Leadership in the Law: Bring All Your Values to the Table

Why is it an issue when you place too much emphasis on your monetary value? When monetary value dictates your success, your personal values get overshadowed by material values. You may find yourself measuring your personal worth to the price of the matter or the fees you receive. This is neither sustainable nor satisfactory. On the other hand, when your costs are coupled with personal values and brand strengths, you possess a stronger and more personal balance, which is not only durable and permanent, but evident and appreciated by your clients and colleagues. You want to remain in control and own your success. By balancing and influencing all of your values, you will make certain that leadership,' clients, workflow and pipeline, team and cost management are always evident among your goals.

Intangible Values

What are some of these attributes and why do they hold value? These are personal qualities, skills and traits that you possess and that help to distinguish you from other lawyers. They determine others' impressions and perceptions of you and your overall success. They become valued and anticipated by others. These characteristics are part of what is seen by others as your “secret sauce.” Your value “signature” includes not only your quantifiable values, but your intangible values that become tangible and recognizable through your consistent deliverables. Others may be more conscious of your values than you are, as you display them through all your actions. When you are aware of your personal values you will then use them to your best potential.

Communication As Value

To gain insights into these other values, start with your overarching personal value: your communication style. Your communication style is your personal stamp and a key contributor to and determinant of your success. How you communicate will affect your ability and skill in building relationships, strategizing and solving problems, confronting obstacles, or mentoring and nurturing your team. Through your communication prowess, you continually display the depths of your ability, regardless of the situation.

The more aware you are of what values contribute to your success, the more likely you will be to succeed. If you do not appreciate or value what you do, you cannot expect your clients or colleagues to value your efforts. It is simply not enough to just bill and do the work. You want to bring more of you to the matter: you want to leverage all your values to demonstrate your worth. The more values you exhibit, the more successful you will be.

Add Other Values

These other values act like an internal compass that anchors your actions. Without this stabilizing force you may feel unfocused and ineffective in your practice, and unsatisfied and unhappy as a lawyer. Instead of feeling in control of your efforts, you may be mechanically going through your actions, only focusing on getting the bill out. You will then miss out on the value-add that enables both best practices and the leveraging of higher investment returns.

Your values quotient is comprised of many complimentary and interconnected values, which work effectively to leverage your key monetary value. Your image, personal branding, and professional service values will help jumpstart and move your success to next levels. You will also be guided by your personal values, such as integrity, fairness, creativity, and autonomy, which determine your decisions and judgment. All of these values are drivers behind your actions and help to lead you to success.

What should be your next steps? Consider how to be sure the following values support and maximize your value quotient.

Image and Personal Branding Values

To fully grasp the role that image and personal branding bring to your overall success, recognize that your personal branding values set you apart from others. As the author of your brand, you are totally in control of these specific values and are solely responsible for their interactions, behaviors and outcomes. You are your brand and your brand enables you to win or lose clients. You decide how you want to think, feel and behave and, as your actions are a direct result of your brand, you should not be surprised by or detached from the outcomes or impacts of your decisions.

You are only as good as your brand. If you are not perceived the way you want to be perceived and are not reaching the goals you have set out to meet, you want to re-evaluate your values and determine if your brand needs to be tweaked, revamped or potentially overhauled. A key cornerstone of your personal brand is your authenticity: The more authentic you are, the more trustworthy you are found to be, and the more lasting the connection between you, your colleagues and clients.

Your authenticity comes from within, and is secured internally by your personal beliefs and values. These hidden influencers individualize the choices you make and support the reasoning that you bring to the table. These values spell out who you are, what motivates you and how you lead.

Your image values are evident in how you package yourself, including your work, mannerisms, written and oral communication, personality and dress. All of these play a role in your daily communication. Your image values always precede you, whether when you walk into a room, send an e-mail or document, and conduct business. It is difficult to separate you as a person from how you communicate, as they are deeply entwined. You will be more successful if you value your image and how you and anything that is an extension of you comes across to others. We cannot control others' impressions; we only control how we “market” ourselves to our clients, colleagues and prospects. You want to control how you communicate, and you want your communication to reveal your personal brand. When you apply your image and personal branding values, you have a direct effect on how you communicate, network and build relationships. Effective communication builds strong relationships and strong relationships will get you work.

When you manage and control your thoughts and feelings, you are more likely to convey the right message, whether written, oral, or unspoken. As an effective communicator, you are a good listener; an efficient delegator; trusted colleague; flexible manager; socially adept and a crisis manager. Your image and personal branding cannot function without your communication abilities. Your communication's value to your success is priceless.

Professional Service Values

Communication owns significant real estate in your professional service. Everything you do is laced with communication. Your professional service values help you solve problems and deal with clients' pain points. Your values back you when you confront obstacles and tailor your service to client needs. When you and your team are reaching objectives and effectively closing your matters and deals, your professional service values will ensure you succeed. What are these values?

Your practice management and delegation skills are key professional service values. Creating an organic process from the beginning to the end of your project and supervising others' work with the same care you apply to your own work are fine examples of your values. Being decisive and demonstrating sound management in all situations are key values, as are juggling effectively, knowing when “to pick your battles” and staying focused on message. Listening attentively,' preparing diligently, mitigating risk and managing yourself within allotted hours of the day are additional values that help to guarantee strong returns on your investment. All these values keep you focused on your practice, nurturing and mentoring your team and providing exceptional service to all your clients. These efficiencies will help ensure that all concerned are reaping the benefits needed for success.

Professional service values also entail exemplary work produced by strategic efforts, execution and delivery. Your drive to provide excellent service and see returns on investment comes from the values you bring forward, including leadership; preparation; time and deadline management; negotiation skills;' establishing and maintaining reporting structures; and being accessible to team, colleagues and clients. Also of key service value is your energy and its byproduct, hard work, or “sweat.” Your work ethic is one of your main hallmark values, which will separate you from others. The energy that you bring to your professional service highlights for your clients the goods they can expect to get from you as their provider. Your work ethic and energy should be apparent to those with whom you communicate with your first contact, whether in a networking environment, an introductory communication, a first draft. Your inner values are translated into your work product as soon as your pen hits the paper or your fingers hit a keyboard. And it doesn't dissipate with the close of the matter. It continues during the rapport you continue to build with your clients, which will lead to the next new deal or matter.

Leverage All Your Values

Your monetary value is a crucial benchmark when measuring your success. This value will help you build your client relationships and grow your reputation and expertise. Your success, however, is not dependent solely on your monetary value. You also have a rich cache of high-performing values that provide you with many options for enhancing your success, including fine-tuning your communication skills, enhancing strategic and leadership abilities and further developing project management acumen. Leverage all your values to demonstrate your abilities and you will only excel.

'

Debra Forman, PCC, certified executive coach and principal of Pinstripe Coaching (www.pinstripecoaching.com), partners with attorneys in one-on-one and group coaching sessions, and produces the monthly video Making Rain.

'

How do you gauge your success? If you are similar to many lawyers, you do so by your monetary value: your billable rate, how much you billed and the amount you realized and collected. Your personal worth may seem to be tied to your monthly draw. Why? Monetary value is easily defined and clearly quantifiable. But you have many more attributes that also hold value and they can play pivotal roles in your success. While some of these values may be more subjective and less easy to identify or quantify than monetary value, when you bring all of these values to the table, everyone will benefit. But before exploring these other values, let us first look at your success solely through the lens of monetary value.

Monetary Value

When running a lucrative legal enterprise, the contribution of price and monetary value are essential for your success. Price is the proverbial line in the sand that lets you communicate the monetary value of your product. Price also helps you determine and articulate your professional service worth, as acknowledged by your hourly rate or your project's value. Even if the price becomes a sliding scale, it will allow sometimes intangible things to be quantified and will indicate your value and the worth of your matter. That being said, you do not want your price and monetary value to lead you to your goals. Instead, you want to be guided by your other vital values and trust, with the measures you have put in place with these values, that your monetary value will follow suit.

Why is it an issue when you place too much emphasis on your monetary value? When monetary value dictates your success, your personal values get overshadowed by material values. You may find yourself measuring your personal worth to the price of the matter or the fees you receive. This is neither sustainable nor satisfactory. On the other hand, when your costs are coupled with personal values and brand strengths, you possess a stronger and more personal balance, which is not only durable and permanent, but evident and appreciated by your clients and colleagues. You want to remain in control and own your success. By balancing and influencing all of your values, you will make certain that leadership,' clients, workflow and pipeline, team and cost management are always evident among your goals.

Intangible Values

What are some of these attributes and why do they hold value? These are personal qualities, skills and traits that you possess and that help to distinguish you from other lawyers. They determine others' impressions and perceptions of you and your overall success. They become valued and anticipated by others. These characteristics are part of what is seen by others as your “secret sauce.” Your value “signature” includes not only your quantifiable values, but your intangible values that become tangible and recognizable through your consistent deliverables. Others may be more conscious of your values than you are, as you display them through all your actions. When you are aware of your personal values you will then use them to your best potential.

Communication As Value

To gain insights into these other values, start with your overarching personal value: your communication style. Your communication style is your personal stamp and a key contributor to and determinant of your success. How you communicate will affect your ability and skill in building relationships, strategizing and solving problems, confronting obstacles, or mentoring and nurturing your team. Through your communication prowess, you continually display the depths of your ability, regardless of the situation.

The more aware you are of what values contribute to your success, the more likely you will be to succeed. If you do not appreciate or value what you do, you cannot expect your clients or colleagues to value your efforts. It is simply not enough to just bill and do the work. You want to bring more of you to the matter: you want to leverage all your values to demonstrate your worth. The more values you exhibit, the more successful you will be.

Add Other Values

These other values act like an internal compass that anchors your actions. Without this stabilizing force you may feel unfocused and ineffective in your practice, and unsatisfied and unhappy as a lawyer. Instead of feeling in control of your efforts, you may be mechanically going through your actions, only focusing on getting the bill out. You will then miss out on the value-add that enables both best practices and the leveraging of higher investment returns.

Your values quotient is comprised of many complimentary and interconnected values, which work effectively to leverage your key monetary value. Your image, personal branding, and professional service values will help jumpstart and move your success to next levels. You will also be guided by your personal values, such as integrity, fairness, creativity, and autonomy, which determine your decisions and judgment. All of these values are drivers behind your actions and help to lead you to success.

What should be your next steps? Consider how to be sure the following values support and maximize your value quotient.

Image and Personal Branding Values

To fully grasp the role that image and personal branding bring to your overall success, recognize that your personal branding values set you apart from others. As the author of your brand, you are totally in control of these specific values and are solely responsible for their interactions, behaviors and outcomes. You are your brand and your brand enables you to win or lose clients. You decide how you want to think, feel and behave and, as your actions are a direct result of your brand, you should not be surprised by or detached from the outcomes or impacts of your decisions.

You are only as good as your brand. If you are not perceived the way you want to be perceived and are not reaching the goals you have set out to meet, you want to re-evaluate your values and determine if your brand needs to be tweaked, revamped or potentially overhauled. A key cornerstone of your personal brand is your authenticity: The more authentic you are, the more trustworthy you are found to be, and the more lasting the connection between you, your colleagues and clients.

Your authenticity comes from within, and is secured internally by your personal beliefs and values. These hidden influencers individualize the choices you make and support the reasoning that you bring to the table. These values spell out who you are, what motivates you and how you lead.

Your image values are evident in how you package yourself, including your work, mannerisms, written and oral communication, personality and dress. All of these play a role in your daily communication. Your image values always precede you, whether when you walk into a room, send an e-mail or document, and conduct business. It is difficult to separate you as a person from how you communicate, as they are deeply entwined. You will be more successful if you value your image and how you and anything that is an extension of you comes across to others. We cannot control others' impressions; we only control how we “market” ourselves to our clients, colleagues and prospects. You want to control how you communicate, and you want your communication to reveal your personal brand. When you apply your image and personal branding values, you have a direct effect on how you communicate, network and build relationships. Effective communication builds strong relationships and strong relationships will get you work.

When you manage and control your thoughts and feelings, you are more likely to convey the right message, whether written, oral, or unspoken. As an effective communicator, you are a good listener; an efficient delegator; trusted colleague; flexible manager; socially adept and a crisis manager. Your image and personal branding cannot function without your communication abilities. Your communication's value to your success is priceless.

Professional Service Values

Communication owns significant real estate in your professional service. Everything you do is laced with communication. Your professional service values help you solve problems and deal with clients' pain points. Your values back you when you confront obstacles and tailor your service to client needs. When you and your team are reaching objectives and effectively closing your matters and deals, your professional service values will ensure you succeed. What are these values?

Your practice management and delegation skills are key professional service values. Creating an organic process from the beginning to the end of your project and supervising others' work with the same care you apply to your own work are fine examples of your values. Being decisive and demonstrating sound management in all situations are key values, as are juggling effectively, knowing when “to pick your battles” and staying focused on message. Listening attentively,' preparing diligently, mitigating risk and managing yourself within allotted hours of the day are additional values that help to guarantee strong returns on your investment. All these values keep you focused on your practice, nurturing and mentoring your team and providing exceptional service to all your clients. These efficiencies will help ensure that all concerned are reaping the benefits needed for success.

Professional service values also entail exemplary work produced by strategic efforts, execution and delivery. Your drive to provide excellent service and see returns on investment comes from the values you bring forward, including leadership; preparation; time and deadline management; negotiation skills;' establishing and maintaining reporting structures; and being accessible to team, colleagues and clients. Also of key service value is your energy and its byproduct, hard work, or “sweat.” Your work ethic is one of your main hallmark values, which will separate you from others. The energy that you bring to your professional service highlights for your clients the goods they can expect to get from you as their provider. Your work ethic and energy should be apparent to those with whom you communicate with your first contact, whether in a networking environment, an introductory communication, a first draft. Your inner values are translated into your work product as soon as your pen hits the paper or your fingers hit a keyboard. And it doesn't dissipate with the close of the matter. It continues during the rapport you continue to build with your clients, which will lead to the next new deal or matter.

Leverage All Your Values

Your monetary value is a crucial benchmark when measuring your success. This value will help you build your client relationships and grow your reputation and expertise. Your success, however, is not dependent solely on your monetary value. You also have a rich cache of high-performing values that provide you with many options for enhancing your success, including fine-tuning your communication skills, enhancing strategic and leadership abilities and further developing project management acumen. Leverage all your values to demonstrate your abilities and you will only excel.

'

Debra Forman, PCC, certified executive coach and principal of Pinstripe Coaching (www.pinstripecoaching.com), partners with attorneys in one-on-one and group coaching sessions, and produces the monthly video Making Rain.

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