In the Mix. Creative Law?

In my recent 22twts interview I was asked:

My advice was inspired by a quote attributed to Steve Jobs who, speaking at the Stanford University 2005 graduation ceremony, said "You can't join the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in the future".

You can find his full address here, but the point which fascinated me in this speech was that when Mr Jobs was at college, he actually dropped-out of the course allocated to him and instead chose to follow his intuition and curiosity and take up a calligraphy course of study, the learning of which bore no practical application in his life at all.  10 years later when working on the design of the first Macintosh computer, he recalled his calligraphy learnings and fed them into the creative design process which resulted in the development of the Apple Mac with its signature typefaces, typography and fonts. An example of magnificent creativity.

Simply put, the more broad your experience and interests, the more opportunities there are in your life to connect the dots and bring a fresh and creative perspective to the table.

Law is no different, and some would argue more in need of creative energy: the best patent attorneys usually have a background in science and chemistry and a passion for photography might fuel a leading copyright lawyer's quest to represent image right-holders.

For me personally, a 'mumpreneur' moment during my maternity leave back in 2005 led me to develop and optimise a website for pregnant women.  What is this to do with your legal blog, I hear you ask?

Well, 3 years later I found myself interviewing for the position of in-house lawyer at a digital marketing company quietly confident that I knew, more than any other candidate, my SEO from my PPC, and my back-links from my HTML.  What's more,  my experience during an 'off-track' year as a PSL responsible for training lawyers in a commercial law firm, rather than practicing law with them, continues to feed into that element of my present job responsible for managing the Training & Development at my company.  It all adds up.

In my view, its easy for lawyers to pigeon-hole themselves as specialists, one trick legal ponies; but I'd like to challenge your  specialism and encourage you to take your legal wisdom, add a pinch of a personal interest and pour out a creative contribution to your workplace.

I'm a Specialist Plant

I recently realised that I've not blogged a blog post throughout the whole of May.  However, I do have a perfectly good scientific explanation for this.

I'm a specialist plant.

At least, my "preferred roles" are that of a specialist (law) and a plant (a creative ideas person).  More particularly, my "least preferred role" is that of a completer-finisher (..er...there's no easy way to say this, basically I prefer other people to sort out the detail, and I'll get on with the bigger picture).  This is unusual for a lawyer, most of us are archetypal completer-finishers (interested in painstaking detail).  Not me apparently.

In other words, I had an idea about how I could develop my specialism of law....this blog, and then during May (presumably while I had other ideas brewing) I must have assumed that someone else in Team Melanie would get on with the detail of the blog for me.  No such luck!

Well, at least  this is the explanation according to an analysis of my typical behaviours in a Belbin Team Role Profile.  For those of you who aren't familiar with Belbin, he was a Dr who, (not Dr Who, but a Dr who) with a team of researchers in the 1970's, set about observing and recording team behaviours, with a view to finding out why some teams worked effectively and some didn't (assuming a controlled set of resources).  The research identified 9 Team-Role behaviours, and through an incredibly simple set of psychometric questions identifies an individual's preferred, manageable and least-preferred team toles. To have a preference for or against a role is not wrong per se, and the theory does suggest "allowable weaknesses" for each role (for example the conscientious completer-finisher might be reluctant to delegate), but on the flip side, it also suggests weaknesses which if allowed to get out of hand would not be beneficial for the overall team good.

Like DISC (see my earlier post Disc World) Belbin theory is another tool which allows you to understand your own behaviour and those of others in your team.  It also helps team managers to not just build a team made up of a perfectly balanced set of 9 Team Role types, but identify where the potential gaps of behaviour in their team lie and to plan around that accordingly.

I was introduced to Belbin Team Role Theory by the very friendly and helpful Urquhart Partnership, or for more information you can go direct to http://www.belbin.com/.

Disc World

As most in-house lawyers to SMEs will testify the role will expand into areas of the business which just aren’t in any way, shape or form legally related; and the area which I’ve found myself deviating into is training and development. Having some experience as a professional support lawyer for a UK Top 15 law firm it’s an area I’m familiar and comfortable with, so I was delighted to be asked to formulate a training and development strategy for my company's senior managers during the latter part of 2009.

One of the key tools which I’ve built the strategy around is DISC, a behavioural profiling tool which aids the individual in recognising their own behavioural traits, those of others, and then allows the individual to adapt their personal style to better influence others. I firmly believe that one of the foundation stones for personal development is to “know thyself” and awareness of your own behavioural pattern is an essential for increased communication and influence both in your personal and business lives.

I’m not the only lawyer interested in this, the DISC profiling system in use today was initially formulated by lawyer and psychologist, William Marston, in the early 1920s born out of his fascination with individuals’ behavioural patterns and it’s now widely used within all types of business the world over.

The DISC model is incredibly insightful, and users are often amazed at the accuracy of the information obtained about themselves in their profile report. One of the reasons for its popularity is that it uses neutral language. There is no wrong or right behaviour in DISC, it uses a “universal language of observable behaviour” (TTI Ltd) to powerfully identify the behavioural tendencies within each of us individually and which make up our unique character. Furthermore, DISC is not a psychometric tool nor is it a measure of knowledge or intelligence; and so it’s a true “leveller” between directors, senior managers and junior staff alike and can be used to create a common language within your business to better aid communication.

DISC itself is an acronym for the 4 quadrants of observable behaviour (all of which are in us to a greater or lesser degree):

Dominance or Drive: results-driven, competitive, risk-taking people show a high D profile. Think successful sports stars, coaches and entrepreneurs.

Influence: charismatic, enthusiastic, popular and charming are characteristics of individuals with a high I. Oprah Winfrey and Jonathan Ross both have a high level of I in their behavioural profiles.

Steadiness: High S individuals portray loyal, devoted, stable and patient behavioural patterns. They are the ultimate safe pair of hands, think Mother Theresa and Ugly Betty!

Compliance or Conscientiousness: High Cs are perfectionists, analytical, accurate, precise and exacting individuals. The Monica Geller character in Friends and most lawyers and accountants will demonstrate a high C in their behavioural profile.

There is also a clever inter-relationship between the individual quadrants of the DISC reflecting whether a behavioural type is motivated by task (D and C) as opposed to people (I and S), whether a behavioural type is active (D and I) or reflective (S and C), and how an individual’s “natural” style changes into an “adapted” style under pressure.

Of course each of the quadrants of behaviour brings with it a value to a business, and a team will need individuals from all quadrants (or an individual operating in each quadrant at the right time) to successfully deliver a project or task. Each behavioural quadrant will however need motivating and managing in a particular way, and recognising the behaviour in an individual is the first step to achieving the appropriate balance of motivation and management.

There are different versions of DISC profiling in use today and a simple search of the internet will reveal providers of all of those versions. The version which I experienced was from TTI Ltd, a licensed supplier of Success Insights Intl Inc and was delivered by Julie Harrison Consulting. I’ve also found DISC Profile Blog full of informative and practical demonstrations of DISC in action.