5 Tips For Lawyers to Improve Their Professional Development (Perspective)

Editor’s Note: The author of this post is an assistant general counsel for Microsoft-based in Chicago.

I’m a native New Yorker and a lifelong fan of the New York Yankees baseball team. After I volunteered to serve as head coach for my 4-year-old son’s baseball team earlier this Spring, I was shocked to learn that our team’s name would be the Boston Red Sox — the long-time dreaded rivals to my beloved New York Yankees. However, Stanford University Professor Dr. Carol Dweck —one of the world’s leading researchers in the field of motivation and author of the highly influential book “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success” — would be proud of me. Instead of remaining stuck in a “fixed mindset,” I’m employing a “growth mindset” by openly embracing the Boston Red Sox (and I’m even wearing a Red Sox jersey and hat during our practices and games).

Professor Dweck champions a straightforward philosophy that we all have the ability to develop our intelligence by embracing a culture of learning (a “growth mindset”) versus believing that our qualities are carved in stone (a “fixed mindset”). To better serve our clients, our profession, ourselves and others, it is incumbent for lawyers to maintain a “growth mindset.” All lawyers and legal organizations can become higher performing and transform their behavior from “know it all” to “learn it all” by embracing these practices:

Always be Stretching

As I know from plenty of experience it is so easy to remain in our comfort zones — especially given our busy professional and personal lives. However, the only way we can truly grow and develop as lawyers is to put ourselves into new and uncomfortable situations that challenges us. Whether it be learning an unfamiliar legal topic so that you can serve on a future CLE panel, obtaining a certification with the International Association of Privacy Professionals to demonstrate your expertise in the burgeoning area of privacy law or taking on an overseas assignment with your employer, be sure to actively seek opportunities to stretch and grow (and enlist the support of your management team to help identify those opportunities).

Failure Isn’t Fatal

All lawyers make mistakes every single day. Smart legal organizations recognize that failure will happen along the path to growth and success — especially as lawyers lean in to uncertainty, move quickly and help their clients engage in smart risk-taking. The key is to fail fast when we make mistakes, demonstrate resiliency and actively learn from our errors.

Be Diverse & Inclusive

Our world is becoming increasingly diverse and lawyers must properly represent the growing needs of a varied population. Those lawyers who are open to learning about their own biases to change their behaviors and who actively value and seek out differences in views will be much stronger advocates for their clients. In-house counsel who embrace inclusiveness will help their companies provide better service to their customers.

Proactively Seek Feedback

I participated in a meeting several years ago where the presenter talked about feedback being a “gift.” While I didn’t appreciate it at the time the presenter was right as we should treasure when our colleagues invest the time to provide feedback about us. Lawyers should not seek feedback solely from their management team. Instead ask for feedback on an informal 1:1 basis from your clients, your customers, your peers, your direct reports, your indirect reports, administrative assistants, paralegals, opposing counsel, judges, and others that have the opportunity to observe you. And of course once you receive the “gift” of feedback, actually learn from it and reciprocate by actively sharing your own feedback about others.

Encourage & Reward “Growth Mindsetters”

Ideally the senior leaders in your legal organization should encourage and set the tone for a culture that is always learning and insatiably curious. Individuals and teams of legal professionals exemplifying a “growth mindset” persona should be celebrated, recognized and appropriately rewarded.

Remember that the “growth mindset” is a journey and not a destination. As such, the road to excellence is always under construction for all of us.