With Paula Davis: Leadership Mindsets to Inspire and Retain Legal Talent

Transcript

Paula Davis 00:00

We hear a lot about post-traumatic stress disorder, but not a lot of people realize that post-traumatic growth is oftentimes what can come from traumatic events. So, what it does is it causes people to take a step back and ask deeper questions like, is this the work that I want to do?

Candice Reed 00:13

To be effective, particularly at team leadership within a work environment I think you have to be intentional. I think you have to be empathetic and create a team and culture of belonging so that each one of the members of your team feels valued, not just for the work that they are producing, but for the person that they are showing up as every day.

Paula Davis 00:39

As technology continues to take hold and evolve, we have to be thinking about more so, what is the human side of the work? How do we amplify and lead in a human-centered way?

Candice Reed 00:50

This is Leveraging Latitude: Cultivating a Full Life in the Law. Please join us on our journey as we discover how to leverage the hard work of becoming a lawyer to achieving success and leading a rich and fulfilling life in the law.

Tim Haley 01:04

Welcome back to Leveraging Latitude. Hey, Candice, how are you doing?

Candice Reed 01:07

Hi, I am good, Tim. How are you?

Tim Haley 01:09

I’m doing great. I’m excited. I’m in my brand new office. It’s two weeks old, so new background, new reflections, new lighting issues, new sound challenges.

Candice Reed 01:20

New perspective.

Tim Haley 01:21

New perspective.

Candice Reed 01:21

Sounds great.

Tim Haley 01:22

It’s exciting, exciting times and I’m excited. Today we have Paula Davis back on, I think one of our very first guests, if I remember right.

Candice Reed 01:33

That’s right.

Tim Haley 01:34

And that was such a fun conversation. And I think today we’re going to talk about leadership. What I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, there’s definitely a difference between having the leadership title and actually being a leader and the difference between being in charge versus being a leader. And I don’t think you have to be in charge to be a leader, but Candice, I’m throw that out and see what you think.

Candice Reed 01:58

I agree with that. I think that there are some characteristics or philosophies of leadership that have not changed, but I also think that as effective leaders, we have to evolve. We have to continue to think about how we are leading our teams, how we are leading ourselves. And I think that as you mentioned, that you don’t have to be — you don’t have to have a certain title to be a leader or to lead others, but I do think that you have to have intention. It’s not necessarily something that just happens. Certainly there are people who are charismatic, but to be effective, particularly at team leadership within a work environment, I think you have to be intentional. I think you have to be empathetic and create a team and culture of belonging so that each one of the members of your team feels valued, not just for the work that they are producing, but for the person that they are showing up as every day. And I think the best leaders are very capable of doing that.

Tim Haley 03:18

Yeah. And full disclosure, the context that I’ve been thinking about it is when I’m trying to wrangle my kids to be where they’re supposed to be and they’re all off doing their own exercises in leadership, and it’s just a daily challenge, but it’s a good one and it’s fun. But with that-

Candice Reed 03:37

Yeah, parenting definitely requires a good dose of leadership that we often don’t talk about. We don’t talk about it in those terms.

Tim Haley 03:43

Well, I just know that I’m definitely not in charge, is what I know. But with that, let’s introduce Paula.

Candice Reed 03:52

That’s right. I am so excited to reintroduce Paula Davis. Paula’s been on the Leveraging Latitude podcast before, as you mentioned. I think she was our first guest-

Tim Haley 04:05

I think so.

Candice Reed 04:05

Actually a few years ago. So, Paula, welcome back. We are excited to talk about your new book, Lead Well. Let me make sure everyone can see that. For those of you who might be watching the video. Lead Well: 5 Mindsets to Engage, Retain, and Inspire Your Team. So, let me briefly introduce Paula to those of you who may not be familiar with her work. She is a former attorney, former in-house counsel who pivoted to focus on workplace well-being a few years ago. And so she is now a globally recognized expert on the effects of workplace stress, burnout prevention, workplace well-being, building resilience, both for individuals and teams. She’s a founder or the founder and CEO of the Stress and Resilience Institute.

Candice Reed 04:55

And her first book was, or the first book that we talked about here on this podcast was Beating Burnout at Work: Why Teams Hold the Secret to Well-Being and Resilience. And Paula, I know you know this because I have told you this individually, but I will tell the podcast audience this. I love this book. It is one of my favorite books about stress and burnout and how teams hold the secret to combating that burnout and building resilience. In fact, I was just at the University of Tennessee College of Law this past weekend teaching my class on Thriving in the Law. And once again, this year we talked about this book and the work that you have done around this issue. So, thank you so much for bringing our awareness to the issue of how stress and burnout is a systemic problem with individual symptoms.

Candice Reed 05:54

So, with that, I will remind everyone that you have been featured in numerous publications that we would all know, The New York Times, the Oprah magazine, The Washington Post, Forbes, Psychology Today. So, there are a lot of people paying attention to what you are doing and the important work that you are putting out in these very helpful and easy to read books. It’s a great leadership book when you know that you can read it in one sitting because it’s just chock-full of pragmatic solutions and suggestions, but it doesn’t get lost in a bunch of pages. So, Paula, welcome so much. We’re excited to have you back on the podcast. We’ve been talking about this book, Lead Well, please tell us what inspired you to write it.

Paula Davis 06:52

Yes. Well, first of all, thank you both so much. I did not realize I was among the first guests when you launched this. This was a handful of years ago, so it’s been a good four years or so.

Candice Reed 07:02

That’s right.

Tim Haley 07:03

That’s right.

Paula Davis 07:03

Since I was on and I’ve been following, of course, all of your amazing work at Latitude, and so it’s really an honor to be back. And I was so looking forward to this conversation. Because I know we’re going to get into some really great stuff. So, I did not set out necessarily to think to myself like, okay, I’m going to write a second book and here’s what it’s going to be on. I published, as you mentioned, Beating Burnout At Work and had the opportunity to just really, really spend an inordinate amount of time with leaders and teams and people since the book was published, really just talking about their stressors, struggles at work, things that they were noticing, issues that they couldn’t seem to kind of get over, all of which were having an impact on their stress and their well-being and what have you.

Paula Davis 07:45

And I started to notice over those handful of years that the same types of issues were coming up, the same types of struggles were being raised by the leaders that I was talking to. People kept coming back around to similar issues and problems that they were having. And I started to realize that, well, maybe there’s something there. Maybe we need to take another step forward in the conversation about how we deal with all of these challenges in a systemic way. And I guess just was really felt called to kind of pen it from a leader’s perspective because it’s really who … really I would say the biggest group of folks that I was interfacing with. And so really helping them, giving them a language and a framework to really think about if we’re going to make progress in dealing with disengagement, lack of motivation, low well-being, mental health scores that aren’t getting better, burnout rates that are still increasing, where do we need to start and how do we need to start talking about it?

Tim Haley 08:51

So, Paula, I’m going to go back to the question I posed Candice at the beginning. I mean, you can have the title, you can be the general counsel, you can be the managing partner, but what’s the difference between being in charge and being a leader?

Paula Davis 09:07

So, I don’t think about leadership in terms of titles. I mean, I think that’s how most of us think about it. I think about it as a set of behaviors and when you start to reframe what leadership is and thinking about it as a skill set or a set of behaviors, it’s something that you can practice and you can start to develop way early on in your career. And so going into firms and in legal departments, oftentimes we’re talking about leadership at the partner level, we’re talking about leadership at the senior associate level. And first year associates just don’t see themselves at all as oftentimes as being leaders. And in reality, they are leading other people, they’re leading teams, even if it’s just you and your assistant, even if it’s you and your assistant and a paralegal, you are in charge of how those folks are showing up into their work environment and creating a work environment that has positive impacts on them. So, we don’t talk about leadership early enough and often enough I think in the legal profession. So, we should be messaging ideas about leadership and behaviors associated with leadership really as soon as lawyers and folks start their careers.

Tim Haley 10:19

From my own experience, I’m not sure anybody talked about leadership at all except for at the end of someone’s career looking backwards. I don’t think anybody ever talked about it from a present tense or future tense perspective, at least in my career. I don’t know, Candice, if your career was different.

Candice Reed 10:38

No, I think you raise a good point that often it’s something that young attorneys are evaluated on, say in an annual review, and maybe it comes up within that context as a backward looking perspective. This is when you showed leadership or you need to show it more, but there isn’t, or in my experience, there wasn’t a lot of conversation or vocabulary around leadership and the skills that equate to leadership. Like so much in the legal profession. I do think that we look at leadership often within a fixed mindset rather than a growth mindset where thinking that it’s something that you either have or you don’t have versus something that you can develop, skills that you can develop.

Paula Davis 11:29

No, no, absolutely. And one of my own favorite projects that I worked on was about four years or so ago, and I created a series for my Forbes blog where I actually interviewed four different practicing lawyers. Three were in firms and one was in the Air Force JAG Corps because I wanted to draw in some of my work with the military to really, I think highlight for folks in the legal profession that in other industries or in other areas, leadership is taken very seriously starting on day one. And it’s built into the culture and the fabric of how people just sort of “rise through the ranks”, certainly in that area.

Paula Davis 12:09

And so if folks are interested, you can just Google my name and Forbes and look for that series because the leaders and the legal, the lawyers who I talked to are now at various different levels in their respective firms. And again, one is still very senior in the JAG Corps and they had a lot of really valuable advice. And I put some hard questions to them too, somewhat of what we’re talking about right now. How do we actually dig into this in a profession that just has really not prioritized it or prioritized it too late? So, that was eye-opening for me.

Candice Reed 12:43

Paula, I want us to take a small step backwards. The book that you have written, Lead Well, is not just about the legal industry, though there are many lessons that lawyer leaders can learn from the book, but in it you first discuss that there are four major factors that impact our experience with our work, and some of those are relatively new. Can you discuss what they are and why lawyer leaders should be paying attention to these four factors?

Paula Davis 13:20

Sure. Yeah, it was sort of my way to answer why now, why should we be caring about this conversation at this moment in time? And really quite honestly for the foreseeable and extended future. And the first one is just the post-pandemic psychology essentially. I still think that a lot of legal leaders, I think leaders in general, particularly legal leaders, really underestimate the psychological toll that the pandemic really took on people. It was very much a traumatic event for a lot of folks. And so with traumatic events, with highly stressful and sustained events can come post-traumatic growth. We hear a lot about post-traumatic stress disorder, but not a lot of people realize that post-traumatic growth is oftentimes what can come from traumatic events. So, what it does is it causes people to take a step back and ask deeper questions like, Is this the work that I want to do? Is this the place that I want to be at? Am I getting a lot of meaning and fulfillment from my work and from my interactions? I really want to prioritize relationships now and things that are important to me. And so we continue to carry those questions with us, and I think it’s taken legal leaders back a little bit by hearing some of that mentality around just the meaning and the mattering and the deeper connection to what folks really want to do. So, there’s that one. That’s a big one.

Paula Davis 14:42

The second one is that we’re really in a state of persistent uncertainty. So, the pandemic was certainly one big uncertain event where we didn’t know when it was going to end and how we needed to act within the framework of that period of time. But we rolled right into generative AI taking the world by storm. We’ve got geopolitical uncertainty. There’s just uncertainty and so many layers in so many different facets of our world and our work. And our brains do not like uncertainty. And so that can be a stressful situation for a lot of us to be in. And when it’s persistent with no end, that activates a lot of psychology for folks. So, that’s a big one.

Paula Davis 15:27

The fact that we are now in a world where we are talking about Generative AI and AI tools front and center and having lots of conversations in the legal profession, particularly about what is this going to look like. From the gloom and doom headlines “Are Lawyers Going to be Replaced One Day?” which I don’t think so, but I think because that is now the way the world is going, we have to think about how do we coexist as humans and technology. So, as technology continues to take hold and evolve, we have to be thinking about more so, what is the human side of work? How do we amplify and lead in a human centered way because it’s not going to be and can’t all be about technology. AI I don’t think is going to have an easy time, if at all, being able to replace things like empathy and teamwork and collaboration and resilience and other things that we really need to be prioritizing.

Paula Davis 16:23

And then the last factor is, and it’s a little bit related to the first piece that I talked about, but younger generations, I think all of us but particularly younger generations are coming to their work front and center saying, What is the social impact that I am going to have? What is the impact that I’m going to have in my work? Where is the meaning in my work? I have certain things that I value about work and does the legal environment that I’m going into match those values, walk those values and live those values? So, that values alignment piece has really been pushed up to the front because legal leaders are going to need to be thinking about that more so than ever if they’re going to retain good talent. So, those are the big macro four pieces.

Candice Reed 17:07

What do you think most legal leaders or most leaders generally, but specifically in the law, what’s the one that they miss?

Paula Davis 17:17

I think in the law, probably a lot of those, but I think this notion of, wait a second, my role is to provide value and meaning and talk about meaning and purpose. And it is just I got to bill some hours and I’ve got to take care of my clients and make sure that my clients are happy. That front and center messaging is not something I think is intuitive or where we oftentimes think we need to start having a deeper conversation. And so I think of all of those, that’s probably the one where I get the most either pushback or quizzical looks or Seriously? sort of response. But I would say that one.

Candice Reed 18:03

I can just imagine that some lawyers are bristling hearing you talk about empathy and building a vocabulary around what we have now come to talk about as these power skills, not soft skills, but power skills that are the big differentiator between what humans can do and bring to the table and how we can do our work versus AI and technology.

Paula Davis 18:36

Yeah, I will say that I think, and I try to address this in a good chunk of one of the chapters, and I try to do it through the lens of the business case because I think that that lands in a different way with leaders in the legal profession. But I think this notion of leading in a human centered way or however you want to describe it, is probably one of the biggest untapped areas of differentiation of while we’re leaving money on the table, if we want to bring even more money into our firms or into our organizations, if we got that even semi right and we’re focused on it, I think that they would notice a positive difference to the bottom line. And so I think it is, they may not see it yet. I think it’s the wave of the future in terms of where we need to be focusing and prioritizing in the leadership conversation, certainly not minimizing other types of conversations in the leadership space, but I think we really need to start drawing that concept in and amplifying it.

Tim Haley 19:42

So, Paula, what are the strategies to implement this thinking into a space where you’ve got to make your clients happy and you’ve got to make your supervisor happy and you’ve got a deadline tomorrow and everything’s due yesterday and you still have to bill your hours. So, how do you make time for this intentional effort?

Paula Davis 20:10

So, the time question is always going to be a question I think across the board in any industry, but particularly in the legal profession where we in private practice, where we bill our hours, certainly. There’s a little less of that, at least billable hour focus for in-house folks, but still obviously time and taking care of your internal business clients is certainly part of the conversation. So, for me, the way that I think about it and the way that I teach it and the way that I talk about it is certainly kind of framed around those five mindsets. So, giving people different pathways or lanes to start to go down, and then within those pathways or lanes thinking about it in a couple of different ways. So, it really comes down to some not so difficult, what I call combination of good teaming practices and good human strategies together that really can start to move the needle in the right direction. And I frame them around in the book, I call them all TNTs or tiny noticeable things. So, that’s a carryover from my first book. But really trying to distill and show legal leaders that there are very, some of them, simple, pragmatic, many of them don’t take that drastic or a ton of time that you can start building in with intention into your practices and into your leadership. So, that’s the big picture framework. And there’s lots of details to talk about depending on what mindset or path that you choose, but it’s sending that message that it’s about being strategic, intentional, and building in really small practices on the teaming side. And then on the human skill side that matters.

Candice Reed 21:45

I don’t want to bury the lead, Paula, what are the five mindsets that you discuss in your book?

Paula Davis 21:51

So, the first one is to prioritize sticky recognition and mattering. So, again, we’re talking a little bit about some of those human strategies, but it’s really of all of the chapters, this one really, I don’t want to be too dramatic and say necessarily that it changed my life, but it really opened up a new way of thinking for me that I hadn’t even explored and gone down in terms of my own leadership practice or how I think about parenting or being a friend or being in my community. So, that’s a huge one. The second one is to amplify ABC needs. So, legal leaders consistently, I think, misunderstand motivation and what motivates people to do well at work. And we take still a very carrot-and-stick approach to how we motivate, but just again, amplifying that, the combination of autonomy, belonging and challenge. So, having a little bit of control over our day and our work, having some connection with other people and then being able to pursue something that is growth for me, going toward goals that matter to me is a very, very, very potent and powerful combination for legal leaders to be thinking about. The third one, creating workload sustainability.

Candice Reed 23:05

There you go.

Paula Davis 23:08

I’m sure we’ll get into this conversation. This was the chapter I knew I needed to write but didn’t want to write because I knew it was going to be, there’s just a lot to say about all of this, but that’s a big one. The fourth mindset is creating a sustainable, sorry, systemic stress resilience. So, helping to think about resilience not just from the individual perspective, but as a team and then collectively as an organization, how do we navigate all of the uncertainty and the challenges that we’re facing? And then the last one is touching on that notion of values alignment and meaning. If I’m going to lead in a way that’s going to promote values alignment and meaning, what are the things or the areas or the factors that I need to focus on? So, those are the mindsets.

Tim Haley 23:53

I want to go back to the workload sustainability section. Why was that section so challenging, and what did you learn about it by writing the chapter?

Paula Davis 24:04

Yes. So, we’re all laughing about it because we know this is kind of the elephant in the room with a lot of conversations with lawyers and in the legal profession. So, first and foremost, why I knew I needed to write it is because I outline in the book why we need to take more of a root cause, systemic approach to a lot of the issues that we’re facing in this space in the legal profession. And I heard unequivocally not only from the legal profession, but across industry, the biggest factor challenging people’s levels of stress, promoting burnout, driving disengagement and lack of motivation and unhappiness and all of the things was an unmanageable workload by far and away. And so I knew that if I was going to try and present some sort of solution in a systemic way, I had to address the piece that was really driving the bus in terms of the problem. And I though didn’t really know where to start with writing this chapter, and I just started to dig into some of the factors that drive workload unsustainability. What does that even mean? How do we start to get our arms around it? And really what I noticed is it came down to a couple of different things. One of the pieces made it in the book, the other piece did not make it in the book, so that will be future material for blog posts and other things. But really what it comes down to is creating and sustaining really good teaming practices. So, again, something that I don’t know that we really think about intentionally in the legal profession. How do we make good teams? What does a good team even look like or mean? How do we form them? How do we keep them?

Paula Davis 25:41

And that’s mostly what I wrote about in the chapter, but the other piece is how do we recover from the stress because we do not do a good job of that in the legal profession. My new research with American Law Media shows that we really struggle with, our workloads are so high that we don’t have enough time to prioritize with our family and friends and hobbies and things of that nature. And so how do we, in our downtime – What is downtime? What does that look like? How do we get enough of that recovery period both at work and outside of work in order to continue to sustain us over the long haul? Because that’s certainly my goal with all of this is whatever you want your legal career to look like, how do we make that sustainable over a longer period of time? So, that’s sort of the reasoning, that’s the why I even went there and dug into this, but it was really, I learned a lot. It was really an eye-opening chapter for me to write.

Candice Reed 26:39

What does that look like from a leadership perspective? If you were trying to build — if you are using a workload sustainability mindset to center your leadership of your team, what does that look like?

Paula Davis 26:55

Sure. First of all, it does not mean shorter hours. It doesn’t mean we’re going to take our foot off the gas and we’re going to be like, woo. It’s all fun and breezy now at work. It doesn’t mean any of those —

Candice Reed 27:08

Everybody gets to work outside today. Remember when the teacher would tell you that class was going to be outside and it was almost like a free day?

Tim Haley 27:15

That was beautiful.

Paula Davis 27:15

Yes. I think that’s a really, really important message to send to folks.

Candice Reed 27:20

I do too.

Paula Davis 27:21

And the folks who really helped me see that clearly one in particular is Ben Carpenter. So, I talk about him in my book and I talk about the US Bank guidelines and I talk about the Mindful Business Charter. So, there are two different frameworks that are great starting points. I’ve now had a chance to unpack the framework with a number of partners and a number of senior folks in-house and hear their thoughts about this. But it becomes a starting point to have a conversation either internally within your team where a lot of, I would say lawyers and firms feel most comfortable using this type of framework, but I also think it becomes a way for lawyers and their clients to have a different conversation or to have a conversation about how are we going to interact together? How are we going to facilitate an ongoing relationship that is not only promotive of good work, but is also promotive of good teaming practices, of good relationships, of good communication. And so I think when we keep it on that level and we don’t say, how are we going to promote well-being between clients and lawyers, where that gets people a little bit bristly, we can talk about it as a way to start to facilitate some of these good communication and teaming practices, which the end result of which will be, we may be able to head off some of the unpredictability. We may be able to have a better conversation about the stress and the last minute nature of work. Does everything need to be a fire drill? We can start to have some of those conversations that will help.

Paula Davis 29:02

And so I see a lot of really great promise with these frameworks, and there’s been a lot more conversation out there in terms of educating lawyers and legal leaders that these frameworks even exist. But there are a lot of very powerful, certainly banks and clients who are signing onto these frameworks who are taking this seriously. And so this doesn’t mean that you have to have this type of conversation with every client if you’re the partner in charge, you got to feel this out a little bit. But I also interviewed Mike Kraut for the book, who’s a partner at Morgan Lewis and really, really pressed him seriously, how can this work? Because I understand, I remember from my own practice, you just didn’t go there. And he really, really helped me see, it’s not necessarily a conversation for every single client, but it is for quite a few of them. And it certainly is in terms of internally how you want to run your own team. And so starting at a place like that I think is a very doable place for us to start the conversation. And then it feels like we can kind of make a little progress.

Candice Reed 30:16

You mentioned Ben Carpenter. He actually joined us for a webinar that we did a couple of years ago, and I remember him saying, I believe, obviously I’m paraphrasing, but in some sense he felt like in-house leaders, the clients really had an opportunity to lead in this area because if they brought up the topic, if they started the conversation with their outside law firm, then of course the law firm is going to follow, right? And it’s a much more comfortable conversation for the client to bring up. So, as you mentioned, you’re not asking your outside legal counsel to work less or ignore your emails, it’s just — I remember him giving the example of, “Hey, we don’t expect you to respond after seven o’clock, eight o’clock, nine o’clock”, I can’t remember the time, “at night.” So, for example, “I’m going to be in bed at one o’clock in the morning. I don’t expect you to email me at one o’clock in the morning.” Just saying something so simple and seemingly common sense, but yet it releases the pressure valve a little bit. It lets the law firm lawyer then know you get to be human, you get to go to bed and sleep and have carve out time in the evenings to rest and recharge so that you are better able to hit the ground running in the morning when you show up for work.

Paula Davis 31:56

Yes. And a couple of things that I want to punctuate that you just said, I’m trying to advocate for more, whether it’s more trainings, workshops, programs, opportunities for clients and lawyers to coexist. Because these are the conversations. It’s funny, I feel like I’m sometimes a workplace therapist go-between where I hear the message from the in-house folks and then I take it over to the law firm folks, and then they say some stuff, and then I take it back to the in-house folks. And I think that there is just such an extraordinary opportunity to share resources and to have both sides of the equation coming together to have those conversations. I just think there’s an enormous opportunity there. But in my interview with Mike, he raised something that I had never even thought about before, and he said, oftentimes we’re trying to, if I’m outside counsel, I’m trying to look good to my clients, and so I’m going to fire off that email or that document or what have you at 11 o’clock at night or 10:30 at night. And sometimes we’re not thinking that that might not be what the client actually wants. The client may actually be having a date night or spending time with their kids or just decompressing in front of the TV, and now you’ve pinged them and now they’re thinking about something that they weren’t going to think about until the next day or even later. And so it never dawned on me, and I don’t think it probably dawns on a lot of lawyers that it’s not always the thing that the client wants.

Candice Reed 33:28

So, that open communication is so key.

Tim Haley 33:31

And that communication too increasingly as business becomes more global, part of that conversation just has to be had just logistically in order to have your West Coast team and East Coast team work together effectively.

Paula Davis 33:48

There’s too much complexity. There’s too much fast-pacedness going on deals and things are just moving at such a rate of speed. There’s so much uncertainty as we talked about already. There’s so much going on in the legal world and in our world generally in the world of business that if you don’t have those good communication practices established or talked about or sought out on some level, it is really going to be a detrimental impact to how you provide service.

Candice Reed 34:16

Paula, I want to go back to one of the other mindsets that you mentioned earlier with recognition and mattering because one of the most striking stats in your book for me was from the study in I think American Law Media as you mentioned, 44% of attorneys say they rarely or never receive recognition at work, but yet we’ve already talked about even at the very beginning of the program that feeling valued is a huge driver of engagement and keeping your team not just engaged, but keeping them so that they don’t look for another job. So, why do legal teams struggle with this so much, and what can leaders do to create more opportunities for recognition and mattering in the workplace?

Paula Davis 35:13

Yeah, I love, love, love, love this whole area of conversation because I think this mindset more so than the others, really unlocks a lot of low hanging fruit and really, really great stuff. And so the reflexive answer that oftentimes there’s two that I oftentimes will get is more of what I would call in the legacy mindset category. This just isn’t what I experienced or this just isn’t how I was kind of raised or came through the profession. And so why should I? Getting outside of that legacy mindset thinking. The other response that I oftentimes will hear is that I’m just too busy. And going back to that unmanageable workload piece, I’m just doing everything that I can to just get my work done and making sure that I’m providing good client service, that I don’t think about it quite honestly, just too focused. And I put a list of some other pieces that I oftentimes will hear from leaders both in the legal profession and outside of the legal profession, but oftentimes it’s like I’m too focused on mitigating or making sure mistakes don’t happen. And so I’m not focused on amplifying things that are going or even thinking about things that are going right. There’s not a sense of urgency. I’m not thinking to myself, well, wow, I haven’t appreciated or said thank you to somebody in six months. I bet they’re going to leave because of that. Our brain just doesn’t really think that there is any sort of urgency and that lack of urgency has any consequences associated with it. And then getting into some pretty blunt comments around, I’m not your cheerleader. I had one leader, this was outside of the legal profession who said, this feels like everybody gets a trophy.

Candice Reed 36:54

Gets a trophy. Sure.

Paula Davis 36:55

Kind of snowflake behavior. We’re all special snowflakes, and that’s just not what I want to do. And sometimes people will say, well, especially in the legal profession, you get a very nice paycheck. Your paycheck is thanks enough for a job well done, instead of looking at a paycheck as just simply fulfillment of an employment contract. And that’s not like an extra that we get. And so we really have to dig in and think about, and this is where I encourage a mindset shift first and foremost. So, if you don’t intuitively sort of see the benefit of this, I want people to start thinking about the fact that this is not about stroking someone’s ego. This is about igniting psychological fuel that will help people feel engaged, that will help people stay, that will reduce attrition, which will increase the bottom line. There’s a lot of different cascading effects that come from prioritizing this.

Paula Davis 37:47

And so there’s one skill in particular that I talk about front and center, and it’s called a thank you plus. So, I tell people, if you don’t say thank you a lot, start there because a basic thank you can go a very long way, but I want you to add what I call the plus piece. So, this is where people really get to see the evidence of their impact, which is why it makes it so sticky and why it unlocks a lot of these other pieces. And that’s simply to recognize or talk about or tell the person the behavior that you noticed, the strengths that you noticed that were displayed, that led to the good outcomes. So, you’re literally just sort of attaching and piecing on a little bit of extra. And it can be as simple — I share a story in the book that is a legal profession example of a former practicing lawyer who put some deposition transcripts together, and she found it to be a really tedious project, and she saw the partner was calling one day and she was anxious to even pick up because she didn’t want to do more deposition summaries. And he surprised her and said, “I’m just calling to say thanks. The way that you organized and summarized the notes helped me see the key takeaways quickly.” That’s the plus piece. That’s all you have to do is just that little extra piece. And she said, “The whole conversation lasted two minutes.” And she said, “But going forward, anything he came back to me with I said yes to.” And she’s like, “That’s how I ended up getting my first federal court argument appeal.” And so we got to think about, first of all, it’s a self-awareness piece, and second of all, then it doesn’t take a lot of time. It’s really just being very strategic in how you say it that amplifies that sense of stickiness, which activates that sense of mattering. And so there’s a whole host of other pieces and things that I put in the book, but it’s basically just comes down to basic human skills. Do I notice people? Do I see you? Do I see that you’re doing good work? Am I saying something about it when I notice things like that?

Candice Reed 39:49

That’s what, as you’re talking and explaining this to me, I’m thinking about every other relationship I have in my life where this is pretty common, or if it’s not common, it’s at least something that I know I should be doing or something that I want from the other person in the relationship. So, you think about romantic relationships, family relationships, relationships with your children, with your friends. When my daughter gets out of the car, when I pick her up from school and immediately goes and gets the mail out of the mailbox and brings it into the house without complaint, I say, “Thank you. I appreciate you getting the mail for the family today. That was very helpful. I know it’s cold outside.” And that not only makes her feel better or feel seen, or valued, it also builds a better relationship between the two of us. I’m getting something out of that thank you too, because I’m getting a closer relationship with my daughter. And if you take that into the work context, those relationships are so important. And I think for so long we have looked at them as these odd different types of relationships. Like they deserve some different treatment than every other relationship in our lives. And what I hear you say is, hey, we’re not talking about giving everybody a trophy when they walk into the office every morning. It’s just about recognizing what people are doing and having what is otherwise a pretty normal conversation where you say, “Hey, thanks. I really appreciate you putting those deposition summaries together. It was a really well done document. It was easy to read, and it only took me a few minutes to comprehend what all had happened over the course of several hours in depositions. Thanks so much.”

Tim Haley 42:01

And that’s a great example too, because I mean, nobody makes deposition summaries in law school. So, part of your growth process as a young attorney is learning how to do whatever it is you have to do, and part of the teaching process of that isn’t just, “Hey, here’s where you could do better.” It’s also, “Hey, this is good.” Or even after giving correction, coming back and saying, “You did exactly what I asked you to do. That was great.”

Paula Davis 42:30

Yeah, and I think one of the things, there’s so much to say about all of this, but one of the things that I wanted to highlight also was back to my study with ALM where one of the statements that I asked people to evaluate was, I feel like a cog in the wheel. And 51.4% of folks said once a week, a few times a week, or every day. So, out of that 51.4%, 23.1% said every day I feel like a cog in the wheel. And so this is one of the ways that you can start to bust that mentality because we know that there are consequences that come with feeling this way, mental health and well-being consequences and other things. There are studies that show that. And a lot of people ask, how do we build community? How do we foster connection now at work? This is a direct target in that it amplifies that. It’s the B part of the ABC needs also, so it does double duty.

Candice Reed 43:25

Paula, there is so much in your book. I know we keep referring to it. I want to mention it again. It’s Lead Well. You can see if you’re watching the video of our conversation, you can see that it’s relatively short. Always think that’s really important for leadership books because these are busy people that don’t have time to read and highlight and flag a 500-page book. You can digest this in one sitting and then keep going back to it and implementing certain strategies that you’re suggesting. If there’s one takeaway that you would like for everyone or most people or a lot of people to get either from this conversation or from the book as a whole, what’s that one big idea?

Paula Davis 44:10

Thank you. So, it’s really that it’s a combination. What we’re looking at, if we want to start to look at how individuals and team dynamics and leadership behaviors intersect with each other to create this ultimate goal of sustainable human performance and work performance at work. And if we want to start to address some of the deeper layer or root cause issues of the challenges that we’re experiencing at work, what it comes down to is having some intentional and good teaming practices and some intentional and good human practices, human strategies that together form a really powerful duo to be able to help leaders start to tackle some of these issues and then see all of the good stuff that we want to come from it. There was nothing that was easy about this process for this book, but I’m really proud of it and I’m really excited. It’s been very heartwarming to hear people just on their own just sharing what they’re learning from it already. And so for me, it’s now about getting out there and spreading this message and starting to continue to help leaders, legal leaders, and legal organizations start to build in some of these practices in a very intentional way and in lots of different ways, workshops, training, consulting on demand, all of the ways that we can get this information in the hands of lawyers and legal leaders, because this isn’t taught in law school and in our leadership development. So, just feeling really passionate about getting out there and spreading the word and continuing to write.

Candice Reed 45:44

If somebody wants to get ahold of you, I know you do a lot of workshops and speaking. I follow you on LinkedIn, and of course we have a friendship that I cherish. So, if someone wants to get ahold of you, what’s the best way to do that?

Paula Davis 45:59

Sure. So, the website, my website is really my hub of all things informational about workshops and consulting and on-demand stuff and all of that. And so that’s stressandresilience.com. And then certainly LinkedIn is my first social media platform of choice, and so just finding me, Paula Davis, on LinkedIn.

Tim Haley 46:22

Paula, thank you so much. I can’t wait to have you back on again maybe in a couple of years after you do finish that third book.

Paula Davis 46:31

Fingers crossed.

Tim Haley 46:31

But we’ll look forward to talking to you and staying in touch.

Paula Davis 46:34

I will absolutely. We’ll keep the conversation going, and thank you both so much. This was just a fantastic conversation.

Tim Haley 46:39

Well, thank you.

Candice Reed 46:40

I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your perspective and expertise with us.

Paula Davis 46:46

Thank you.

Tim Haley 46:47

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