for him on America's Got Talent.

Below is the information we received from Leon. Help us pass it along:

Tune in Tuesday, August 6th at 9:00 EDT on NBC. Spread the word to your family and friends and on social media to vote for Leon & Romy. Voting opens AFTER the show is over. You can vote up to 10 times per phone line (if you have a cell phone and a land line). You can also vote 10 more times on NBC.com/vote once the show is over. And you can vote once on Twitter.

Thank you so much! Love, Leon & Romy!

“Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.” ~Fyodor Dostoyevsky

In our last blog post we introduced “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” by Patrick Lencioni. We discussed Dysfunction #1, Lack of Trust. Today we will talk about Dysfunction #2, Fear of Conflict.

Is conflict ever positive? Teams that engage in productive conflict know that the purpose is to produce the best possible solution in the shortest period of time. Are people holding back? Are people on your team choosing their battles?

Teams that fear conflict:

1. Have boring meetings
2. Create environments where back-channel politics and personal attacks thrive
3. Ignore controversial topics that are critical to team success
4. Fail to tap into all the opinions and perspectives of team members
5. Waste time and energy with posturing and interpersonal risk management

Teams that engage in conflict:

1. Have lively, interesting meetings
2. Extract and explore the ideas of all team members
3. Solve real problems quickly
4. Minimize politics
5. Put critical topics on the table for discussion

I recently conducted an annual review with one of our key LWP team leaders, and we were talking about her growth over the past year. She made tremendous progress in her ability to take a stand and speak the truth, often with a fair amount of angst. We celebrated her willingness to “use her voice” in our company. She started laughing and said, “The first few meetings I was stunned; I used to go home and tell my husband, the team meetings are worse than any dysfunctional family supper table!”

This was an enormous personal victory; it meant we were on the right track. The health of any great company is solely dependent on its willingness to embrace “truth telling.” When a team is willing to truthfully engage in conflict with passion and forcefulness while having the sole intention of producing the best possible resolution, it will ALWAYS produce a strong game plan with the least amount of resistance, blame and pain.

One suggestion for overcoming fear of conflict is to extract buried disagreements within the team and shine the light of day on them. Another is to grant real-time permission to discuss what’s not working in the moment while allowing team members to coach one another not to retreat from healthy debate. Get comfortable with the idea that conflict always leads to growth.

We fool ourselves when our mantra is “avoid conflict at all cost. Put your head down and keep your mouth shut.” Conflict can never really be avoided. When we are unwilling to have the heated conversations and keep it all together, the conflict is really just in “silent stereo.” That means you never truly know the core reasons why you were not able to produce X or why so and so really quit. Trying to avoid conflict guarantees that the hidden conflicts will absolutely multiply while creating a team of snarling, wounded sufferers. The heart wrenching part is the stifling of creativity, production and excitement for the future, the thick air of lost hope.

What type of team are you leading: one of conflict crusaders or conflict avoiders?

Are you interested in knowing more about Lawyers With Purpose? If so, then come see what we are all about. Join us September 12-13 in Phoenix AZ, for our Asset Protection, Medicaid and VA Summit. Register now and take advantage of our early bird pricing.