Peer to Peer Magazine

Enhance Your Leadership Skills Through Self-Awareness material on your firm’s array of technology. Again, use straightforward language. The benefit to the firm is that it gets some technical input to ensure that its marketing statements are accurate. The benefit to you is that you learn the discipline of clear communication to a broad audience. In either case, self-marketing will force you to identify and express your main points in a meaningful way. Understand business as theater. This issue may seem esoteric, but it is not. The cultural theorist Jeremy Rifkin, an instructor of executive education at the Wharton School of Business, makes this helpful point in “The Empathic Civilization.” Work has a “theatrical” component: The principles of theater and the theory and practice of drama are finding their way into virtually every field. Entrepreneurs who have to tell a story of something that doesn’t yet exist as if it did in order to spark the imagination of investors and clients have to be able to use dramatic license to make their case. The audience needs to “suspend disbelief” — which is what theater is about — and actually place themselves in the fictional setting the entrepreneur has created and experience the proposed venture as if it were real. You may find yourself in a similar position when giving a presentation or making a case for a certain software purchase to senior management. Whatever the venue, be self-aware without being self-conscious. Be alert to how your presence is affecting others. Project and control your movements. Understand how voice inflection or eye contact impacts others. Are you focused on conveying your message? Work on the rough edges, practice speaking publicly, and ask for feedback on specific issues. One of the best ways to overcome the difficulties of self-awareness is to make your thoughts public. Watch for the immediate reaction of others. Generation Y appears to have a keener understanding of this challenge. Look at the details they are willing to divulge online! But if you think of what you do as having a public, shared aspect, you are much less likely to succumb to the pitfalls of self-ignorance. ILTA Vic Peterson is Director of Practice Support at Stinson Morrison Hecker LLP. A seven-year veteran of the firm, he has significant experience in practice support management including in-house and vendor-hosted litigation support. He has advocated the benefits of technology to attorneys and other firm users through presentations at practice division meetings and other appropriate venues, as well as established best practices for litigation support, trial presentations, electronic court filing and other nonlitigation practice area needs. Vic can be reached at VPeterson@stinson.com. Peer to Peer the quarterly magazine of ILTA 73

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