December 6, 2006
One Leadership Style Doesn't Fit All Law Firms
If you are stepping into a law firm leadership position, your success will depend on how well you match your approach and style to your particular firm’s environment and people. Those who selected you did so because they know you can do the job. The question is, “Can you do the job successfully in this environment with these people?” One leadership style doesn’t fit all. In fact, a recent study by Harvard and GE confirmed that negative things can happen due to a mismatch in style when a company hires a successful CEO away from another company.
It all comes down to what Clayton Christensen, Matt Marx, and Howard H. Stevenson call the Agreement Matrix and where your team fits in relation to the four quatrains of the matrix:
When a consensus on objectives exists, the organization needs someone out front leading the charge. The key here is pushing activity—“Just do it!”
On the other hand, when no consensus exists, various factions within a law firm are often pulling in very different (sometimes opposite) directions. It takes power, command, and enforcement to realign the organization behind common objectives. This is the classic call for a leader who can say and back up the statement: “I don’t care if you agree or not, get on board, get out, or suffer the consequences.”
When a consensus exists on both objective and the strategy for achieving it, management’s job is to reinforce the vision through the organization’s culture—folklore, rituals, tradition, planning, etc.
On the other hand, when there is agreement on the objective but weak or little consensus on how to achieve that goal, leadership has to focus on training, standard procedures, measurement and rewards.
Environments are seldom black and white. There are degrees of style and approach. There are different issues and different segments within a law firm that must each be met with appropriate leadership style but you get the gist—one style doesn’t fit all. Your success will depend on how well you adjust to fit the environment and its people.
You can read more about “The Tools of Cooperation and Change” in the October 2006 issue of Harvard Business Review, where the authors noted: “One of the rarest managerial skills is the ability to understand which tools will work in a given situation—and not to waste energy or risk credibility using tools that won’t.” You can purchase a reprint of “The Tools of Cooperation and Change” for a small charge by going to Harvard Business Online.
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Filed under Management by Tom Collins