#22 – Meta Matters – Learning to Learn
Part 7 – A Learning & Development Expert Rounds Off The Discussion
This is the seventh and final part in a fascinating series on Meta Learning.
The discussion has focused on the best learning environment and approach for in-house lawyers in relation to the skills on which we focus here in Practical Counsel – namely, leadership, management and relational skills.
It has been a wide-ranging and comprehensive discussion with a number of highly insightful contributions. I would highlight in particular the fascinating discussion I had with Sir Mark Elder, a world-renowed orchestral conductor (Issue #20). That discussion enabled me to draw parallels between Sir Mark’s leadership of an orchestra, and how he has acquired his leadership skills, and the leading of an in-house department.
I would also highlight last week’s discussion with Dominique Ashby (Issue #21), with her focus on learnings from the developing field of Neuroscience, and the experiences shared by three senior in-house lawyers as to what has moved the dial for them in terms of their personal leadership development (issue #19).
In this final issue, a leading global Learning & Development Expert rounds off the discussion - sharing his experience, both practical and academic, and offering his thoughts in relation to the topic. Professor Nigel Spencer is ex-Head of L & D globally for both Reed Smith and Simmons & Simmons, and now runs the Hub for Professional Practice at Queen Mary University of London. Nobody could be better qualified to conclude this fascinating series.
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.
Thought Piece by Professor Nigel Spencer – Rounding Off the Series on Meta Learning
Leadership for lawyers and “learning to learn”: some personal reflections drawn from nearly 20 years of creating immersive development activities for senior leaders
Over 15-20 years I have worked with lawyers to develop their leadership skills, many of those years spent as a head of Learning & Development in two global law firms, in addition to designing and leading leadership programmes for a number of other firms when I was at Oxford’s Saïd Business School, and now as the Director of the Hub for Professional Practice at Queen Mary University of London’s School of Law. There are a few things that stand out for me, which also link back to some themes already explored in this series.
The first thing – and I hope an encouraging one – is that, yes, leadership skills absolutely can be improved through development activity. Leadership skills can be honed and improved. One important reflection I have taken from all of my work is “how” this learning happens. Where I have seen leadership development at its most effective, what has that looked like?
A key component in “how” leadership skills can be learnt most effectively is ensuring that the learning is very experiential: by building lots of “learning by doing” into the relevant programme. We learn to walk, ride a bicycle, or to drive a vehicle, by “doing”. In my experience, leadership development is similar; to be effective, the learning can’t be passive. You need to give people the chance to practise the skills in real time in sessions, and to allow that practice to be related to their own world.
So make sure that leaders have an opportunity to practise that feedback conversation, that presentation of their “vision” to their team, or that conversation with stakeholders or clients where they are learning to “ask” rather than “tell” as a leader, thereby changing the dynamic of such a conversation. Best of all, I recall many times we gave people a structure for such skills (often using an experienced facilitator or coach, perhaps with a background from the theatre), and then the exercise would be a dry-run of a real situation – a presentation, or appraisal meeting – which they might face in the following week. What were we doing? Creating a safe space for experimentation: to try the new skill, to hear back from fellow learners who observed them, to adapt, and then to practise again.
In other words, I have found that a good method of developing leadership is allowing people to develop new “habits” through practice; this links to the theme of physical movement and activity which was mentioned by Dominique Ashby in the last issue of Practical Counsel.[1] In my experience, practice is the best way to build people’s confidence whereby they can try and become good at a new leadership skill, which they can then ‘perform’ back in the office, in a more ‘high-stakes’ situation. This is because the exercises they have tried out on a programme have allowed them to move, at least a little, along the scale from “conscious incompetence” towards “unconscious competence”, as the learning phrase goes. This is aligned with the thesis of Malcolm Gladwell and his concept of 10,000 hours of practice (referenced in a previous issue in this series) – but also noting his later reflections that the quality of the practice and feedback is critical. As I have noted above, I’d also add that the relevance of the practice to the real work situation was an important element in all of the leadership courses that we created.
The importance of practice, and learning by doing, brings me on to an important broader point of how I have seen leadership development work well for lawyers over many years. In short, don’t think that the answer for yourself, or for members of your team, is always to “go on a course” - or to send someone on a course! That may be the correct answer, but we need to remember the Centre for Creative Leadership’s “70-20-10” model of development, which makes the point that only 10% of our development should be from formal training. The biggest benefit (70% of our time) is learning through hands-on experience, while 20% is learning from others (the mentoring and coaching element).
The reason we need to think about this framework, for ourselves and for our teams, is that there is the risk of a “learning transfer” gap when we learn from formal training courses. In other words, how quickly can you find an opportunity to apply the course’s learning back at your desk? This challenge is one reason why I found it most effective to – in effect – bring the “desk” or the workplace into the leadership programmes I designed.[2] As I mentioned above, where leaders practised the new skills with real examples it helped them to feel confident to try it in the coming days, or weeks, back in the leadership “day job”.
Another positive (and practical) point about creating “on the job” learning (or “stretch”) opportunities for any member of your team, is the budgetary aspect. It costs precisely nothing (apart from a bit of your time) to improve the skills of one of your future leaders if you do it by giving them an opportunity to learn by doing. This could be a project or aspect of your team’s work they have never tried before, a new “stretch” experience for them, which you support by ensuring they have the support framework of mentors and someone giving “air cover” for them as they try it for the first time. My “field research” with lawyers on this over many years backs up the value of this approach because, whenever I ran a leadership session and asked leaders when they had learnt the most, one comment which came up repeatedly was: “the first time I tried x”. When I ran these types of discussions in one of my sessions I also noticed a lot of energy. People were excited, and remembered with smiles on their faces, what a “buzz” trying something new had given them. This was not only because they had learnt and practised new skills. Think of the additional messages they received through such experiences. Their own leader, or boss, was putting an immense amount of trust in them by letting them try that new type of project or role – and that, too, was incredibly motivating.
So questions we should ask ourselves regularly as leaders include:
· When was the last time I created these types of “stretch” experiences for my team?
· How did I give team members feedback around those experiences, to build their confidence, allowing me to hand over that part of the work to them?
· Where can I find mentoring and work shadowing opportunities for them?
· And, importantly, do I truly stand back and let them learn the relevant leadership skills through these experiences, rather than micro-managing them as they “learn by doing”?
On this last point, the need to avoid micro-management has been one theme commented on a lot in recent years. Remember, lawyers in your team are smart, seek autonomy and want to master new skills and knowledge. So a key leadership skill for yourself is to give them that space. As Tim Gallwey noted: “performance = potential – interference”. One of the key leadership skills we need to master is to judge when not to get in the way.
One more important point to end on, which I have often been asked, is how you can create an environment where people can “learn to learn”.
I think an important aspect here is to look in the mirror. In other words, are we ourselves role modelling that we are learning, and that we realise that we ourselves need to learn more? Do we talk to our team about what we are learning in conversations with each other, with other parts of the organisation, or with our external customers and networks? How often is “learning” a topic of conversation, so that we are giving permission, and more than that, even creating an expectation, that we are all learning, however senior we are – and also role modelling that there are those different ways of learning, to link back to the 70-20-10 point.
This reflection links to the important concept of creating “psychological safety” in your team or teams. Role modelling is a great way to emphasise to your next generation of leaders that they too can learn and try something out. And – if it doesn’t go 100% well – that it will still be recognised the team has taken a step forwards by trying something new, perhaps innovating and delivering service in a different way, for example. Of course there needs to be risk management built around these “First Attempts In Learning” (a different way of viewing what it means to “F-A-I-L”), but making it clear that you value such attempts is the key point.
Perhaps, too, any such “failure” can also be framed more positively with your customers or clients. How does this sound as a conversation with a client who has said that they are looking for innovation and new ideas from their advisors? “We’re always looking to innovate, and we’ve never tried this before but, if you’re happy for us to use this new method, I think we’ll both learn if this is a better way for the future”.
[1] For habit formation in leadership skills development, see the impact of HighNetWork’s app to “nudge” behaviour change (winner of the FT Innovative Lawyer 2021 “People & Skills” award for its measurable impact on skills change), a concept discussed by Anne Marcotty (HighNetWork’s CEO) and myself in our article, “‘Nudging up’ your top line: the power of incremental habit change in business development”, Centrum, Professional Services Marketing Group (Spring 2019).
[2] For the impact of connecting workplace experience to leadership development programmes, see N. Spencer and J. Stokes, ‘Coaching and Mentoring as a Key Leadership Development Tool Across Legal Generations’, in R Normand-Hochman (ed.), Mentoring and Coaching for Lawyers: Building Partnerships for Success (Globe Business Publishing 2014), 103-17, in particular the lawyer describing the work placement element of a development programme as “… the best learning experience I can remember having taken part in…” (ibid., 115).
Key Takeaways
1. This issue of Practical Counsel concludes a series of issues on the topic of Meta Learning. The series has focused on the best ways for in-house lawyers to learn leadership, management and relational skills – and also how they can ‘Meta Learn’, i.e. learn to learn.
2. The Expert – Professor Nigel Spencer – affirms several of the conclusions reached by earlier contributors to the series. His key conclusions are as follows.
3. Leadership can be improved through development activity. The most effective way to improve leadership is to learn by doing, and to develop and embed new ‘habits’ through practice.
4. The 70-20-10 model is crucial – 70% of learning through hands-on experience, 20% through learning from others, 10% from formal training.
5. Performance = potential minus interference. Avoid micro-management. Don’t get in the way.
6. Reframe failure – communicate it more positively to customer and clients, and to those you are developing. Frame it positively as learning better ways for the future.
7. Role model learning – and include learning as a topic of conversation, so as to create an expectation that we are all learning, however senior we are.
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