How To Achieve More with the Right Leadership and Law Firm Coaching
Over the years, coaching has grown in popularity throughout many industries and professions. Coaching, previously viewed as a luxury expense for professional development, is now seen as a crucial tool for many organizations.
An investment in coaching leads to greater goal achievement, a more cohesive team, lower stress levels and higher confidence, among other positive business outcomes. How can help a law firm coaching you to achieve more?
Creating a Coaching-Centered Culture
Loeb Leadership has worked with lawyers since 1997. We know firsthand that creating a coaching-friendly culture can impact your firm’s success and bottom line. A firm that welcomes and celebrates coaching is one that encourages curiosity, lifelong learning, vulnerability, and self-improvement. Because coaching opens the door to being more vulnerable at work, this leads to greater human connections, higher levels of trust, and subsequently, an easier road to success.
These outcomes positively improve company culture, which numerous studies continue to prove is the leading predictor of attrition. The more positive the perceived company culture, the higher employee retention, and productivity.
Decide What You Want to Achieve with Coaching
The first step in achieving more with coaching is to simply ask yourself which areas you are looking to improve. Not all coaching engagements are alike; some focus on people and leadership skills, some on business skills, others on personal skills, and others still on some variation of everything. We’ll outline three types of coaching engagements below.
Leadership Coaching
Leadership coaching is focused on equipping you with the skills and tools needed to be an effective leader, including improving communication and delegation skills, how to provide feedback, have challenging and honest conversations with people, inspire your team, and more.
Benefits of a leadership coaching engagement include:
Insight into your management style and how to optimize it
Higher level of self-awareness and greater authenticity
Increased focus, confidence levels, and assertiveness
Performance-boosting management techniques
Goal-, boundary-, and expectation-setting
Create cohesion within teams, making them more efficient and effective
More balance, empathy, and patience.
Executive Coaching
Executive coaching often overlaps with leadership coaching, but typically involves more personalized coaching around an individual's unique hindrances and obstacles. Because of its highly individualized approach, coaching is a great way to support attorney well-being by improving self-awareness, confidence, and resilience. Think of it like this: if law school teaches you to be a lawyer, coaching teaches you to be a leader.
Executive coaching will help:
Build stronger work relationships
Develop managerial and executory skills
Enhance one's decision-making capabilities
Increase emotional intelligence and self-awareness
Reduce rigid thinking and make one more willing to try new methods
Improved anxiety and stress management
Business Coaching
Most lawyers didn’t become lawyers because they loved paperwork. We get it! It’s easy to write off the business end of a law practice as something to be handled by someone else – be it associates, bookkeepers, administrative managers, and the like. However, there are many managerial and administrative tasks that can have an impact on your productivity, stress levels, and quality of work. Many administrative tasks require some form of delegation and communication, which ties back to effective leadership and company culture. Learning how to lead yourself and others through the more tedious tasks is just as important as the exciting ones.
Business coaching is a great option for anyone looking to gain mastery over more practical and tangible business tasks and skills.
Measuring The Effectiveness of Coaching
We often hear concerns that coaching services aren't quantifiable, but there are many ways to measure a return on a coaching investment. While the numbers are an important thing to examine, measuring the value of a coaching engagement is about more than money or even productivity. The result of creating lasting and meaningful cultural changes in the workplace cannot be overstated. With consistency, coaching creates a high-trust culture. Plus, leaders who stick to company values gain more respect and instill confidence in others.
This is especially needed for uncertain times. In more trying periods, the results of your leadership development will certainly show itself.
Law Firm Coaching with Loeb Leadership
What you can achieve through coaching is almost limitless. Whether you know exactly what you’re looking for or need help deciding where your firm needs improvement, Loeb Leadership is ready to help you and your organization transform. Contact us today!