The Cultivating leadership skills at every stage of your legal career discussion was moderated by Dr Justine Rogers, deputy director of the Future of Law and Innovation in the Profession (FLIP) research stream, a strategic partnership between the NSW Law Society and UNSW, and included four panelists.

When asked by Dr Rogers what makes a good leader, Michael Bunting, founder of The Mindful Leader, said that with 50 per cent leaders not trusted, good leaders are honest and have voluntary followers rather than forced followers.

“The most important beginning for any leader is being able to define what your leadership is about. If you were my boss, what should I expect from you, behaviour-wise? That’s the first thing, we find that less than 1 per cent of leaders have actually defined themselves,” he said.

“So, what exactly does your leadership look like? Do that as a minimum.”

Experienced NSW government lawyer and executive director and deputy general counsel of the Planning, Environment and Resources Governance and Legal Division Department, Brendon Jenkins, said good leadership was about empowering employees and creating a supportive culture which encourages the three C’s: curiosity, collaboration and creativity. Good leaders should also “accept every failure as an opportunity for growth and development,” he said.

“Know your strengths and weaknesses and work to improve the areas that you’ve perhaps been a bit weaker on, but also leverage the strengths of others around you.

“You also need to be creative and resilient, in particular, being able to control your emotions in difficult situations when you’re under pressure. You need to be able to be accountable for your own mistakes, but also for your teams’ mistakes as well, don’t throw your people under the bus. Be flexible and open to different perspectives; be willing to change your views when presented with evidence; and try to avoid being overly hierarchical, if you can,” Mr Jenkins added.

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Property Development and Transactions, Governance and Legal Division director at the Department of Planning and Environment, Amanda Alassad-Bruun, added that good leaders create a safe environment for staff to thrive in, as well as providing recognition for your team and admitting when you’ve made a mistake.

“I think you have to have high emotional intelligence and you have to be able to reflect on your actions and behaviour and how you can actually impact others. You need to let go of your ego — I know as lawyers that’s really hard, but we need to let go of our ego and we need to actively listen and understand that if we can collaborate with others, magic happens,” she said.

“You’ve got to be able to build strong relationships — and it all goes back to the pyramid of trust, but it’s so important, internally and externally, to build really strong relationships with people. There has to be responsibility and accountability.”

Particularly, as lawyers aren’t typically learning leadership skills throughout law school, Mudlarks Coaching & Advisory founder and principal, David Armsworth-Maw, said that being able to adapt flexibility to any situation — and being able to know what your company and staff need — are key traits of a good leader in law.

“The best leadership skills for the legal industry are being open to taking new perspectives and having a lifelong passion for learning. One of the things that we often see is that leaders or professionals in many ways get trapped in their own expertise, and start closing out others who have other expertise which may be really powerful to support lawyers to provide the best possible legal advice for their clients,” he said.

“Whilst we obviously know that lawyers are very technically skilled and very technically knowledgeable, I think the donut around those skills is the other professional skills of being able to relate to people, build good connections, build a great network of information; but also, being ready to deal with those unexpected challenges as we’ve seen in the past few years. And being open to rapidly changing ways of working and ways of thinking in order to support the future.”

Whilst lawyers increasingly focus on academic and hard skills, being the smartest person in the room does “absolutely not” make you a leader, according to Ms Alassad-Bruun — who said that lawyers need soft skills to be a leader, which are oftentimes overlooked.

“As an industry, we’re really doing a disservice to both [promoted lawyers], because we aren’t setting them up for success, we’re not teaching them to manage and lead; and especially to our junior lawyers, they’re often negatively impacted by ineffective senior leadership,” she said.

“I’ve experienced firsthand and witnessed that impact, both mentally and physically that it takes on people. And it’s why, unfortunately, a lot of lawyers do leave the industry, because there’s just horrific leadership and a person only has that technical capability — and you’ll find that there are a lot of people who are completely disillusioned and jaded, and broken when they do leave the industry. As an industry, we really need to develop and spend time and money training people and investing in our staff, and promoting people on a holistic basis.”

Similarly, Mr Jenkins agreed that “technical skills alone don’t make you a good leader”.

“You need to have well-rounded personal attributes such as courage and empathy, self-awareness, resilience and a love for bringing out the best in people. We need to recognise this before promoting people to leadership roles who are, perhaps, poorly equipped for the challenges of leadership,” he said.  

“I think every law firm and legal practice should teach leadership skills from day one, to prepare their staff for the time when they’re promoted to a leadership role. And I think there’s a bit too much emphasis on perfection; and being the smartest person at the table and not enough on developing those fundamental attributes for leadership.”

Further to this, Mr Bunting added that all the things that lawyers need for leadership are “just not taught”.

“The problem for most people in the professional services area is that trying to develop leadership skills can feel scary, uncomfortable, beginner-like; and so often it’s just avoided because of that.

“However, it’s learnable. That’s the key.”