When I became the managing partner of my firm, we hired an excellent general manager, who ultimately became our COO. I will call her Bev.
Bev had a background in business, significant experience in human resources and a great capacity for emotional intelligence, all of which were in short supply among our partners.
I was living my best analytical-driver life at the time and doing it well. I knew what we had to do to succeed and thought that all I had to do was explain it to my partners and they would line up behind me to get it done.
Of course, I soon found out I had some partners who just did not “get it,” which means they did not agree with me. They really should have, because I was clearly right, and they were overwhelmingly wrong.
I used to lament to Bev that no matter how many times I explained my views on what constituted the best strategic direction for the firm, some of my partners continued to fight me. This was back in the day when I did not understand that the solution to such situations is to take your client ball and go home. I was still at the stage of thinking I could win people over with facts and well-developed arguments. And yet, no matter how much I argued, all I got back from many of my law partners was sass. Go figure.
That is when Bev taught me a valuable lesson. She said you often must let people figure out things on their own. She counselled me to let them make their mistakes and learn from them, and that no amount of telling them that they were wrong was going to be as effective as allowing them to figure it out themselves. She was right, of course, as she usually was.
The time came that I recognized that Bev had contributed more to the success of our firm than most of our partners, and I suggested to my partners that we invite Bev to join the partnership. (Since she was not a lawyer, that would have taken some creativity, but I had some ideas as to how to do it.)
Ben was one of my partners; his grasp of law firm management did not go much beyond “everyone should work harder and bill more.” He told me, and all the other partners, that this was my stupidest idea ever. He said it in a way that suggested he had given the matter a great deal of thought, and that the competition had not even been close. I must admit to feeling some satisfaction that this must have meant that my earlier ideas had not been as stupid as he had previously said.
Bev did not become a partner, even after Ben left the firm because we did not work hard enough or bill more. As for me, I never did take my client ball and go home. Maybe I was not as smart as I thought I was. I suspect Bev knew that and was just letting me figure it out for myself.
This article was originally published by Law360 Canada, part of LexisNexis Canada Inc.