The Management Wisdom of Midlevel Associates

The wisdom I refer to has been gathered in more than 20 years of training associates, counsel and partners on topics like matter management, team leadership, delegation and feedback. In many of those programs, I run a simple exercise that puts participants in pairs. I ask one person to brainstorm a list of the behaviors and traits of effective leaders. I ask the other to list the behaviors of ineffective leaders. We then discuss the two lists, and the habits that the associates should aspire to as future leaders and matter managers. I have collected many of these lists over the years, and they no longer surprise me. What does surprise me is the continuing tolerance that even top firms have for poor matter management and leadership.

The good news is that associates know effective leadership when they see it. Every firm I have worked with has partners whom associates much prefer to follow. If those great leadership behaviors got as much attention as business development practices, many firms would be on associates' “best places to work” lists. Here, I choose to focus on the negative behaviors because to fix something, you have to know it's broken. No firm is immune from partners who lead poorly and from the costs of doing nothing about it.