BESPOKE SESSIONS

Effective collaboration continues to be a challenge for international firms.  Our clients tell us that we have helped create stronger partner connections by helping them really get to know each other better and to share their motivations, successes and business objectives.  Our interactive sessions create enthusiasm and a sense of collective ambition for sharing networks and building collaborative plans to pitch for and develop more business.  Following our sessions, partners have successfully co-created significant, new client relationships. 

The collegiate nature of firms means that it is often difficult for partners to have necessary challenging conversations.  By helping them develop clarity about what they want from the conversations, what might hold them back and the emotional agility to engage in productive dialogue, we enable them to communicate in an effective and inspiring manner.  Using practical and memorable techniques that draw upon emotional intelligence and neuroscience, we create a confidential place to practice and receive feedback on their conversations.  Our clients tell us that they leave these sessions feeling more confident and motivated.

We know from psychometric studies and experience that lawyers have strong natural tendencies toward high caution and perfectionism, both of which can hinder delegation.  The leveraged model of firms means that is important for lawyers at all levels to delegate well and early in their careers.  Our sessions help them to overcome tendencies toward perfectionism, busyness and the limiting assumption that it is easier to do it themselves.  Our interactive practical sessions explore the best methods for delegating, including how to project manage, motivate others, engage in meaningful conversations, create trust and give effective feedback.

The continuing multi-generational profile of law firms means that it is important for each generation to understand the others better. In this highly interactive session, partners and associates work in generational cohorts to create profiles that accurately represent them.  They are asked to answer questions about values, motivations, rewards, and working styles. The candid (and often amusing) revelations from one generation to another build a new and more honest awareness of how people are feeling and what they want from work. These conversations serve as a springboard to develop greater mutual understanding and alignment.

We help our clients design and introduce highly engaging mentoring programmes, which have a significant impact on both mentors and mentees.  We believe that in order for mentoring to be successful, there must be mutual respect, genuine curiosity, good chemistry and strong communication skills.  We work with firms, up front, to help them understand how to create good matches.  We teach the participants how to contract clearly, articulate and share their motivations for being a mentor or mentee.  We give them a rehearsal space to practice goal setting and having conversations that provide an appropriate blend of support and challenge. These sessions are interactive and highly practical.

For many of our clients, the sentiment ‘what got you here won’t get you there’ resonates strongly.  While certain behaviour may have been driven by intelligent choices earlier in their careers, that same behaviour may now be holding them back from achieving greater success. In these highly reflective sessions, we lead the group through a step by step exercise of setting a goal for positive change, clearing out the obstructive behaviour, confronting competing commitments, and challenging big assumptions.  By shifting their perspective, they take real steps toward meaningful change.

In this increasingly volatile world, adaptive leadership becomes ever more important.   Grounded in emotional intelligence research, we help leaders and future leaders to increase their awareness of the impact they are having and want to have. In this lively interactive session, participants explore their natural styles of leadership, and the strengths and limitations of their preferred styles. We invite them to experiment with a wider range of styles to generate more possibilities, demonstrate agility and become more impactful leaders.

Through the use of psychometrics, we give our clients a greater ability to develop self-awareness, which is at the core of emotionally intelligent leadership.  They learn how to leverage natural strengths and practice responding with greater self-regulation.   The session explores the five big factors of personality.  In safe and interactive way, participants share aspects of their personality in order to appreciate differences or similarities.  This level of sharing generates stronger bonds, greater trust and lots of laughter.

Resilience is about the ability to choose how to respond to a challenging situation rather than to react negatively, and the ability to bounce back quickly and with optimism.  In this reflective session, we provide a framework to explore a particularly challenging situation, understand the negative emotions that may trigger, and learn how to make a conscious choice in responding to that situation.  We draw on research in neuroscience, mindfulness and emotional intelligence to help increase awareness, focus and choice.