BusinessLawGuy's Blog

Where does inspiration come from? There isn’t a single answer. Something that inspires you may not inspire me and vice versa. What inspires me today may be different than what will inspire me tomorrow. The source of inspiration is ever changing, which is why it is different day to day and can hit you at times that seem unlikely, such as the middle of the night or when you are in the shower.

Inspiration may be conscious or may sneak up on you . This reminds me of a lyric from the Pearl Jam song Release: “I’ll ride the wave where it takes me.” You have to be open to inspiration and embrace it when it comes. If you don’t, it will be gone in an instant, like a wave. The challenge is your best thoughts or ideas can come to you at any time.

I encourage you to embrace inspiration whenever it is there. This may mean having paper and a pen on your night stand or walking out of a shower dripping wet to write down an idea. You need to be open to and accept inspiration whenever it appears. That is the only way you will have the chance to follow the muse and see where it can take you.

Delivering a great experience to every client every time you interact with them is important. You want to treat them so they feel like they’re your priority even though they know you have many other clients and matters you’re working on. To do this you need to be conscious of the experience you’re providing no matter the type of communication.

It’s easier to do this in person than on the phone or through email or text because of the immediate feedback you receive from observing what your client is saying and their body language. When communication is in writing, it’s flat and more difficult to understand any emotion or tone.

Clients want to know we care. Luckily, there are many ways to show you care. You can demonstrate empathy for the client’s situation, listen fully to what they are communicating to you, and by honoring the commitments you make on getting back to them or completing a project or task. Sometimes you’ll miss, but hopefully it doesn’t happen often. If it does, you need to reset your client’s expectations in a manner that lets them know they and their matter remain a priority to you.

Delivering a great client experience also means paying attention to the simple mechanics of customer service. For example, it is better to over communicate with your client than the alternative. If you are communicating too much for their liking, they will let you know, hopefully in a constructive manner.

It also is of the utmost importance to return calls and emails promptly. Nothing says “you and your issues are not my priority” than responding to people in an untimely manner. If you have problems with this, you need to come up with a way to ensure you timely respond, whether through a to do list or setting tasks or appointments in your calendar.

All of us are in the customer service business. If I don’t provide great service to my clients, there are a lot of other attorneys and firms who will. The same is true in your line of work, which makes it important to try to set a goal to exceed your clients’ expectations in relation to the customer experience you provide.

Making hard decisions isn’t easy. But as my wife says, “hard decisions, easy life or easy decisions, hard life.” This is true in your personal life and your business.

In business, employees and peers are watching. If you fail to act, or delay acting, people will notice. This will negatively affect you effectiveness as a leader. This is about credibility. When you deal with issues, others on your team learn how their actions or inactions will affect their responsibilities and roles, and, ultimately, their employment.

Many leaders leave negative situations to chance positing the situation will work itself out. Most times this allows a negative situation to fester, which makes it harder to deal with in the future. The negative effects can include having good employees leave to escape a toxic situation. Making timely hard decisions is so important to avoid these types of negative results.

Timely dealing with hard decisions will make your life easier. You need to make hard decisions when they need to be made, not later. Try it and go for the easier life.

It’s a skill to fully listen to one or more people in a conversation. If you want to test how people are listening, ask them to repeat back to you the message or direction you were trying to convey. You will be surprised at how often the other person wasn’t fully listening or took something different from your words than you meant. That’s right, someone can be listening, but take something different from what you said than you meant.

I struggle with active listening because my mind goes into overdrive on what I want to say or how I want to respond. In my role as an attorney I have to be able to think on my feet, immediately respond to questions from judges or clients, and all the while respond in a meaningful way that answers a question or drives home a position. This doesn’t help me be a better listener, but only a better advocate for my client. Turning this off in other conversations is difficult.

The struggle to fully listen is evident in conversations with clients, friends, and family. I may be thinking about a response to a question or position, or a story I want to share, but if I focus on what I want to say, I am not focusing on what you are saying. This is human nature, but I constantly am working to be a better listener.

At a base level I try to remember what I tell my children, which is that if your mouth is open, your ears are closed. I am trying to teach them you have to listen to know what to say.

You should ask others about what you have said to see whether they were fully listening to you and whether they understood what you were trying to convey. You will be surprised by the results. Likewise, in important conversations, repeat back what you believe you heard to see when you are correct, or not.

I notice when I focus on what the other person says my responses are more thoughtful and directed at what I understand the speaker is interested in discussing. I challenge you to listen better in your conversations this week and see how you do.

A few years ago I read a quote that resonated with me. I happened upon the quote this week and had the same reaction. The quote is “Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them.”  This insightful statement is by Buckminster Fuller, and he is correct on many levels. 

We all have potential, but realizing that potential takes work.  Think about the intelligent people you have known who are disinterested in learning or otherwise do not apply themselves. No matter your definition of success, in most settings, hard work beats intelligence.

Learning goes hand in hand with hard work. It is part of improving yourself and makes for a better work place. It also makes for a more interesting work place.

Learning may take the form of business and self-help books, staying current on the news, or books on your chosen profession or vocation. It could involve attending seminars or taking classes. With the Internet at our fingertips, the options for learning are seemingly endless.

If you aren’t interested in learning more about what you do or how to do it better, you should ask yourself why. Is it because you think there is nothing left for you to learn? There is. Is it because you aren’t really interested in what you do? If so, that is a deeper question you should spend time considering.

This learning doesn’t really happen by chance. You may randomly pick things up from reading required in your job or from working with others in the course of doing your job, but that is haphazard learning. It is better to come up with a plan, which may include asking others for opportunities to learn from them or receiving direction on other actions you may take to do so.

What you learn depends on what you do and what will help you do what you do. The first step you should take is to figure out what your options are. They may include reading a book about networking, to taking a course online or at a local community college. The amount of options may surprise you.

Despite the plentiful options, it’s up to you to take action to stop the de-genius process. Challenge yourself and see where you can get by the end of the year.

Teams are important. It takes people to have a team. For a team to perform optimally, each person must have a voice and be allowed to contribute. 

This has been on my mind in relation to a corporate client who, while having a management team, really has a top down decision making process driven by a single person, the owner. I was asked to participate in a meeting on issues related to a legal matter. Each member of the team of four was allowed to speak. After each one spoke I watched and listened to the owner kind of acknowledge what someone said and then replace it with what he thought or wanted to do. This went on for two hours, after which I was directed to do what the owner had told me he wanted to do a few days before the meeting. He allowed his people to speak and ignored their thoughts and input. 

This is an example of a dysfunctional team. An owner has the right to be the ultimate decision maker, but if you give someone a voice only to ignore it, what’s the point of even giving the illusion of wanting input? 

That meeting made me think of a non-profit board I am a member of. The members of the board are diverse in many ways and each bring things to the table the others don’t. During a recent meeting on strategic issues, I listened as committee members spoke. People actually listened to each other and helped form the ideas and action steps on the matters being decided by the board. This is a functional team.

Functional teams involve input from all and team members being open to ideas different from their own. If you think about this, most of us are involved in teams at work and home. How these teams function makes a difference. Of course, at home, parents need to dictate family decisions on many issues, but allowing children a voice at the table on certain issues seems like a smart strategy for them to be part of a functional team from a young age.

People on a team won’t always agree with the decisions coming out of the group. Once a decision is made, those who may not have agreed with the decision need to align so there is a singular message coming from the team. This happens with high functioning teams: respectful discussion and disagreement when meeting and then sending a unified message to those not on the team.

If you are on a functional team, it just makes things easier. If you are on a dysfunctional team, make changes. Change is hard, but it’s the path forward to more ideas and better decision making.

Most of us are connected to our phones, tablets or computers more than ever right now. From the time we wake up until the time we go to sleep, most of us are a few steps from our office from anywhere in our home. Like many, my summer travel plans were cancelled, taking away a time I actually disconnect from work and email. Losing that time and the current circumstances are wearing on me and those around me. We all need a break, but it’s hard to do when day and night are spent in the same place.

It’s always hard to disconnect because of some perceived emergency situation for a client I may or may not remember a year in the future. When I do disconnect, I am reminded we all need to do so. It’s so relaxing and provides a much needed break from work and the continuous need to stay on top of email and various forms of electronic media and information. When is the last time you disconnected?

It’s more important than ever to do so, but it takes even more planning. Maybe you are willing to travel by plane or car and take a few days away. Even if you aren’t, there are ways to take time. Plan an outdoor activity. If the weather is bad in your locale, you may have to drive a few hours, but you can do so and be home the same day. It doesn’t matter what you do as long as you do something and force yourself to disconnect.

We walk around with these small computers in our pockets that we use to communicate with others, take pictures, surf the Internet, and stream video and audio content. We also use them for work. Most of us really are connected all day long whether because of a level of addiction or the need to be accessible at all times to customers and clients. For those working at home, the lines have become even more blurred.

As an attorney, I definitely have clients who think I should be able to immediately respond to any email or text at almost any time of the day. I try to set reasonable expectations of my availability and general response times, but many people think because a message was sent it will be immediately viewed and responded to. I had one client who used to text me “????” if I didn’t respond or call him within a few minutes of his text. When I would get back to him he logically understood I have other clients, a family and things going on, but because he is an instant responder on email and text, his knee jerk reaction is that everyone else is too.

Use your phone to Google it and you will find numerous articles and studies about how bad it is for your brain and, generally, your well-being, to be using technology so much and accessible at all hours. How bad has it become? Someone my wife previously worked with used to (and hopefully, for her and her husband’s sanity, doesn’t) keep her phone under her pillow and answer texts at all hours of the night. That is so bad on many levels.

Just like your body and brain need you to take vacation, they need you to disconnect from technology for at least short amounts of time. But it isn’t easy to disconnect – our phones help us fill downtime or dead space. The problem is that our downtime is time we used to spend thinking, coming up with ideas, and being creative. In the big picture, for most of us, technology is a creativity killer. For me it may mean the great legal argument or idea for one of my cases won’t come into my head out of the blue like they used to. For you it probably means something different, but there is something you have lost from not taking time to let your mind be unoccupied, even for a moment.

At the same time, I am a big fan of technology both in my professional and personal worlds. I continually am trying to balance its use better, with varying results depending on the day. The truth is you have to focus on turning away from your technology to reconnect not only with the people around you, but yourself.

Try taking a short break from technology and see what positive effects it has for you. I know some of you are saying to yourselves “but when I turn it back on I will be so behind and have to catch up.” You have to do that anytime you go on vacation, are in a meeting or unable to constantly be online, so accept that as a given. If you try to take a break, even for a short time, you will come back looking forward to the next time you can do so and try to make it a regular thing.

Imagine you are in a car with others on a long drive, have somewhere to be, and out of nowhere traffic on the highway comes to a stop. What is your first reaction? It may be to curse under your breath (or out loud). It may be to voice your frustration or you may be upset knowing you will be late to your destination.

I had this happen earlier this week. My first reaction definitely was frustration. But then I sat back and thought about what I can control and what I can’t control. It didn’t make sitting in traffic for around an hour stopped or barely moving fun by any means. At the same time it gave way to good conversation, made it easier to change the music and provided some time to think. There is good and bad with all things and I tried to find the good and let go of the frustration.

Patience is defined as “the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset.” Being able to do so is a learned talent. We all want what we want now. Learning that isn’t how the world works when you are young is a hard lesson. Aging, and hopefully maturing, doesn’t make it any easier. It also is impacted by the situation, whether you didn’t sleep well last night and a host of other factors.

That is why patience always is a work in progress. I try to exercise patience in situations where it’s needed. Sometimes I do better than others. No matter my reaction, I do look back to try and figure out how I could have reacted better and with a plan (and hope) to do better the next time.