Making
The Hours of Your Life Worth More ™
Issue # 46
CAN SEARCHING FOR THE RULES
STEER YOU OFF COURSE?
Ellen Ostrow, Ph.D., Editor: Ellen
is the founder of LawyersLifeCoach.com™ Personal and Career Coaching
for Lawyers Determined to Achieve Extraordinary Professional Success
AND a Fulfilling Life
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.
CAN SEARCHING FOR THE RULES
STEER YOU OFF COURSE?
A version of this article, entitled "Don't Follow These
Laws!" first appeared in the Women Lawyers Journal, a
publication of the National Association of Women Lawyers,
Vol. 92, No. 1, Fall 2006
When you live in a world of contract law, tort principles
and civil procedure, it's easy to expect that there must
be a rule for most things in life. Certainly, living can
seem simpler when there is a clear-cut "right" and "wrong"
to guide you. Ambiguity creates discomfort. Conventions
allow us to feel more in control and make the world seem
more orderly.
But sometimes our wish to find "the right way" to do something
can steer us off course. Often, the women lawyers I coach
describe their experience of the legal workplace as akin to
having entered a milieu where everyone else knows the rules -
and they don't have a clue. Their confusion is more complex
than finding out how to get copies made or where the mail room is.
Rather, they have a sense that there are particular ways to
successfully negotiate the system and someone forgot to give
them the code of conduct. It's an experience most people have
when they are members of a minority group trying to navigate
through the majority culture.
It reminds me of the first time I attended a Catholic mass.
Not having been raised Catholic, I froze when the person next
to me tried to steer me toward the priest to receive communion.
What should I do? If I "faked" it, wasn't that sacrilegious?
On the other hand, trying to sit quietly in my pew made me painfully
conspicuous.
But my situation was a short-lived challenge. I wasn't trying to
convert - and if I had been, they would have given me a rule book.
In contrast, many women attorneys have to adapt to a culture
designed by men. The behavioral norms reflect traditional
male mores. There's plenty of lore about those women pioneers
who learned to "act like men" in order to gain acceptance and
succeed professionally. Many younger women don't view the women
who forged the way as models they want to follow.
Consultants vs. Coaches
In an effort to help women advance, many legal workplaces now hire
coaches and consultants to assist them in adapting to the culture.
But exactly what are women lawyers learning from us?
I became concerned with this when the members of a panel on which
I participated asked me if I didn't agree with the "rule" that
women lawyers should not be "too nice or empathic." Of course,
I knew exactly what they meant - women who come across as warm,
sensitive to others' feelings, who manage indirectly rather than
by issuing directives, and who often follow their well-informed
statements with tag questions like "don't you agree?" do not match
the stereotype of a law firm leader. The adjectives that "leader"
bring to mind overlap with the male gender stereotype: strong,
dominant, competitive, assertive, independent. Leaders, like
men, ostensibly speak with authority. They get down to
business rather than attending to a subordinate's feelings.
They give direct orders. There is no tentativeness in their
speech.
Of course there is merit to this argument. Women - and
even more so women of color - typically do not benefit from
the presumption of competence that male lawyers - particularly
white ones - receive. They need to prove that they are smart,
strong and tough enough, based on the belief that these are
necessary traits for competent legal practice. I'd agree with
the "smart" part - we all want the people who help us, be
they our doctors, lawyers, or other advisors, to be knowledgeable
and incisive problem solvers.
But are "strong" and "tough" truly job requirements? During
my last physical my physician told me I was his last appointment
before he was scheduled for surgery. He'd been biking cross
country and had fallen and broken a finger. Not wanting to lose
time, he decided to forego medical care. Naturally, the bone
had re-set itself in a very odd position and he now needed surgery
to re-break and then re-set the bone. "You know how it is," he
said, speaking to me as a colleague. "Your patients need to see
you as invulnerable." I told him that I certainly didn't need
that from him and that he might want to reconsider that
assumption.
Similarly, assumptions about how lawyers should act and
speak often reflect the fact that men have been behaving this
way for many years more than they reveal some true requirement
for competent legal practice.
In our efforts to promote diversity in the profession, we need
to take care not to inadvertently promote conformity and
homogeneity. A significant part of my coaching practice is
devoted to coaching women attorneys who feel uncomfortable about
marketing to discover and develop their business development
strengths. A number of participants in these coaching groups
have already participated in "coaching" programs provided by
their firms. They blame themselves for failing these programs
because they couldn't follow the "rules."
"I just couldn't call three people a week. The phone is
not my best way of connecting with people. I'm shy - I don't
just call people I haven't seen in a long time and ask them
for business," confessed one woman lawyer. Another said that
she'd followed the rule to "just ask for the business"
from an in-house attorney with whom she'd been friends for
years and her friend felt so offended she ended their
relationship.
Women lawyers need clear information about whether the
person hired to train them is a coach or a consultant.
Consultants present themselves as experts - they have
"the answers." Coaches, in contrast, encourage their
clients to develop their own answers. And women lawyers
may find that resisting the urge to find out "the right
way" to talk to their assistants, to develop business,
to chair a meeting, or to negotiate a contract, although
uncomfortable, may actually allow them to discover their
own way.
After all, whether you're dealing with a client, a
subordinate or a manager, you're dealing with a relationship.
There are no "one size fits all" rules for relationships.
Some people respond better to direct instructions; others
cooperate more when their input is solicited. Some friends
would love to give you business; others find the idea of
mixing business and friendships an affront.
If you can tolerate the ambiguity, listen carefully to
the person with whom you have the relationship, and know
and use your own unique strengths, you're likely to be
successful. And then we might actually achieve the
ideal of a diverse profession.
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(c) Copyright 1998 - 2007 Ellen Ostrow. All rights reserved.
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