Leadership

December 5, 2018 by MollyandLaney

The Top 3 Bad Attitude Mistakes Not to Make if You Want Your Team Members to Work As Hard As You Do…

Bosses, your attitude could be harming your business.

We know, who do we think we are? This statement is harsh. Remember, we’re “bosses” too…we don’t like hearing it any more than you do.

But, as business consultants and staffing experts, our commitment is to create impact, income, freedom and—dare we say—joy and ease for your business. Even when it means being a mirror and reflecting back to you some things you are doing to self-destruct your business. And creating those things all starts with your attitude.

Last week we were facilitating a 60-Day Employee Evaluation Onboarding call for a new attorney hire. The attorney owner was exhausted, frustrated, stressed, and overwhelmed with a large caseload, training a new employee, finding out another associate attorney on her team didn’t pass the bar, and well…just “business owner stuff” in general. The attorney dialed in to the call hot and heavy. All we had to do was ask, “How’s it going?” She didn’t skip a beat. “I feel like I am fighting alligators all day long and nobody in my office knows how to do their job.” Did we mention that the new associate and law firm manager were present? Mic drop. And then she said, “And you didn’t do your job either, sending me this attorney who doesn’t have the skillset or knowledge to do the job.” Again, did we mentioned the brand new hire attorney was sitting in the room? And it took us four months to find this superstar. If she walks out, the owner attorney is really going to know the truest definition of stress.

My response, “Excuse me?”

Attorney response, “Did I stutter?”

Now that she “felt better” because she blew off steam and was able to verbally vomit all of her stress and frustration, she was ready to talk about what was working.

Listen up: unless you’re trying to cause a mass exodus, don’t ever, EVER treat your employees like this. Bosses, your attitude is harming your business! Tony Robbins says, “An attitude of gratitude is where money and opportunity flows.” When your feeling like you need to explode (and trust us, we get it!) find a coach, a therapist, a spouse, a close friend…SOMEONE to unleash your stresses to prior to walking into your office when your hair is on fire. Don’t even walk into the office when you’re feeling this way—go find neutral ground and get it out of your system. Especially when there are new hires in the building, you’re still trying to enroll them in why your place of business was the best investment in their future they have made.

We know this isn’t how 90% of the attorneys we work closely with operate. But you may have an associate with this mentality— share your expectations and standards with them. Too often we get calls: the attorney owner is amazing but they are locked in a conference room all day; the managing associate(s) who we spend all day with are another story…

Here are the top 3 bad attitude mistakes NOT to make if you want your team members to work as hard as you do day in and day out:

1. Constantly telling everyone how many hours you worked, what time you got up, how you didn’t sleep, didn’t get to pee yesterday, what you have to do before lunch, and how you are never going to make it home tonight. We cannot tell you how many entrepreneurs do this. Obsessively. This is the most disempowering and de-enrolling, backfiring strategy we have witnessed. This is how your team interprets these complaints: keep busy and don’t offer to take anything additional on because we don’t want to end up negative, stressed, and burnt out like our boss.

2. Don’t verbally abuse your team. EVER. It only takes one bad day to break the trust you’ve built with your team members…and it’s next to impossible to regain it. Your employees don’t care who you are. They don’t care what title you hold. They don’t care how long (or short) you’ve been doing what you’ve been doing. They don’t care how respected you are in your industry. Employees simply won’t tolerate being verbally abused by a frustrated, exhausted boss. This is not the 1990s patriarchal tyrant manager era any more. Employees will not hesitate to give up every perk under the sun for respect and appreciation.

3. Don’t ignore your employees. Throughout the recruiting and hiring processes, when we ask potential new hires why they are looking to leave their companies, the one thing we hear over and over again is this: “we only hear from the boss when things are bad. I love the mission of the company, my co-workers, our clients, and everything we stand for. If only we could hear about what we are doing right, receive consistent feedback, support, and coaching on how to improve and grow. I can’t describe it, there is an energy in the office that feels like we are rearranging chairs on the deck of the Titanic all day.”

If you’re not showing up as a nice person, people won’t work for you. Sorry, but it’s the truth. If you’re ship is sinking, maybe it’s time to admit that your attitude might be to blame.

November 29, 2018 by MollyandLaney

If You’re Spending Most of 2018 Year End Frustrated, You Still Have 4 Weeks to Fix That!

If you’re spending most of 2018 year end frustrated by clients falling through the cracks, balls dropping and work product not meeting your expectations, all while you deal with office chaos and practice management systems that either didn’t work or were not consistently followed…

…then we want to come aboard YOUR team to help you immediately stop the hemorrhaging, retrain your staff members, and refine all that you need in place to hit your revenue, volume and personal satisfaction goals in 2018—in just the final 4 remaining weeks.

As you know, we work with many firms in a high-level capacity, and are the “behind the scenes” team leadership to some of the top legal and business organizations in the country. We have gotten requests to “clone” our work ethic, mindset, and leadership ownerships for decades. We’ve written the manual (and Amazon #1 Best Seller) on the “how to.” And we have found a way to do it.

We have downloaded our 20+ years of expertise, best practice approach, and proven habits and behaviors into a program that will supercharge everyone in your office. Your team will be able to ensure that your practice starts running like a well-oiled machine and is positioned to handle controlled volume and growth without frustration, breakdowns, client dissatisfaction or the pressure for you to work 70+ hours a week.

We opened some spaces in our Team Empowerment Academy and, most importantly, made it affordable, because we know there are a lot of great small business owners (and equally dedicated team members) out there who need help.

Trust us: your team members don’t want to fail you and let you down. They want to take your firm to six figures and beyond.

If you want one of the remaining SIX spots left in our Team Empowerment Academy—to get started NOW, while there are still 4 weeks left in 2018—schedule a 15 minute call right here and now to see if this is the answer you’ve been desperate for. We have a few time slots still remaining for next week to discuss specifically the outline of the program and the results you can expect from working in this customized private capacity.

November 14, 2018 by MollyandLaney

Hold Your Team Members Accountable…to Each Other

If you are micromanaging your employees, please stop! Now. It is literally debilitating to your law firm or business. Micromanagement prevents your business from evolving with the times. It thwarts innovation. It pushes strong team members out the door, hinders workflow, disempowers staff, closes communication channels, and turns “teamwork” into a four letter word.

Shall we continue?

Micromanagement could be the biggest nail in your firm or business’s coffin. Do you find it difficult to delegate responsibility to team members, taking an if-you-want-something-done-right-you-gotta-do-it-yourself approach instead? Do you have high employee turnover, or do you get the feeling that your team members are walking on eggshells around you? Are you the only person at your business responsible for making decisions? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, well, we’re sorry to say it, but…you might be a micromanager.

But there is hope! Many a micromanager has been able to turn their leadership technique around and create a workplace environment rich with empowerment. Here’s how:

1. Hire the right people. The #1 reason why leaders micromanage is because they don’t trust their team members. Hiring quality people who you truly believe are capable of delivering the caliber of work you expect will reduce the need to micromanage them. One of the best pieces of advice we were ever given was this: hire people who are better than you. Put your ego aside and think about that for a minute. Hiring people who are better than you only stands to benefit your firm in the long run.

2. Hold your team members accountable…to each other. Nothing ensures quality control more so than peer pressure. Allowing your staff to provide anonymous feedback about the performance of other team members and departments will create a sense of ownership, and can help you implement systems that keep your team satisfied and productive.

3. Be clear about what you expect. If your staff doesn’t know what you expect, then how can they work towards it? So many times we see micromanagement emerge as a response to poorly communicated expectations. Be clear, give your team specific benchmarks and objectives, and eliminate the need to micromanage them!

4. Empower your employees. Providing your team members with the freedom to engage—meaningfully—in decision-making processes will help them “own their role” at your firm. They’ll be willing to go above and beyond because they know you won’t be sweeping up behind them, changing everything that they’ve done. They’ll be excited about their job, and will take the success (or failure) of your business personally.

5. Recognize your own bad behavior. So the saying goes, the first step is admitting. Once you recognize your own micromanaging tendencies, you can begin to change them. Working with a management consultant or executive coach can be a huge help for those with the tendency to micromanage.

No matter how you look at it, micromanagement is a huge problem that needs to be stopped before it destroys your firm. You want—no, you need—empowered employees who aren’t afraid to step up and lead. Forget about the robots who need to be told what to do, and how to do it. Hire cream-of-the crop-employees, empower them, and you’ll find there is no need to micromanage anything (or anyone) anymore.

Schedule a FREE Discovery Session

Is your firm or business struggling with micromanagement? Are you confident that you have hired amazing people? Are you confident that you have communicated your process for holding your team accountable…to each other? Maybe it’s time to hire your next (or first) superstar hire and empower them to take ownership of your business. Hiring & Empowering Solutions specializes in legal staffing, and offers the only Team Empowerment Academy (TM) in the country. Schedule a 30-minute discovery session with our co-founder, Molly Hall, today. Find out how we can support the evolution of your firm, and ensure its viability today and tomorrow.

November 1, 2018 by MollyandLaney

Why Employee Training & Development Programs Don’t Offer an Immediate Solution

Small law firms are investing more than ever in employee training and development, seeking to better engage their employees and keep them invested in their jobs for the long-term. Don’t get us wrong, employee training and development is hugely important to any small or solo law practice. But we see it time and time again: law firm leadership identifies a learning opportunity or behavioral problem and thinks that investing in an employee training and development program will offer an immediate solution.

But an employee training and development program is only as effective as a law firm’s leadership. If your firm’s leadership has not clarified which groups and individuals are responsible for making certain decisions, they are negating your training efforts. If authority has been delegated in a silo—and only at the very tippity-top of that silo—you are impeding your own team training efforts. If you have not outlined a measurable way to hold your employees accountable for decision-making, then you are standing in your own way. And you need to step aside.

Employee training and development is a highly-effective solution for a lot of traditional business problems: it helps keep balls in the air rather than constantly dropping; it snuffs out office drama; it streamlines operations and keeps your firm running like a well-oiled machine; it draws out each employee’s superpowers; and it empowers your employees to step up and lead rather than await orders and execute as dictated.

But if, at the core of your firm, you’re not meeting these three requirements, there isn’t a training and development program in the world that could help you:

1. An internal system that is aligned with your training & development goals. So, you want your team to feel more ownership of the firm and its performance—you want them to make confident decisions and run with their intrepreneurial ideas. But is your firm structured in a way that enables this level of employee empowerment? Or do you have a managerially “tall” organization, where each layer of leadership is required to approve decisions? Is access to important information limited to certain members of your leadership team? If employees keep running into red tape and feel that they need to ask permission to make even the tiniest decision, how can they be empowered to become leaders?

2. Leaders who are 100% committed to making positive changes at your firm. You’ve taken the first step and figured out the root cause of dysfunction at your firm. Now, are your leaders willing to make changes that solve internal problems and open the doors to an effective employee training and development program? If leaders aren’t ready to relinquish control of your firm’s decision-making processes and trust that their newly-empowered team would be capable of calling the shots, then training and development efforts will be moot.

3. Find solutions, not bandaids. There is the case of one particular firm leader whose team kept reporting back to her that they were stressed out and overworked. With the best of intentions, she rolled out a mindfulness workshop at her firm. This would reduce stress, right? But even though her team reported back that the mindfulness workshop was “interesting”…it still didn’t reduce their stress. The problem is that, to reduce stress, the root cause of that stress needs to be addressed. The mindfulness workshop was just a bandaid—not a long-term solution.

Implementing an employee training and development program under the wrong conditions is a waste of time and money. If you’re unsure about the conditions at your law firm, we’d love the opportunity to connect and assess your situation. Depending on where you are, our Team Empowerment Solution might be the perfect fit for your firm’s leadership and employees alike. Schedule a free discovery session with Molly and find out if your firm is ready to empower its employees and equip them with the tools they need to grow your business.

October 24, 2018 by MollyandLaney

Your Qualified, Invested Employee Just Quit…Here Are 9 Reasons Why

Attorneys, listen up. This may comes as a surprise, but your employees do not need your paycheck. Your old war cry of, “It’s so hard to find good help,” has shifted dramatically in favor of employees. Now you may find yourself crying, “It’s so hard to find ANY help…good, bad or the other!” The unemployment rate is momentously low at only 3.9%—with average unemployment rates of 1.9% for attorneys and 3.1% for paralegals, just to add salt to the wound. And recruiting top talent is harder than ever! Gone are the days of publishing an ad and getting hundreds of resumes. Unless you have a giant pay-per-click budget of $1500+ per ad, and can run that ad on multiple recruiting platforms, chances are you’re not going to reach many qualified candidates. And, even then, you have to sit by the phone like a professional recruiter because, if you wait three days to reply to an applicant, they’ll already have multiple offers in hand.

Yes, more than ever employees are in the driver seat and are interviewing your firm, more so than your firm is interviewing them. The quality of the questions coming from the employee’s side have never been richer. They want to know about the firms values, what happened to the employees who came before them, the company’s financial security, and accessibility to leadership, supervisors and trainers, etc. They want to know what the employee manual says, what the training process looks like, what the firm’s quarterly goals are, what the evaluation and raise process is. And the #1 question: what are the uniform communication verticals. They want to know about the management of the firm; their expectations and values.

Then, only after those questions are answered, come the money, benefits and perks inquiries. Shockingly, this is secondary after your potential new hire knows who they will working for. In the words of one job candidate, “The money is secondary after I hear about the communication styles, the availability of management, and their training processes. Regardless of the starting pay and vague promises for ‘opportunity’ and ‘work/life balance,’ if the leaders are unapproachable and don’t see their employees as the greatest asset in their business, I’ll pass.” Again, these are a job candidate’s words.

But it’s not all doom and gloom! If you are willing to be a great employer—and believe in giving your team time, attention and consistent feedback—then you are in mega luck!

Let us try to paint a very real picture for you. We helped a very busy law firm hire a new Legal Assistant. The firm was too busy to focus on hiring—they actually had three new positions available. We started with the first open positions, and then once a new hire was in place, we quickly moved to the second position. The firm was also too busy to schedule the 30-day onboarding process calls included in our Smart Hire Solution program fee. Our COO reminded them several times to get their 30-day onboarding and goal-setting call in the books. As quickly as it was scheduled, it would be cancelled due to “emergencies and crises in the firm.” We finally got the 30-day review (note: we were never able to schedule an initial goal-setting call) in the books, 45-days into the new hire’s start date. We conducted the review call on video—body language says everything—and there were 150 red flags in the managing partner’s, team leader’s and new employee’s body languages. But we ended the call with everyone claiming they were excited, empowered, and ready to the hit the ground running for the next 30-days, and that they couldn’t wait to declare their success in our 60-day review.

One week later, we got a call from the employee. “Molly, I just quit and wanted to provide you with very specific reasons why, so I can support you in finding the best candidate for the working conditions at this firm.”

So here they are. Nine reasons your qualified, invested employee just quit (and what NOT to do if you’d like to retain your employees):

1. Unavailable, unapproachable leadership. The candidate strongly communicated that, “The attorney’s hourly rate is $450 hour. If you needed to talk to her, you’d better be able to go back to your desk and bill the amount of revenue she lost while you were talking to her.”
2. Frustration about the firm’s mission & vision statement.
3. Lack of a structured training process
4. Inconsistent communication.
5. Existing employees are disengaged.
6. Undelivered promises. “We spent more time apologizing, backtracking and making things up to everybody—clients, referral sources and employees. We couldn’t get a win. We never got in the car at the end of our day or week feeling victorious, like, ‘wow, we over delivered.’”
7. Absence of recognition; feeling undervalued and under-appreciated.
8. Lack of office culture. It feels like a factory filled with walking robots.
9. No joy or fun to engage employees on an emotional level.

But here is the good news: if you can make certain you are not making the above nine mistakes and have thoroughly communicated the open position in your employment ads, interviewing, onboarding process, you will land the most qualified, empowered employees that will not only work long hours and protect and defend your time as a business owner, but they will never, ever leave—no matter how much money is waved at them. And this is especially important now, with the current shallow talent pool who have recruiters inboxing them daily with messages saying, “Are you sure you’re happy? I have the most perfect job for you!” Yes, this is actually happening…

Schedule a Free Discovery Session

If you need help implementing a recruiting strategy and revolving-door-proof employee hiring and training plan, schedule a free 30-minute discovery session with Molly. We can discuss the position of your small law firm, determine your recruiting and staffing needs, and identify areas of opportunity for your firm’s culture and leadership development. Click the button below to schedule your free discovery session!