#18 – Meta Matters – Learning to Learn
Part 3 – The Down Low GC (DGC) makes a reappearance; ‘Sitting with Nellie’; Learning about Learning from Chairman Mao
I’m over my second bout of Covid (known in my house as “Covid 2 - the Virus Strikes Back”) and feeling my normal self.
In other news, the last two issues of Practical Counsel clearly struck a chord with a number of readers who wrote into me, both in-house counsel and private practice lawyers.
Most readers seem broadly to have agreed with the thrust of issues #16 and #17, in particular my assertion last week that most senior in-house lawyers would benefit from broadening out their skill set to bring them up to the level of their C Suite peers.
One response stuck out like a sore thumb and was very much an outlier. This was from the guest contributor to Issue #12 of Practical Counsel, the anonymous GC who you might recall I whimsically dubbed the Down-Low GC (or DGC for short).
I’m giving over a chunk of this week’s issue to the DGC.
The DGC makes an argument that I have heard from a large number of senior lawyers, both in-house and in private practice – that leadership, management and relational skills are hard to train or untrainable.
The DGC further argues that the best way to learn these skills is on the job – or as this used to be called in the UK (I haven’t heard the phrase myself for a while), ‘Sitting with Nellie’. Click here if you want to read a short, interesting, piece about the origin and meaning of the phrase ‘Sitting with Nellie’ – or as a prominent British politician from the 1960s styled it, ‘exposure training’.
Responding to the DGC is another guest contributor, Mark Schaub, London Managing Partner of King & Wood Mallesons, who is an Australian of German heritage, living between Shanghai and London. Mark brings a cross-cultural perspective – and his own unique brand of humour - to his response.
There will be a further response to the DGC’s view – which I would describe (perhaps somewhat politely) as both rather counter-cultural and rather old-fashioned – in the next issue of Practical Counsel. The next issue will, I think, conclude the current run of issues on Meta-Learning.
Enjoy reading, and please comment and contribute to the debate by posting direct on Practical Counsel. Also, please write in with your unique people issues to me (practicalcounsel@substack.com) - I unequivocally undertake never to reveal your identity and will change key details of your situation so as to preserve your confidentiality and anonymity (unless you don’t want this). I also undertake to write to you personally with my own thoughts and comments on your situation and am always happy to follow up with a call on Zoom or similar.
Dear Jonathan (from the Down-Low GC) … and Jonathan’s Reply
Dear Jonathan,
The last two issues of Practical Counsel – titled (somewhat pretentiously, in my view) ‘Meta Matters – Learning to Learn’ – contain an assumption that I feel moved to challenge.
The assumption underlying both issues is that leadership, management and (what you call) relational skills are indeed trainable and that everyone can be trained in and learn these skills.
What is the evidence underpinning this assumption?
When I was in private practice I observed my very large Global Law Firm spending vast amounts of money to retain an army of external consultants and, internally, so-called Learning and Development professionals to teach these skills. Yet I saw not a scrap of evidence that said skills could in fact be taught – still less anything that resembled an analysis around return on investment for said vast amounts of spend.
If there’s some evidence out there, I’d like to see it please.
My experience is that a lot of senior lawyers could go on training courses from now until eternity and still be hopeless leaders – while some lawyers have leadership skills that are obvious and identifiable from early on (some from day one).
What’s your view on this?
And here’s another point.
Why spend vast amounts of money training these skills when people, by and large, learn these skills on the job?
Here’s my doubtless jaundiced take on training and development.
There used to be a catch phrase on one of the TV game shows: “Points Mean Prizes”. Great catch phrase. It made a lot of money for the producers of the game show.
What emerged for most lawyers (certainly in my home jurisdiction), from the mid-80s onwards, was a strange professional obligation to collect points by attending training courses. The winning number of points in my home jurisdiction was 16 (not, I believe a winning number in any other sport). Lawyers had to evidence their participation at sufficient qualifying events to accumulate 16 points annually. If they failed to do so they incurred the wrath of their professional body.
It was, in my view, a bit of a racket, and an expensive one at that. Providers popped up, over time, offering any number of courses, seminars, meetings, networking events and similar, costing increasingly eye-watering sums to attend, and proudly advertising the number of points that attendance guaranteed.
Qualifying events took place at all times of day - morning, noon, and night (and sometimes all three). What was initially viewed as a relaxing day out of the office became increasingly stressful as the years rolled by and the need to respond to multiple channels of communication (email, text, phone, WhatsApp) increased.
It took around 30 years for my home jurisdiction’s professional body to realise that their honourable intentions had morphed into a giant money-making exercise, primarily for the course providers (of which the professional body, over time, became one). Once said professional body discontinued the obligation to collect points attendance at courses plummeted like the proverbial lead balloon.
Yet long before the “Points Means Prizes” regime began (and during it, and after it), the best way for a young lawyer to learn was, in my view, ‘on the job’.
No need for expensive training courses. No need for armies of training and development specialists. Put any young lawyer in the same office as an experienced lawyer, and learning will almost inevitably happen (assuming the young lawyer has the capacity to learn – not always a given – see above).
Such on the job "lessons" can't easily be duplicated or replicated in a formal teaching environment. They are best learned, in my view, when the lawyer is young enough to be impressionable, and clever enough to realise the value of sitting and watching, listening and learning.
That's why lockdown was calamitous in terms of the missed (involuntary) education of young lawyers. For up to two years, the ‘Human Touch1’ was sadly missing.
When it comes to leadership and management, the same applies, in my view.
Leadership skills are either inherent or learned on the job.
Soldiers don’t learn to lead in the classroom. They learn to lead in the heat of battle, ‘earn their spurs’ via combat, not CPD course. You can be a great leader on paper, but you don’t actually prove yourself as a leader until tested by circumstance.
In sum, I don’t believe all lawyers are capable of rising, like cream, to the top. Some swim upwards for a while, then, to use a diving metaphor, get the bends. If they rise too quickly, it’s intensely painful for them, and ultimately they fail.
Others rise, and rise, again, until they break the surface, ending up as GC or CLO, and sometimes rising still further in the organisational ranks.
Unlike in diving there’s no manual (or in the words of the GC of Phillips, Martin Wilson, in issue #16, ‘instructional guidance) for top level leadership. To continue the swimming metaphor, as a top tier leader, you swim …. or sink.
That’s my thoughts on this topic. Others will doubtless disagree.
Yours,
The DGC
—
Jonathan’s Response to the DGC
Dear DGC,
The briefest of responses.
Your views, with the very greatest respect, are antediluvian. I’ll leave it to next week’s expert contributor to present you with some evidence that these skills are indeed trainable in the vast majority of people.
The old-fashioned view that you just ‘learn on the job’ is lazy. The world’s largest law firms don’t spend large amounts of money on L & D for fun. It produces best in class lawyers. The world’s largest corporations don’t spent large amounts of money on executive development for fun. There’s no reason why some executives should have acquired a rounded basket leadership skills on the way up; not everyone has captained a team, or lead an expedition. Of course, executives learn some of their leadership skills by observing others, others ‘on the job’. But their leadership skills are rounded out by other inputs, just as Martin Wilson argued in his excellent piece in Issue #16.
Where I agree with you – and it is pretty much the only thing on which I agree with you – is that not everyone is trainable on high-level (i.e. sophisticated, up to C Suite level) leadership, management and relational, skills. But training remains important to highlight areas of limitation and / or blind spots and / or potential derailers.
There will be more on this next week. For now, I suggest you read the following contribution from Mark Schaub, who himself knows one or two things about leadership, as London Managing Partner of one of the world’s top 50 largest firms by revenue.
Best wishes
Jonathan
Response to the DGC by Expert Contributor of the Week
Mark Schaub is London Managing Partner of King & Wood Mallesons. Born and brought up in Australia, Mark studied Law at the Universities of Adelaide and South Australia, and Economics at the Freie Universität in Berlin. He is a dual national of Australia and Germany. Working as a corporate / M & A lawyer in China since 1993, Mark helps international businesses on the legal and strategic aspects of doing business in and with China. He splits his time between Europe (where he lives in London) and China.
Dear Jonathan,
When considering law firm management in the 2020s, as with so many things in life I find myself asking – “What would Chairman Mao do?”2
Chairman Mao was a firm supporter of training – as he said “It is well known that when you do anything, unless you understand its actual circumstances, its nature and its relations to other things, you will not know the laws governing it, or know how to do it, or be able to do it well.”
‘Learn by doing’ indeed remains a common refrain in private legal practice but there - with the ever-increasing specialisation of lawyers - many are limited to being highly expert in a narrow technical field. Highly successful lawyers need to be more well-rounded (unless they work in tax). Senior in-house lawyers – certainly those at GC or CLO level – need to be exceptionally well-rounded and have highly developed management and leadership skills.
Lawyers are in the main not trained in management or leadership skills, or more generally dealing with people. I find this curious as these skills are so fundamental to a lawyer’s work; and critical to those of the senior in-house lawyer.
Indeed, in respect of law firm management, it has often struck me that those who become part of management in larger firms normally fell in one of two camps. They are either seen as charismatic and having natural management skills or there is a conscious decision within the firm that this individual will pose less of a risk in management than in practice.
However, being adept at management, leadership and dealing with people is important for all lawyers and critical for senior management both in-house and in private practice.
Despite this, many lawyers are passionate in their disinterest in formal training.
While formal training cannot replace learning on the job it does afford new insights, alternative views to those of limited role models within the corporate or firm in question, and also provides exposure to situations to which the lawyer has not yet been confronted.
Naturally, different people have different predispositions, but every professional should have some “muscle knowledge” for dealing with challenging situations. These challenges are not as static as they once were such as dealing with clients, managing associate expectations or interactions between partners. In today’s interconnected and dynamic world people are continuously being challenged by new situations. Globalisation should make one sensitive that you may need to deal with a situation in London differently than in Beijing or Berlin. In addition, the general speeding up of the pace of life means senior lawyers need to consider the opinions and attitudes of a younger generations … no matter how annoying we find them.
It is difficult to master these complexities in a vacuum or to rely solely on your own direct experiences. For this reason, training is a crucial on-going part of education for lawyers not only to unlock talent (or independently confirm you really cannot deal with people) but also to identify blind spots and appreciate complexities.
To paraphrase Chairman Mao – if you do not understand an issue how will you deal with it, much less deal with it well.
And, as we know, Chairman Mao was right at least 70% of the time3.
Best wishes
Mark
Note from Jonathan:
Mark has his own excellent newsletter on Substack4, China Chit-Chat, for those interested in business in China. Highly recommended.
This Week’s Key Takeaways
1. In the past two issues of PC, the first expert contributor (Martin Wilson, GC of Phillips) argued that the acquisition of leadership, management and relational skills is akin to the acquisition of any other sophisticated talent and requires application and practice (10,000 hours+, citing well-known research).
2. Martin further contended that these skills can be learnt in a variety of ways, including by learning from the successes and failures of role models, and also via instructional guidance.
3. In the last issue, I argued that the rounded in-house lawyer will look outside the organisation and learn from other sources. I gave the example of the leadership of HM the Queen (successful leadership) and that of Boris Johnson, current Prime Minister of the UK (problematic / flawed leadership).
4. In this issue, the DGC (Down-Low GC) argues that there is limited / questionable evidence that leadership, management and relational skills are in fact trainable. He further agues that some senior in-house lawyers are in fact untrainable in some or all of these skills. And he also argues that the best way to learn these skills is ‘on the job’.
5. I reject the argument that leadership, management and relational skills are untrainable. Next week’s issue will summarise some of evidence that they are trainable. I agree that some senior in-house lawyers have limited capacity to improve some or all of these skills.
6. This week’s expert contributor (Mark Schaub of King & Wood Mallesons) similarly refutes the idea that the only way to learn these skills is on the job. Training affords new insights and exposure to situations that might not have been encountered on the job. It is an essential part of the rounded education of the sophisticated senior lawyer – both to educate and also to provide insight and self-awareness as to blindspots and areas of limitation.
And now …….
Contribute to the debate and write in with your comments and observations. Also write to Jonathan with any other people issues you face as an in-house lawyer.
Jonathan can be reached by email at practicalcounsel@substack.com
A note for you picky lawyers; and a plea for tolerance
I am a British lawyer by background and went to both school and University in the UK. So my English is British English. I have taken a conscious decision to write this newsletter in British English, but to try to avoid phrases that aren’t common outside the UK. Sometimes, though, I’ll use a phrase that isn’t commonly used outside the UK, without realising that it is a Britishism. I also endeavour to use the vernacular spellings of my contributors (e.g. to use US spellings for a US contributor), but won’t always get this right.
My plea is for you to tolerate the British spellings and grammar and the occasional Britishism. And to focus on the substance of the newsletter rather than the occasional (to you) annoying turn of phrase, bit of grammar or unorthodox spelling, or the occasional inconsistency in spelling as between, for example, UK and US ‘standard’ spellings.
Thank you and best wishes,
Jonathan Middleburgh
Yes, hat tip to Bruce Springsteen. I’m a huge fan.
By way of explanation, my focus on Chairman Mao may have something to do with the fact that I have spent so much of my working life in China. I have worked as a corporate / M & A lawyer in China since 1993 and have spent much of my life since then living in Shanghai.
This is, indeed, official policy in China. See this article on npr.org for more.
The letter featured in this weeks newsletter, although anti-deluvian as Jonathan commented, I suspect is still repesentative of some lawyers who influence the decisions of law firms. I can sympathise to some extent, as I have in the past, been part of the points machine he mentions and have heard at first hand the sarcasm he alludes to. Had participants been making the link between the learning and their practice, they wouldn't have been so uncomplementary.
In my exerience as an executive coach and programme designer working with law firms, any development work has to begin where people are. Making the link between their current challenges and how the work we are doing addresses these, is essential. There must be a contract for the the learning relationship, not so much a legal one as an understanding, acceptable to all parties, that acts as a vehicle for the work done.
One to one, I must establsh motivation and commitment to the outcome the coachee expects and if there is a line manager involved who has perhaps suggested the coaching in the first place, they must also be included. Learning only happens when there is clarity and safety. And if/when circumstances change, the contract may also need to be adjusted.
The same applies to a group. That is why I only work with small groups and include at least two, one to one coaching sessions to ensure they are receiving the expected value they contracted for initially. In reviewing our work together they can compare what they thought they were getting with what they actually got, something for which we share responsibility. Even sitting beside Nellie requires a desire to learn something.
As a result, outcomes are more likley to meet with satisfaction, an increase in confidence and a recognition that personal development is never ending. There is always more to learn when it comes to managing yourself and others.