Law Business Review, September 2010

In the final article in the series on leadership, Jennifer explains how the ability to lead and inspire others towards a shared purpose is the ultimate step in leadership.  

She shows how successful organisations such as Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, and Star Bucks run their companies on this basis and teach these leadership skills.  If only law firms were to invest in legitimate leadership training programmes like these organisations....

Jennifer goes on to say that you can only lead by being the kind of person others want to follow and then building your team and leading through example, enthusiasm, challenge, and empowerment.  

Law Business Review, July 2010

Leadership only happens in the context of relationships and boils down to influence, but sometimes lawyers forget this and fail to use the elementary tools of influence.  In the second article in a series of three on leadership, Jennifer considers four drivers of leadership and examines real-life examples of lawyers using each of the actions.  The four drivers are:  

• Achievement. People with a high need for achievement long to excel and are driven to meet or even exceed a certain (usually self-imposed) standard. They have little patience for those who can’t keep up and generally prefer to work either alone or with people like themselves.

• Affiliation. People with a high need for affiliation desire harmonious relationships with other people and want to feel accepted. While this can appear a relatively weak or casual motivation, its consequence is to foster aligned behaviour, so within the context of leadership it has a significant role to play.

• Personal power. People who seek personal power want to direct, control, and influence others, which at first glance might appear to be reasonable motivations for a leader. However, the person dominated by these considerations will tend toward coercion and manipulation, which will fatally undermine his cause.

• Socialized power.People motivated by socialized power influence others by helping them develop their skills and grow in confidence. When driven by socialized power, people achieve far more than they could when fueled by their own personal aspirations, because championing, encouraging, and uplifting others is a powerful motivator. In fact, the person driven by socialized power is so concerned with the collective good that his or her purpose becomes inseparable from the interests of any followers. Not surprisingly, this is by far the most effective and authentic form of leadership.

Law Business Review, May 2010

In the first of a series of articles Jennifer explores the three different stages of leadership and says that, by forming a strong personal vision of what you want to achieve, you can take the first step on the leadership ladder.  The three different stages of leadership are:

1.  First, you must self-lead, by having a vision for your future and, despite setbacks, must maintain commitment to that vision and have self-belief.

2.  Secondly, you must lead within your relationship, by managing yourself as a leader in relation to others.

3.  Finally, you must learn to lead others.  

This article focuses on the first level of leadership:  self-leading.  To do this, you must develop self-awareness, think optimistically, control emotions, take action, learn from your mistakes and never stop self-developing.

Solicitors Journal, December 2009

Being a successful lawyer is about more than just legal knowledge. You need the X-factor! Learn how to get it.

Solicitors Journal, December 2009

Building relationships is essential to the success of every lawyer, and one only does so through the process of networking. In this article, Jennifer shows young lawyers how…