Your junior’s coat is on at the dot of five, just as the client’s comments land. You’re left wondering whether you’re stuck with a team who don’t want to work as hard as you did, and how you get them to put in the extra hours when the client needs them. That’s what this episode is all about.
Many people on Partner Track have one management style, and expect their team to work the way they did at that age. Getting the best out of your juniors means flexing that style and taking on the job of motivating them, because developing a team beneath you is part of what your partners expect of you. They’ll be watching whether juniors want to work on your matters, and whether you can get good work done through them.
I’m Heather Townsend, author of Poised for Partnership and co-author of How to Make Partner & Still Have a Life. I’m the leading global expert in what it takes to move from senior fee earner to partner . Here are 5 ways to work with me.
In This Episode You Will Learn:
- Why flexing your management style gets more out of each person on your team
- How to ask for extra hours so your team are there when the client needs them
- Where to find the team members who will repay your investment with loyalty
- How to decide how much time to give each person you work with
If you find this episode useful, don’t forget to like it and then subscribe so you don’t miss another episode.
If delegation itself is where things keep going wrong, listen to our H2MP podcast episode 53, Why Delegation Keeps Failing.
What Help Is Out There For You?
If you’re thinking, ‘I can see I need to flex my style, but my team changes on every matter and half of them aren’t even in the same office’, our Progress To Partner Academy can help you.
That’s precisely why we have the on-demand course ‘How to Create a Strong Hybrid Team’ in the Progress to Partner Academy. It gives you the frameworks and communication strategies to build a cohesive, high-performing team, no matter where they are located.
Courses in Progress to Partner Academy to help with building a team are also available individually:
How to Create a Strong Hybrid Team
How to Excel as a Line Manager
How to set performance objectives for your direct reports
How to give negative feedback without it being a career-limiting move
You can also listen to this episode on Substack and on Apple Podcasts
Hello, and welcome!
It’s twenty to five. The client’s comments have just landed. The draft needs turning round tonight.
You look up. Your junior’s coat is already on. Out of the door at the dot of five.
And the word forms in your head before you can stop it. Snowflake.
Except nobody had told them this was the week you’d need them to stay late to get stuff over the line.
So is this the reality of Gen Z and millennials? Juniors that just don’t want to work as hard as you or stay late? That prize the ‘work life balance’ above more than career progression.
Today’s episode is about motivating the juniors you’ve started to think of as snowflakes. It comes from a conversation I had with one of my team’s executive coaches, whilst we were preparing for a group coaching session with lawyers on one of our How to Make Partner programmes.
This is the How to Make Partner podcast with me, Heather Townsend. The author of Poised for Partnership, and co-author of How to Make Partner and Still Have a Life. In this podcast, I will be highlighting some of the great stuff in our Progress To Partner Academy. New episodes are released weekly, so press subscribe so you never miss a new episode.
Right. Let’s talk about the juniors you think are snowflakes.
I know what you are thinking. “They don’t want to work hard like we did. Yes, they’ve got a better work-life balance. Yes, they’re better at setting expectations than we ever were. Yes, they are probably healthier as a result and perhaps got their priorities right.
But they’ll leave at the dot of five, even when there’s work to be finished, because they put their personal life first.”
And why don’t they have the same dedication to work that I did at the same stage in my career? After all, I didn’t hesitate to stay late when asked. If there was work to be done, I did it.
When this comes up in our group coaching sessions, the conversation tends to follow the same pattern. I ask what they wanted from their career when they were that age. Interesting work, career advancement, and to be paid well. Then someone says, “But this lot don’t want to work hard anymore.” Someone else says they’ve probably got a better attitude than we had at their age, because they’re not going to get burnt out like we did. Everyone agrees. And then someone says, “I just wish they’d stay later.”
So here’s the question I ask next. Do you remember when you were that age? Do you remember the people who didn’t work as hard as you did? Where are they now?
Usually the answer is that they didn’t last at the firm. Some went to a smaller firm for a better work-life balance. Some went into industry. Some left the profession altogether. And some of the juniors you’re working with now will go the same way. That’s their choice to make.
The trouble comes when we expect everybody on our team to be in our own image. Because your team is often not your own. Your juniors have more choice than you might think about whether they work with you. Of course, if an influential partner wants them on their matter, that choice gets made for them!
Now here is where I need to be blunt. Your partners are looking for someone who can win work, be excellent with clients, and develop a team beneath them. Your partners want you to have a team that services your work. Even if that is a loose team composed of shared resources with many other partners and senior professionals in your firm. And if your juniors don’t want to work on your stuff this is a red flag for your partnership prospects.
So what do you do instead? You learn to flex your management style.
Most of the people managers I work with have one management style. And let’s be honest, a lot of us would quite like a robot on our team! Someone who does the work, on time, with no mistakes and no questions.
To get the best out of people, you have to meet each person where they’re at, with the task you’ve given them and the context they’re working in. A trainee on their first piece of work needs something different from an associate or qualified who has done that type of work thirty times. And someone who has a lot going on right now needs something different again. Let’s just say in the weeks leading up to my house move I needed to be micromanaged by my team.
It also means recognising that in your role you’re doing more than allocating work and supervising it. which is often how most people on Partner Track see their role. You’re also the coach, the person who helps the team work well together, and the motivator. That last one means working out what makes each person tick. For most people in practice, that’s interesting work, career progression, and feeling valued for who they are and what they bring to the team. Which, when you think about it, is pretty much what you wanted at their age.
In Poised for Partnership I share the story of Eric. (I’ve put a link to the book in the shownotes.) Eric supervised the trainee lawyers in his department, and he struggled to connect with some of them, particularly the more introverted trainees who didn’t share his love of sports. After a coaching session he realised his matter-of-fact, “let’s get the job done” style could come across as brusque, even intimidating, to them. So he started spending more time asking his trainees how he could help them. The result was stronger connections with his trainees, and working relationships he found more fulfilling himself.
Let’s talk about working longer hours when the work needs to get done. Because this is a huge frustration I hear from the delegates I work with on our How To Make Partner and Early Year Partner programmes.
Sometimes the client does need an extra six hours of work to get something across the finish line. When that happens, your job as the leader is to work out how you motivate your team to put those hours in. And the people who’ve got this right do don’t ask for this very often. They only ask their team to stay late when it is really needed. When the piece of work does need to be turned around on tight deadlines. The type of deadlines that the client is demanding or the work is demanding.
For example when a deal is getting to its pointy bit, they warn their team in advance. They’ll say something like, “This deal is getting to the pointy bit. The likelihood is that next week I’m going to need you in the evenings, and there’ll probably be some long days. Is there anything I need to know about to make sure you can be there?”
Notice what that question does. It gives your junior the chance to tell you about the childcare pick-up or the family birthday dinner before it becomes a problem, rather than you turning around and asking them to stay late and them saying no. Or it becomes really awkward and they resent you. And because they only ever get asked to cancel personal commitments when the work really is urgent, they believe you when you say it is.
Whilst this won’t mean every junior says yes every time you ask, it does mean that when you really need your team, they’re far more likely to be there for you. The people who get this right end up with a team who would walk across water for them.
One more thing. Don’t overlook your Steady Eddies.
You’ll know the feeling. The partners have nicked the best people for their matters, and you’re left wondering how you’ll service your work. But did the partners start out with the best team? No. They developed their team. And that’s what you need to do too.
In every firm there’s a group of people who aren’t the A performers, and aren’t the low performers either. They’re solid B performers. They’re not seen as being in the zone for promotion, so they often get overlooked. Look for the Steady Eddies in your resource pool and take one or two of them under your wing. With the right person developing them, they can become an amazing member of your team. And because you’ve taken an interest in them, cared about them and supported them, they’ll reward you with their loyalty.
Be discerning about where you put your time. Some people think they need regular touch points with every single person they might ever work with. Others don’t think about touch points at all. Think about who’s in which bucket. Who works with you every week? Who do you only see on one piece of work a year? Then decide what level of contact is appropriate for each of them.
By the way, if you struggle to build a team when the people on your matters change from one job to the next, there’s an on-demand course inside our Progress to Partner Academy called How to Create a Strong Hybrid Team. I’ll come back to it at the end.
Your juniors may never work the hours you did at their age, and you can’t control that. What your partners will be watching is whether juniors want to work on your jobs, and whether you can get good work done through them. That’s what developing a team beneath you looks like to a partnership.
Now, if you’re thinking, “I can see I need to flex my style, but my team changes on every job and half of them aren’t even in the same office,” that’s exactly what our How to Create a Strong Hybrid Team course is designed for. It gives you the frameworks and communication strategies to build a cohesive, high-performing team, no matter where they are located.
I’ve popped a link to our Progress To Partner Academy, which contains our How to Create a Strong Hybrid Team course, directly in the show notes for this episode. Also in the show notes, you’ll find links to my books, Poised for Partnership and How to Make Partner and Still Have a Life, so you can easily find them on Amazon. And as a thank you for listening, there’s also a link for a 10% discount on annual membership for our Progress To Partner Academy using the code PODCAST10.
That’s all for this episode of the How to Make Partner podcast. What’s your action for this week? Look at the next month on your matters, find the point where you know you’ll need your team to put in extra hours, and tell them now. Then ask them whether there’s anything you need to know about to make sure they can be there.
If you have enjoyed this episode please leave us a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or give us a comment on Substack. This helps us get the word out to others who may need this advice too. Remember to hit subscribe so you don’t miss next week’s episode. Thanks for listening!
I’m Heather Townsend, author of Poised for Partnership and co-author of How to Make Partner & Still Have a Life. I’m the leading global expert in what it takes to move from senior fee earner to partner – and when you get there, stay there. Here are 5 ways to work with me.
What help is out there for you
If you’re thinking, ‘This all makes sense, but I don’t have the time or the data to work any of this out properly,’ our Progress To Partner Academy can help you.
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Books mentioned
Poised for Partnership by Heather Townsend – https://amzn.to/3ETEYk3
How to Make Partner and Still Have a Life by Heather Townsend and Jo Larbie – https://amzn.to/4iLxugM
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