Peer to Peer Magazine

Enhance Your Leadership Skills Through Self-Awareness Most of us need tools and guidance on how to proceed with investigating how our inner selves play into the leadership we exhibit. We need to build our skills of self-awareness as much as any other skills. One of the best exercises for work is to reflect on your own way of doing things. Then, consider how your work habits connect to other people in a business context. Leadership is not just important for senior managers. Any role, from helpdesk staff to CIO, can require the application of leadership skills. The following are some steps you can take to achieve the self-awareness necessary for success: Reach Inward Cultivate introspection. The act of examining one’s thoughts and feelings is underrated in business culture. We are taught to react quickly and decisively, to be bold and speak our thoughts as they unfold. At some point, however, we must turn inward and reflect on our options and decisions. Legal work is fraught, or blessed, with charged psychological moments. Attorneys, especially those who go to trial or manage deal making, know this. No one stands apart from the drama. This includes legal technologists. Whether lending trial support, selecting a document management system, answering a helpdesk call or planning department strategy, it is valuable to step back and contemplate the context of your or excessively optimistic, or worse, to avoid decisions. These are forms of self-protection that distract legal technologists from addressing real business needs. An example from my own experience illustrates the point. As Director of Practice Support at my firm, my job responsibilities include managing a litigation support staff. Several of my litigation support team members came to me and said they needed me to articulate a future vision for their work. Although I’d known for months that this type of exercise could be useful, I avoided it with the justification that the market was changing too quickly and was too complex to propose a path through the chaos. I was deceiving myself. When I took up the challenge of establishing a vision, it proved fruitful. I was able to create a clear roadmap for my team that eased concerns. It also helped me focus on what needed to be done. I can’t say that clarifying my vision eased every anxiety. That would be a false objective. But after spending four hours on a Saturday morning discussing it, I think my team appreciated the seriousness with which I took their request. “We need to build our skills of self- awareness as much as any other skills.” actions. In such situations, it can be beneficial to take a look at such factors as your own work habits, your leadership style and your professional focus. Such introspection gives you the ability to analyze your definition of success. On the other hand, those working in technology are often plagued with inner doubts. Skepticism and zeal for eradicating errors make technologists good at what they do. But business culture and technology culture can be at odds when this occurs. Part of the conflict can be resolved through improving communication skills. First, however, the demon of self-doubt must be overcome. For the technologist facing a tough decision or challenge, there is often a tendency to focus on details. Concentrate instead on the ability to identify and prioritize needs. Avoid a rush to judgment and be patient with yourself and others while you explore the potential impacts of a decision. Try not to impress others with your competency, your insights, or your wealth of knowledge; instead, identify a common goal and proceed deliberately toward it. The effective leader aligns details with priorities. Be truthful with yourself. This is hard medicine. There are tendencies among those who work under deadlines, as legal technologists often do, to be excessively pessimistic Manage yourself. This is not the same thing as managing your time. Managing yourself is really a form of self-development. First you must address your basic survival needs. You cannot work well if you are chronically stressed or tired or angry. If you harbor resentments because you think you are underappreciated, underpaid or overworked, analyze what you can do to improve your situation. It is easy to blame superiors, the nature of the job or the marketplace; but finally, you must reflect on your own investment in the work. Stress relievers such as exercise and yoga or meditation may be useful. So is learning to delegate tasks effectively. If, however, going to work feels like stepping into a scene from the film Glengarry Glen Ross, a movie about a group of ruthless real estate agents, then some serious probing is in order. Do the values of the workplace match your own? Determine your educational needs. Once it was taken for granted that people acquired all the education they needed for life by their early or mid-twenties. What we have learned, especially in light of lengthening life spans, is that ongoing education is important. Your educational needs may be technical or business-oriented. Increasingly, continuing adult education is becoming a market imperative. If you neglect professional enrichment, you may be bypassed for a promotion, or even a lateral move. If you do pursue adult education, assess your strengths and weaknesses before you choose a program or class. Through introspection, you can identify areas where you need to need to develop skills or knowledge and also maximize those areas you consider your strengths. Peer to Peer the quarterly magazine of ILTA 71

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