Dr Larry Richard is a former Lawyer, who now works to understand what makes Lawyers tick. In our conversation, he shares his findings from his work with lawyers. His major insight is that skills and tools that make Lawyers good at law do not necessarily make them good leaders. In analyzing a variety of personality assessment tools, he found that Lawyers tend to be overrepresented in various traits. For example, when you analyze a population using the Caliper tool, you usually get most people scoring around 50 on each trait. With Lawyers, you get seven traits where the majority score outside of the middle range, usually 40-60

Scepticism being the most dominant. The challenge is that although these traits help with performance as a lawyer, they are often less helpful in things like Leadership. In today’s world, for Lawyers to be successful, they also need to develop skills for which a larger portion do not score well.

Here are some of the other insights that stood out for me.

Leadership is about admitting you do not know the way forward.

Having worked with many Leaders, very few are willing to admit that they do not know. Richard commented, “leadership demands that you ask your constituents to trust you as a way of getting them to follow you.” For him, “Leadership isn’t necessary when things are stable. Leadership only needs to emerge when things are changing and uncertain. So leaders can never say, I guarantee this is the right path, which means they always have to say to their constituents, I think this is the right path. Follow me, please trust me.” His point is that because Lawyers are so high in scepticism, it is difficult for them to trust others and ask for trust. Lawyers then are immediately in a dilemma. Asking for and gaining trust from a group of people predisposed to be, and trained to be sceptics, is hard at the best of times. Additionally, in my experience, most people think leaders need to know it all.

When should you choose emotion over logic?

When you are trying to get people to do teamwork, logic can be helpful. Emotions, however, can get you there faster and easier. Logic is a great tool for finding solutions. When it comes to implementing solutions, however, we need to leverage emotions.

Bringing out the best in others is not a logical endeavor.

People are multifaceted. In our conversation, we talk about how, for some people, their talents may not be valuable, until a particular context arises. People are complex and multifaceted. Bringing out the best in others is not a logical endeavour.

Boost performance by helping people find satisfaction and productivity.

In our conversation, we share some of our insights on workplace performance. One conversation that stood out for me is that insight that productivity and satisfaction feed each other. This really resonated with me. Effectively doing things with less friction and better results can be the holy grail of many people’s performance. Workplace engagement has a satisfaction component and an engagement component. When you can connect the two, you increase performance.

Avoiding the hedonic treadmill.

For so many of us, we spend our lives chasing the next goal. In our conversation, we talk about how lawyers are prone to get stuck on the hedonic treadmill. They chase the next thing. I will be happy when I become a partner. I will be happy when I get that new house. When we met those goals, we set new ones. This is the hedonic treadmill. In my own work, we help people work from a lens of consciousness. We help people be intentional about how they spend their time. Doing things today that give them what they want in the future.

Sometimes people are their own worst enemy.

We have a conversation about we often get in our own way. When we look at the things we want to achieve, often the biggest barrier is ourselves.

Predictive tools vs. Heuristic Tools

In our conversation, we talk about how we should think about psychometrics tools. The distinction we discuss is that some of these tools are better predictive tools, (help us predict the future) while others should be thought of as heuristic tools (help us think about and imagine the future). This distinction is important in several additional domains. For example, strategic planning is often thought of as a predictive exercise. The truth is close to it being a heuristic tool.

Quote:

I loved the quote Dr. Richard shared.

Absence diminished mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and kindles fire. – Francois de La Rochefoucauld

For more information, about Dr. Richard visit: https://www.lawyerbrain.com/