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BEYOND THE BILLABLE HOUR (TM) - Making the Hours of Your
Life Worth More (TM)
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Issue # 9 - Ten Secrets for Building an Acceptable Level
of Confidence
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You can receive your own FREE subscription to "Beyond the
Billable Hour" (tm) at http://LawyersLifeCoach.com
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ARTICLE SUMMARY: Lawyers are taught that mistakes are
unacceptable in spite of the fact that
there are no "perfect" lawyers. But the
fear of making mistakes can impede your
success by reducing strategic risk-taking,
keeping you silent unless you're 100%
certain, reducing your visibility and -
paradoxically - creating the perception
that you lack sufficient self-confidence
to be considered for partnership track.
The following ten steps will enable you
to determine an acceptable level of risk,
make yourself visible even when you're
less than 100% certain, and to project the
confidence necessary to be recognized as
competent, authoritative and successful.
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Ellen Ostrow, Ph.D., Editor
Ellen is the founder of LawyersLifeCoach.com (TM)
Personal and Career Coaching for Lawyers Determined
to Achieve Professional Success AND
a Fulfilling Life
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OUR PERSPECTIVE
Most attorneys - especially women -- live impossibly busy lives.
Finding a balance between work and life without sacrificing
professional success, deciding on the best practice area or work
setting, and making career transitions can be a daunting task,
even for the most gifted and accomplished lawyer.
Just as every person deserves the best possible legal
counsel, every attorney deserves professional, dedicated
support in accomplishing her most important goals.
You know how hard you've worked to get where you are --
you serve others, both personally and professionally.
You've earned the right to both career success and
a fulfilling life.
This newsletter is intended to help you create a
satisfying life -- within, or outside of -- legal practice.
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Ten Steps for Building an Acceptable Level of Confidence
"Like it or not, part of being good at a job is making
it up as you go along. There will always be times when
you won't know it all. And you're not going to convince
anyone that you're confident if you look terrified...
None of us has a grasp on all the facts. Think about it.
Does any one of us truly know everything there is to know
about raising kids? No. But that doesn't stop us from
doing it, or from doing it well."
-- Gail Evans, "Play Like a Man -
Win Like a Woman." New York:
Broadway Books, 2000. Pp. 87 & 92.
In the past week, two women attorneys have told me that
they were recently criticized by a male partner for
having a "confidence problem." One of these women is
someone I experience as interpersonally powerful -
she's articulate, extremely knowledgeable about her area
of practice, and has an excellent and clearly laid out
career plan. She was baffled by her partner's feedback.
The second woman, a good public speaker, had never
received this kind of feedback before entering private
practice. In law school, she'd been an excellent debater,
and participated actively in all her classes. She too
was baffled to hear that she was perceived as timid.
Deborah Tannen echoes the experience of these women
in her book, "Talking from 9 to 5 - Women and Men in
the Workplace: Language, Sex and Power" by asking,
"How can so many talented women be seen by their senior
managers as suffering from a lack of confidence?"
As a professional coach and psychologist, I find it
more helpful to think of this issue in terms of what
statisticians call the "level of confidence." In
social science research, the experimenter is interested
in determining whether her treatment had an effect.
Even if a treatment appears to be effective in the
particular sample of people being tested, can she
conclude that the treatment is truly effective?
Scientists know that absolute accuracy is impossible.
Instead, they choose a level of confidence - i.e.,
the probability of being wrong in concluding the
treatment is effective. If the experimenter chooses
to be very cautious in calculating her required
level of confidence, she risks another kind of error -
that of failing to detect the effectiveness of the
treatment.
Many women lawyers appear to lack confidence because
they require too high a level of confidence before
holding forth. Often women won't say anything unless
they are 100% certain they are correct because:
* They're not used to experiencing temporary setbacks.
Partially, this results from not participating in
competitive sports, in which loss isn't perceived
as catastrophic. Without this experience, women
feel like failures when they make a simple mistake.
* The consequences of mistakes are perceived as graver
than for those their male counterparts commit. Many
women lawyers feel open to harsh criticism, public
humiliation, even job loss.
* They feel conspicuous. Women are usually in the
minority in their firms, and the number of women
partners is woefully small. Feeling as if their
behavior is under constant scrutiny, women are
particularly concerned about being caught off guard.
To reduce their anxiety, they try to know everything
before speaking up.
For these and other reasons, many women attorneys
avoid the risk of error and require an extremely high
level of confidence before going public with ideas.
But this caution exposes you to another risk - that
you are perceived as insufficiently confident to
be an effective attorney. In other words, you are
just as likely to fail if you DON'T take risks.
Before concluding that success is impossible and throwing
this newsletter in the circular file, consider the
following ten steps for building an acceptable level
of confidence. These are strategies that have worked
for many women attorneys as well as women in the
corporate world breaking through the glass ceiling.
Ten Steps for Building an Acceptable Level of Confidence
1. Recognize that no one knows everything. Regardless
of how harshly a partner may criticize your errors,
rest assured he's made plenty himself. You can
probably remember a few if you try to.
2. Experiment with presenting ideas about which you are
less than 100% confident. See what happens when you
express something about which you're only 95%
confident. Give yourself a chance to learn that you
can be successful without being 100% certain.
3. Take realistic, strategic, calculated risks. Study
your surroundings for cues about the culture in which
you find yourself. Observe how others act and
interact. Assess the potential costs of being incorrect
in the particular situation. Compare these to the
costs of inaction. Remember that most firms have
multiple backup systems -- there's almost always someone
else reviewing your work. In most cases, it's more
likely that you'll be criticized than that a client
will be hurt.
4. Have faith in your ability to perform. The success
you've achieved thus far is not an accident. You
wouldn't be where you are unless you were competent
and knowledgeable.
5. Be willing to tolerate discomfort. Taking a risk means
stepping outside your comfort zone. People who take
risks are not fearless; they're people who have fear
under control. If you weren't fearful, you wouldn't
be taking a risk.
6. Be willing to learn on the job. Men do this all the
time -- and so do successful women. Seek input from
people unlikely to evaluate you. Remember, we always
learn more from failure than from success.
7. Depersonalize your mistakes and the criticism they
receive. Mistakes are a fact of life -- just because
you failed at one thing doesn't make you a failure.
When criticized:
* Take appropriate responsibility for your error without
denigrating yourself or absolving others from their
own responsibility.
* Try to keep in mind that your critic's anger is
more likely a reflection of his/her current state
of mind -- feelings of frustration, pressure, being
overwhelmed -- than any enduring judgment of your
competence.
* Try to separate the facts you're hearing from your
own feelings about them. You made a mistake -- that's
all.
* Consider all of the temporary and situational
reasons you might have made this error -- don't
attribute failures to your basic ability or
intelligence.
8. Act with confidence even when you're not completely
certain.
DON'T:
* Apologize or ask for permission to speak.
* Begin with statements such as "You probably
thought of this before but..." or " I'm sorry to bother
you but..."
* Hesitate, repeat yourself, or embroider your statements.
DO:
* Speak in a convincing, unconditional, authoritative
manner.
* Be decisive and to the point.
* Make your statements strong and powerful.
* Claim authorship of your ideas by saying, "This is
what I've come up with" or "I did the research
and found..."
* Project your voice.
9. Taking risks builds resilience and self-confidence.
The more you stretch yourself and succeed, the more
confident you'll feel. Think of risk-taking as a
necessary part of your professional training.
10. Remember what you stand to gain from taking a risk:
* Your work will not just be excellent but may also be
recognized.
* You'll have the chance to receive credit for your accomplishments.
* You'll increase your visibility and therefore your
chances of getting good assignments.
* You'll probably feel more confident than you did before.
Remember what you stand to lose from NOT taking a
risk:
* You may be right but no one will know it.
* Your work may go unnoticed or you may not receive
credit for it.
* No one will know you're there.
* Perhaps worst of all - you may be accused of not
having the "necessary confidence."
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ARE YOU A LAWYER WITH CAREER SUCCESS AND LIFE BALANCE?
The legal field needs to hear your strategies. If you
are willing to share them, I'd love to hear from you.
You can send e-mail to Ellen@lawyerslifecoach.com.
Lawyers Life Coach is dedicated to sharing practical
strategies that lawyers are already using --
from something as small as hiring a virtual assistant
to something as large as leaving the profession.
Of course, I will only share your strategies and any
identifying information with your permission.
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BEYOND THE BILLABLE HOUR ™ is published monthly by
Ellen Ostrow, Ph.D., founder of LawyersLifeCoach.com.
She brings 20 years of experience assisting women
attorneys to her work in Lawyers Life Coach ™.
LawyersLifeCoach.com is a professional and personal
coaching firm specializing in working virtually (by
phone with email and fax backup) with women attorneys
interested in developing strategies to find greater
satisfaction in their careers within the law or
in exploring career alternatives for lawyers.
Ellen Ostrow, Ph.D. established Lawyerslifecoach.com
to coach busy lawyers who might benefit from the
insights gained from 20 years as a psychologist
combined with her experience and familiarity with
the legal profession.
Ellen holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology
from the University of Rochester and is a managing
member of Metropolitan Behavioral Health Care, LLC.,
a multispecialty, multidisciplinary psychotherapy
practice in Washington, D.C. and suburban Maryland.
She is a member of the International Coach Federation
and a graduate of the Mentor Coach Program ™.
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NOTE: BEYOND THE BILLABLE HOUR ™ is intended
for informational and educational purposes only.
It is not a substitute for a personal consultation
with a mental health professional and should not
be construed as a form of, or substitute for,
counseling, psychotherapy, or other psychological
service.
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CONTACT INFORMATION
Ellen Ostrow, Ph.D.
LawyersLifeCoach.com
Phone: (301) 578-8686
email: Ellen@LawyersLifeCoach.com
Web: http://LawyersLifeCoach.com
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(c)Copyright 2000 Ellen Ostrow. All rights reserved.
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