The core theme is about shifting managerial mindset to improve team engagement, performance, and accountability by focusing on three key processes: prioritization, delegation, and performance management.
Mind Map
Click to expand
Click to explore the full interactive mind map • Zoom, pan, and navigate
Oh, hi everyone. It's here already. My
name is Tai. I am co-founder of Legal
Boards. Uh, and today we have here with
us Sandra. Uh, Sandra is a practic
management coach. Um, that will join us
today. And Sandra helps lawyers and
other professionals to grow their
practices and build a career. So with 19
years more uh of experience, she has
also a speaker, writer, entrepreneur in
residence at York University. Outside of
work, she loves painting. By the way,
she has a really good podcast that she's
delivered a little bit more about her
passion, uh yoga, meditation, and
reading. So let's get started. Uh thank
you so much, Sandra, to join us. uh
Sandre going to deliver this speech
today and uh after that we're going to
have a few qu Q&A. So if someone have
questions please just drop here at the
zoom and I going to help to miate that
and if we have time we can take a look
at how to apply a few tips and tricks
that Sandre going to deliver using
combine style don't need to be legal
board but of course I going to use legal
boards in this session. Uh and that's
it. So, thank you so much, Sandra.
Um, thank you, Ty, for this opportunity.
I love the partnership and hello everyone.
everyone.
So, we're going to talk about shifting
your mindset to drive better engagement,
performance, and accountability from
your team. But before we dig in, I
wanted to tell you a little story.
When I was a young manager, I got a
pretty big promotion.
I was excited. But before you get
excited, for me, it really didn't go
that well. At least not in the
beginning. It was chaos. Total chaos.
And until I learned a few management tricks.
tricks.
Then things started to fall into place.
I learned how to communicate with my
supervisor in a way that was effective.
I learned how to place my attention on
what my supervisor cared about. I
learned how to develop the right allies.
and I learned how to leverage power that
I didn't even know that I had in order
to influence change. After that, things
started to get significantly better for
everyone, my team, myself, and my manager.
manager.
So, why am I telling you this story from
a million years ago?
This experience taught me that it's
harder to lead than it looks, as I'm
sure many of you know.
And yet, even when a situation feels frustrating,
frustrating,
even when it feels like it's going on
for a long, long time, there still may
be a way to shift your view of your own
role to drive a different and a better
result. Even if there's nothing else
that you can do, you can change the way
you view your own role to change the
results. And that is true for leaders at
every level. In my little story, it was
true for me as the newly promoted
manager and because I did that in my own
role, it was true for my manager and for
their manager.
Okay. So, so whether you're a law firm
owner, a practice manager, or you lead a
team, if you're frustrated by poor
performance, lack of accountability, or
you're feeling the possibilities of
more, but you don't know how to pursue
it just yet, know this. You can change
your mindset to explore ways to get your
team to meet its potential.
So we're going to look at this through
the lens of three key managerial
processes. Prioritization,
delegation, and performance management.
All right, let's start with prioritization.
prioritization.
I know that it can be very frustrating
to watch over and over again as individuals
individuals
on your team
um don't they don't make progress on the
things that you care about while you
know they actually keep making progress
on the things that for you are not
priority and they're excited about those
things and you have tried to deliver
your message about what matters and it
doesn't seem to change anything.
So instead of getting upset that this
pattern continues,
um you can actually explore ways to
change your mindset about ways to help
them to focus on the right things. Okay,
so let's talk about some ideas to do
that. And these are prioritization techniques.
techniques.
Um maybe you have a system, but uh
here's an idea for a simple system. And
Tai is going to show us how to use legal
boards to do this in a way that actually
takes it from the abstract concept into
reality. Like actually use this idea.
Okay. So creating a priority system
starts with a scale. You have a scale
that you all agree on. 1 2 3. It's
literally as simple as that. What is a
priority one look like? That's your high
priority, your urgent thing. What's your
priority two? Less priority three. That
we'll get to it when we can get to it.
And how do you balance between the ones
and the twos and the threes? Because
every if everything's a one, you don't
have a priority system. That's that was
me in that in that young manager role.
That's a chaotic environment.
And if you don't agree on what the ones
are, you also don't have a priority
system. So, if you as the manager are
thinking or the firm owner, the practice
manager, if you're thinking, "These are
my ones. Why aren't my ones happening or
why aren't they happening fast enough?"
Well, maybe nobody else knows that those
are the ones.
So, you have to agree on them in order
And so, the next step to this is
creating a check-in system to review
changes to priorities regularly because
priorities aren't static.
So even if you have a way of labeling
things as 1, twos and threes and you
have you know your summary way of
summarizing the lists
um things are going to change and
sometimes they change really quickly. So
you need a way of checking in with each
other so that everyone has the same
expectations about when and how. So, do
you have a weekly meeting or do you
share a report or is it in a shared
document so that everyone can always see
it or or certain people can make updates
to it? And really what's recommended is
that whoever um whoever is managing
those tasks owns their own list. So, if
you're the firm owner and let's say you
have three lawyers reporting to you, the
three lawyers would have their own
lists. You're not updating it for them.
They own their lists. And if they have
associates reporting to them, they're
not owning their lists. Those associates
own their own lists, but they discuss
them and they ask for what they need to
know that things are actually on track
because, you know, a lot's at stake for you.
you.
And okay, so then the next step is
creating tools that will allow these
individuals to manage their priorities
as independently as possible and give
you the updates that you need at the
frequency that you need it, which may
change. So you may have regular standing
meetings and you may have a different
way of checking in for urgent updates.
Um, and everybody knows what are the
very things that you need to have
flagged in these updates. Where do
things stand? What are the obstacles?
What's the next step? What do people
need from you to move forward? Um,
what's been done? That sort of thing.
Okay. So, let's talk about an example.
So, let's say you have an associate
that's really busy with high maintenance
client. I know never happens, right? A
high maintenance client that actually
has nothing coming up. They're just, you
know, they've got some nervousness and
your associate doesn't hasn't learned
the skills yet of managing the boundary
of creating some clarity around their
role and scope of work and you know um
boundaries appropriate boundaries for
your availability for um you know who is
going to be uh doing what for them.
Okay. So, what happens is they're
spending a lot of time with this squeaky
wheel and you have a deadline creeping
up and materials aren't in yet and
you're still supposed to get back to
opposing council and things aren't
getting done and you're worried it's
they're going to drop the ball. So
that's an example of where you are not
aligned on the same priority
and having a conversation and having the
tools in place
will not only help to make sure that
you're all in agreement and on top of
the same priorities, but will help to
escalate the visibility of what is your
associate struggling with that's keeping
them away from what is actually priority one.
one.
And so instead of getting frustrated
that they're not working on the right
priority, it becomes visible to you
because you're open to a different way
of viewing this
that they're actually struggling with
something. They don't know how to manage
this wiki wheel client and this is just
an example.
All right, let's move on to process
number two. So process number two is delegation.
delegation.
So leaders at law firms know the
downside to not delegating. You all know
it, right? It means that you have too
much work. I mean, everybody's
trying to get a better work life balance
these days. And yet, and yet lawyers
struggle so much with the stress of
their work. There's burnout. And it also
keeps you even at the leader at
leadership level, it keeps you stuck in
the role that you're in. So you're
still, you know, stuck doing those
things that you would really like to
grow out of in order to take on
something new, something different or to
scale up your firm. It keeps you stuck
at that level. And your team also knows
the downside because they know the
downside of not receiving the work that
could have been delegated to them.
They're stuck in the same role at the
same level. Boring, right?
And yet this continues to be an area of
weakness at many law firms and really
across all professional practices. Why?
Why?
You probably already know the answer.
Because the managers and professional
practices are fearful that nobody's
going to do it as well as they will. And
I mean to some extent that's true. you
know, you're the one with the experience
and you're bringing on somebody more
junior and they're not going to do it as
well as you will. And so that's why we
talk about doing delegation effectively.
Guess we're going to dig into that a
little more, but this is the reason why
it's happening. And you know that it's
going to take you long a long time to
train somebody. You also know the stakes
are high. So you don't want somebody to
fumble. You don't want them to send out
something that just doesn't look right.
We don't want them to miss an important
deadline, a crit critical step in your process.
process.
Okay? So, instead of worrying about,
you know, well, they need to be better
before I can really trust them, instead
of worrying about that, you can change
your mindset to what can you do to help
them get better? what is within your
capacity in your role to offer something
to them so they can get better. Okay.
So, so here are some ideas.
Um, now this is a really difficult and
tricky one and it really separates uh
managers that thrive from managers that
that still struggle with the people
management side. Okay, this this is
about learning the differences
in each individual that reports to you.
and giving each of them what they need
so that they can they can perform at
their highest level.
So what do you look at? Each individual
will have different level of experience,
different level of skill. And by the
way, that will change depending on the
specific task, right? You may have
somebody who has five years of
experience and they're great, but then
you give them something they've never
done before and all of a sudden they're
back down at the the more junior level.
I mean some of what they've done could
be transferable but you need to assess
their ability based on their experience
with that specific task not their
experience generally. Okay. So that's
one thing to look at and that will help
you to make decisions about
how much you know how much mentoring to
give them uh how often to meet with them
and along the way you know instead of
waiting until the end. Somebody has more
experience give them more space. They're
not going to appreciate being
micromanaged. So you need a different
approach with different people. That's
the real key here. Other things to look
at based on this individualized approach
is to look at their different learning
styles. So um everybody learns
differently and effective delegation
really also depends on people learning
what's needed. So you know and they may
already be familiar with the process but
they may not be familiar with what you
want there. There's always an element of
learning. So what is their learning
style? And some examples of that would
be, well, you have introverts versus
extroverts. That's something most people
are familiar with, but they may not
realize it affects their learning. So,
let's say you're booking a meeting to
delegate something to somebody or to two
people or three people at the same time.
Just consider, am I working with
introverts or ex extroverts? The
introverts will differ in that they will
benefit from looking at materials in advance.
advance.
So if you give them an email in advance
with I would like you to read this over
or I would like you to look at this or
watch this video or whatever it is, read
this president, whatever it is, give
them a chance to absorb the ideas or
give them, you know, an email that
outlines here are the things I want you
to consider before we go into the
meeting. That will help them to mentally
prepare for your meeting and you will
see that they're much more productive
and much more able to process the discussion.
discussion.
If you just hit them sort of
spontaneously with these ideas, it will
notice that they don't speak up as well.
They don't retain it as well in the
meeting. And if you ask them, okay, so
how are you going to proceed? They may
not be able to have an answer for you on
the fly.
So this is a way of working with them in
order to get the most out of them.
Extroverts by contrast will be more able
to um to brainstorm you know uh ideas,
think out loud and you know absorb ideas
in the moment and actually they'll
benefit from that the discussion the
spontaneous discussion. So knowing who
who's who and uh some people are visual
learners so providing them with you know
visual materials will help them
and some people are auditory and also
people differ in their pace of learning.
So, some people will naturally want to
try something immediately, the whole
thing. You tell them, "Okay, here's a
new thing. You've never done it before."
They'll be like, "Yeah, okay. Let me
go." And that's literally the way they
will do it best. When you're dealing
with somebody like that, give them a
small process to start because they want
to do a toz. So, give them something
small. Don't tell don't start with the
big complex thing. If you're looking at
somebody who who's nervous about that
approach, telling them this is the way
we do it. You just have to throw
yourself into it. You won't get the best
out of them. With somebody like that,
you'll get the best out of them if you
work with their style. So maybe they
need to observe, watch somebody or watch
a video or try a small step. So you can
still show them the whole thing and tell
them do step A and then we'll discuss
it. So just work with their different styles.
styles.
Okay. Help them understand your
expectations. What does a job well done
look like to you?
And help them understand why. Right?
Okay. And okay, so now here's a real
important trick when it comes to
delegation. Never take it back. If you
delegate something, don't touch it. If
somebody's struggling with the thing
that you delegated, there are ways to
address that and support them without
taking it back. This is a trap that many
professionals fall into. All right. So,
for example, let's say a lawyer is
writing a letter and you're not happy
with it. You're like, you know, it
hasn't the tone hasn't landed. Don't
tell them, just email it to me. I'll fix
it because now it's yours. Now it's your
problem. You've taken it back. There are
other ways to address this rather than
just letting them struggle. You could
say, you know what, I don't have time to
talk about it now. the tone hasn't quite
landed, but I have ideas about it and
maybe you can think about it and let's
discuss it at 3 p.m. I have 15 minutes
and they still own the task
and they grow. That's how you that's how
you delegate effectively.
Okay. And then the third process that
we're talking about here is performance management.
management.
So judgment about performance that comes
from experience, you know, and you you
you may have um clear ideas about where
the people who report to you, where they
land, good or bad, and and even on the
good side or the bad side, they may not
have the same view of their own performance.
performance.
So you may have guessed by now what I'm
going to suggest. You can change your
mindset. uh to figure out ways to help
them get on the same page as you.
All right, so let's talk about some ideas.
ideas.
So um one of these ideas would be to get
formal about goal setting and and I
think Tai will also show us something
about this using legal boards.
So instead of just you know throwing
around uh the possibilities or you know
an idea to them and saying oh you know
you could
maybe you should focus a bit more on
getting out there as a speaker so that
your network grows and so people start
to know you and um you know you can you
can build your book of business. And so
instead of that just coming up randomly
once or twice a year and then nothing
happening which can be very frustrating,
um get more formal about these goals.
And the goals can be uh set based on
important goals for the for the
practice, you know, for the firm, for
you as the manager. And they can also be
set based on career aspirations for that
individual. and they could be somewhere
in the middle, you know, like where
these things meet. Um, but, uh, the the
process of setting these goals allows
for you to get to know each other
better. And, you know, maybe having
these conversations around career aspirations
aspirations
actually helps you to find that
intersection point between what this
individual wants and cares about and
what the firm needs. Or maybe it will
help you to come up with new ideas that
you might not have thought about. It may
help you to come up with ways to keep
your best talent. Um, and you know, in
some places it may not be workable, and
that's okay, too. It creates
opportunities for transparent
conversations to uh to keep the bridges
alive. Even if somebody will need to
leave because they want to practice in a
different area, that's okay, too.
Okay. So, goal setting. So examples like
you know okay so we've talked about you
could be saying to somebody we've talked
about you getting out there in front of
your network and uh you you said that
you're interested in speaking so you
could put some goals down around that um
you know um booking some speaking
engagements um you know and and what is
it that they're nervous about about
these speaking engagements? Are they
worried that they may not be good? Have
they not had a lot of experience? Is it
the writing of the speech? Is it the
finding the topic? Is it finding the
right audience? Is it the delivery? What
is it about it that they're struggling
with? And create your goals around that.
So maybe they will join Toast Masters or
maybe they'll just, you know, practice
with a mentor. Um, whatever whatever it
is that supports them to get better at
this goal that you agree on
and be formal about it. So you set the
goal and then you say, "Okay, let's keep
meeting on this goal and here are our
targets for growth." So you get very
specific about metrics that you're going
to be measuring rather than just
throwing around things randomly, you
know, oh, you know, it would be nice if
you did this and then nobody ever
follows up. Nobody understands why that
didn't happen. So here when you say okay
in a month or in two weeks whatever
makes sense for that specific goal we're
going to meet again and we're going to
talk about the progress on this and this
and this and so now well this is an
action plan and this motivates progress
and it gets into the you know the the
action plan from from a perspective of
supporting the individual rather than
forcing them or making it about you know
requireing experiments.
This is about helping them.
Okay. And you know, and another example
of that kind of a goal would be okay.
Let's say somebody wants to get more um
skilled at managing people. So you could
build you could build goals around that.
Is your team busy? Are they getting
results? Are do they look like they're
purposeful in their work? Are they
motivated? Are they growing?
And help them to become that. and ask
them what is it about managing people
that you're finding challenging so that
you can build in um some kind of growth
for them around that on around the
things they struggle with.
Okay. So another area of performance
management that I have noticed lawyers
and other professionals really really
struggle with is giving feedback.
And so to to get really good at
performance management,
this needs to be normalized,
you need to master giving feedback and
make it normal at your firm with your
team. One of the ways to do that is to
get good at receiving feedback, too. You
know, just as a a quick example, if you
want to turn this into part of your
culture at your firm, uh you could say,
you know, in in let's say you have
regular meetings with your team, you
could say at the end of the meeting,
let's go around the room and say, what
could we have done better
today or what did we do well this week?
And also, what you know, what's an idea
for something we could have done better?
And it's a very soft way of doing
feedback in a regular fashion. So people
just get they get comfortable with
saying something critical and finding
the right words to do it and you know
overcoming their fear of people
pleasing, their fear of hurting
somebody's feelings and um you know uh
sort of you know getting comfortable
with both the giving and the receiving
of it.
So, a couple of traps that happen here
with the giving feedback. On the one hand,
hand,
some people tend to be overly nice. You
know, they they're they're very worried
about hurting somebody's feelings or,
you know, that someone's not going to
hear what they really intend with their words.
words.
But if you are overly nice when you're
giving feedback, know that you are
holding somebody back in their career
because they do not have the
professional judgment that you have at
your level and they don't know what they
can do to do to be better. And this is
not about per poor performance. This is
about all of the people who report to
you because the biggest mistake that
managers make is that they don't realize
the star performers are the ones that
really want the feedback. So, you know,
instead of saying, you know what, um,
they're doing great, they don't need
anything from me, those are the ones
that they just they're craving that
feedback. Please tell me what I can do
to be even better.
So this kind of um process applies to everybody.
everybody.
So being nice too nice and I'm not
saying be mean but you know if you are
worried about hurting someone's feelings
and you don't give them the feedback
that they actually need to grow you are
holding them back in their career.
You're not being nice. And then on the
flip side there are um managers who
struggle with holding back on that
expressing disappointment or anger that
they didn't get what they expected that
you know this uh whatever it was
deliverable was below their standard.
And so when you express disappointment
or anger in that way, first of all, it's
it's not motivating and it will hurt
people's feelings, some more than
others, and you may not actually know
that, you know, that's what happened.
But it also won't help them to
understand. You're not helping them get
better because all they see is that they
didn't do it right. They don't maybe
even understand what they did wrong. So
that's not it's not the mindset of
helping them to do better, right? And so
learning some
some emotional restraint around you know
these sort of trigger points will help
you to become a better manager and will
help you to bring your team along to a
higher level of performance and they
will be grateful for this.
Um now there is there is a tool in this
manager's toolbox that relates to
performance management that is underutilized.
underutilized.
this is delivering recognition and I
think that it's always been
underutilized and I think it's even
worse now post pandemic because a lot of
teams are still working remotely or
hybrid and so you know there tends to be
this abrupt nature to uh digital
meetings whereas if you were in the
office you might linger and how was your
weekend what's going on with you oh you
know let's talk a little bit more about
that meeting it was so great I can't
believe you got that new clients and
these types of things don't necessarily
happen when you're meeting digitally.
So, it's important to intentionally
learn how to deliver recognition
regularly, but learn how to do it in a
way that has impact.
And that goes beyond just saying thank
you. Thank you is great. Say thank you.
Don't hold back on saying thank you. but
also t learn how to tie your
appreciation to the thing that motivates
that individual. So now we're going back
to what I spoke about earlier, which is
understanding the the distinction in
each of those individuals that reports
to you. What makes them different? What
makes them tick? And this is not an easy
thing to get at the root of which is why
having regular conversations about their
career aspirations and helping them to
grow will help you to tap into that
better. So the more you understand about
what drives each of these individuals,
the better you'll be able to to give a
compliment to somebody in a way that
really hits home. Okay? And an example
of that, all right, so let's say
somebody did well in court, like really
well, and you know, you're just you just
want to tell them how great it was.
Great job. Great job in court. Okay, so
that's one level one level of
acknowledging it, which is great and
important. Or you could go deeper with
it. You could tell them, you know, you
really prepared your materials well.
That's why it went well in court. It
didn't just happen on that day. you made
this happen over three months.
And um for some people that will really
hit home
because they actually really care about
process. They care about preparing materials.
materials.
For somebody that's more people
oriented, they may have cared about a
different aspect of this. So for that
kind of person, you could say, you know,
you really got to the heart of the
client's story. that's why you did well
in court today because it was magical.
Or maybe they care about the team and
you could say, you know what, you
coordinated this process beautifully.
Everybody knew their role and everybody
showed up at the right time in the right
way and for that person that will land
well. So this is about learning your
team and it it it's not an overnight
process. It's uh you know it takes time
and uh you have to sort of try based on
what you know and you can always ask
people as you have these check-in
meetings and learning more and more
about them why you know what do you love
about your job? What is it that you're
hoping to learn next year? What would
you like to try? And through these kinds
of questions where you get to know them
better, you will learn how to manage
them better and how to help to bring
them along to a higher level of performance.
Okay. So those are the three management
processes I wanted to take you through.
And I would like before we leave this
formal part of the seminar, I would like
to leave everyone here with a challenge.
Okay? So the challenges just start somewhere
somewhere
rather than thinking about going back to
the office and oh my those were some
important ideas I need to I need to
implement all of them that can be
overwhelming. So instead of falling into
that trap what I want to suggest is you
consider an immediate goal one small
goal to start. What can you shift in
your team that would be a catalyst for
change and create some momentum around
you know improving performance and uh
and and uh help you to maybe bring on
one of you know one of these other ideas
next because success breeds success. So
if you bring on if you start with one uh
action item from what we talked about
today and it goes well well then that
will create interest and buy in and it
will create more excitement around
trying something else.
So examples of that you know something
small it an example of that would be
well you know I've I've wanted our firm
to dock it better. Okay. So, how can you
create some goals around docketing
better? Or is it specific individuals
that are, you know, they're more wrapped
up in the case and doing a good job or
are wrapped up in the research, but they
keep forgetting to docket their time and
this isn't volunteer work and that can
be very frustrating. So, creating some
goals around that and and you know who
who needs to be involved in that and how
does that process need to be supported?
how often do you need to meet? Um,
kick it off with some specific metrics
that you're going to measure so that you
can actually celebrate once you've
succeeded. Okay? And other examples
would be, you know, business
development. These are just very easy to
pick off a goal. Okay. Uh, I want, you
know, I want to network more. Um, so
what do I need to do to establish some
goals around that? I want the whole team
to network more. So, what should we be
Okay. And I know Tai is going to take us
through a demo and I just would like to
say that if any part of this talk
resonates with you, I invite everyone
here to book a 30 minute one- on-one law
firm breakthrough breakthrough session
to uncover what's really holding your
firm back and to map out your immediate
next steps. You can email me directly at
Sandra Beckorbeck.ca
and Beckor is spelled be kh o r. Over to
you Ty. Amazing. Thank you. Thank you so
much. So uh people might have some
questions but I have a few questions if
I could take. So the first one that come
to my mind is
do you have any tip or cultural uh
advice that could help us to understand
where where is the moment to delegate
because I think this is a topic very
hard for most of the lawyers because
they do all of the steps. They are able
to do all of the steps. how they can
slice uh and how they manage to delegate
part of their work. Do you have an idea
how this could be something?
Yeah. And you know, I think this goes
back to the idea of individualizing your
plan. So rather than saying this is how
I'm going to delegate moving forward to
think about the people that report to
you and their skill, their level of
experience, but also their interest, you
know, and what what is it they want to
get involved in, but as much as possible
taking off a piece of something so that
that person can own it. So rather than
giving them oh this little thing that
you know that will plug into a process
that you are still managing they're not
going to feel any ownership of that as
much as possible give them a complete task
task
and remember to meet with them you know
give them the milestones give them the
clarity of expectations up front does
that help Tai yeah a lot uh on this
topic um I think at least for me It's
complicated to have um cadence and a
cultural mindset of feedback is always
important should happen uh occasionally.
Uh what is your tips on how we can
implement this culture internally?
How to implement a culture of giving
feedback? Yeah, I I think it starts with
Don't leave this zoom. Okay.
All right. I'm going to explain. So, you
can't um you can't ask other people to
be open to receiving feedback if you
don't show them how to do that, right?
So, you know, uh you can have one-on-
ones with your team where you're
actually being open about aspects of
your role that you've maybe never done
before or you would like to do better
and, you know, asking them for feedback.
So, how can I manage you better? How can
I help you grow better? Um, you know, or
you were at this meeting with this new
client, you got to observe me. Give me
your feedback. What do you think I could
do better next time at a first meeting
or at a, you know, a pitch or you saw me
speak at that event? You give me
feedback. Did you watch my body
language? What can I do better? So, that
gets them more used to it. Yeah. Yeah.
No. and also I think give um more human relationships.
relationships.
Uh uh the partners are not there to be
the god of the firm. We are there to
work together. So might everyone have
different opinions and could increase
the the firm over time? Yeah. And
honestly it's better for everyone. Like
it it might be hard in the beginning to
get used to doing this because you've
never done it before. And it does feel
vulnerable, but actually once you get
into it, there's a sense of relief to
not have to pretend that you're good at
everything because you're not. Because
you know why? Nobody is. Yep. Yep. And
this is uh this hits home because I also
have a 13 years old boy that I need to
raise. And this is something also in the
personal style like yeah I I make
mistakes as you. So this end the conversation.
conversation. Yeah.
Yeah.
Uh so now the last uh few minutes of
this session here uh I going to show
share here a combine style uh workflow
that might be could be the source of all
those topics that Shandra is delivering
here and where you could put everything
together and help you to keep track of
everything. Uh again, this is just an
idea and I of course I'm using legal
boards to show with that. Uh but you
really can do in paper and pen or
anywhere you prefer. So Sandra also
could uh help me to uh improve my
workflow here. So she can uh give some
tips on me here. So what I have here is
a workflow in legal boards that I
created specific for my team member
Katie. Uh so this workflow my idea here
Sandra was create a workflow where I can
have different stage different sections
here and also I can share this workflow
with Katie. So she uh she can you can
see my screen. I don't know if it it's
um you know it showed for a second and
then a tran down to a thin vertical
strip. Yeah. Okay. No problem. I share
again. Let's let's
stop sharing.
Share again.
Here you go. Now, now it's you can see
it. Yeah. Okay. Nice. So my idea here,
Sandra, was create a white board uh to
share with my team member. So I could
have one of those for each one of the
team members I have in my firm and I
share this space with them. So you can
see here I have my Katie uh team member.
So she can see the expectations we have
set up. Uh we have a job description
here. We have a role priority agreement
here. We also set up together the party
goals uh what we are expecting to
improve in the next following months. uh
some skills review so mail response
times something that we can drop here
some ideas or some feedback together and
here uh I have added this next to talk
it's like a inbox session that even
Katie or myself we can drop here some
ideas like well client communication is
not good let's talk about this in the
following weeks uh but also Katie could
drop something like well work balance is
not good for me. I want to have more
space and room in my schedule. Uh so
those are my ideas of how we can
document everything. Do you have tapes
here for me? So this would be a priority
management system. Yeah, like something
that we can revisit um together uh Katie
and I as a manager of her and we can
open the items here. So for example, we
may response times here. I set what is
the problem we are seeing here. We give
some goals uh some examples how we can
take out that and also we can use the
timeline to drop some comments like hey
you got a great improvement last week
and we could open this together in a
online session uh even if it's everyone
in home office we could open this
together and talk about this and discuss
those items here.
So I I I love this and for for everyone
watching this, this is my first time
seeing this. So Ty and I talked about
this idea and I love the interactive
element to this session because it makes
the ideas less abstract. Um and uh this
is very creative, right? Bringing the
ideas into fruition here. Um I I think
this is an interesting example of how to
get away from performance reviews. So
performance reviews uh are becoming more
controversial you know among consultants and
and
a way to replace them and still focus on
performance is to have a coaching system
where you establish goals and you review
them quarterly but to still have some
formality to it. And this is an example
of okay, this is in writing like the
actual employee would have in writing
great improvement this week. I made
progress on my on my goals. So, you
know, if when it comes to reviewing
salary or talking about promotions, you
still have that sort of momentum forward
even if you discard the performance
reviews. Doing something like this would
give you that formality to improving performance.
performance.
Yep. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's great. I
also like this uh next to talk because
um I like the idea of when you are
managing people you give right away uh
insights like hey what you did right now
was not exactly what we should do or hey
this is good but also I want to have a
place that we could register that and
putting all together and also have a
space the team member also share their
problems. So, I want to talk about this
in two weeks because I gonna have a
one-on-one uh with my manager and uh I
want we talk about that. So, this is
also I don't know what you think about
it, but a good open space that we can
put on are the topics that we should
discuss. Yeah. I mean, what this does is
it creates openness to giving feedback.
So, here you're saying, okay, we're
we're going to be talking about
something. That means I have some
comments. is I need to share. So,
they're they're being forewarned about
it and they may have a chance to prepare
for that. But what you're also doing
here, and I find people really struggle
with this, is you're giving them an
opportunity to ask for what they need.
Yeah. You You wouldn't believe how many
times I have coached people,
professionals with years of experience,
and they're having a problem, and I ask
them, "Did you talk about this with your
supervisor?" Almost always the answer is
no. Yeah. And why do they say no?
Because they don't want to look stupid.
Serious. These are smart, smart, smart
people, accomplished people, and they
don't talk about it. But when you
normalize the we need next to talk about
this, you're giving them a permission to
say I need something. Okay. Every time
we meet, I want you to tell me what you need.
need.
Yeah. I love that. Uh so nice. So that
this workflow here is one uh that I I
built based on your speech. Uh the other
one uh I create here it's called team
overview. This is just for myself as a
partner of the firm and this is more
broad. So this is what I expect to my
whole team. So I have team goals, I have
challenge that I can see my team are
facing, uh checkins that I want to do
with everyone, feedback loops, uh
coaching sessions. Uh so some ideas that
we can put here for the entire team. Uh
this one I don't think this uh it's nice
to share with all of the firm, but maybe
that's yours management uh level. think
it's something that we put everyone
together because what I feel is this
cultural in in the form is something
that you need to keep talking like a
little bit every day because in backburn
of your burn of your brain and you need
to keep this up always in every conversation.
conversation.
So um would you add something like you
know here are my top priorities in here?
Yeah, I would say the team goals could
could be something that we swap and
okay, this was this milestone here that
is SOP for my draftings. This we have
finished that. So this is a complete
milestone. This is not more a problem
and then we could add more items here.
So this is Yeah, go ahead. How do you
show the difference in the priorities?
So when I was talking about one, two,
three, so this is urgent. this is not as
urgent. This is the least urgent. How do
you show that here? I I think uh what I
could I would think to address that
using labels. So we could put three
cards here, each one with a different
color label color and everyone could see
here and okay, this is my level of priority.
priority.
Yeah, that's great. And it's so easy to
see it at a quick glance what is top priority.
priority.
Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. So, uh what well
that's it. Uh I really want I was
looking only to give this um open ideas
to how to put in place uh all Sandra
speech and how you could start to
address that right away. Uh and what we
going to do here for the following days
is this session it's being recorded.
We're going to launch this on YouTube
and also in our uh website and we're
going to share with everyone here. Uh
Sandra also prepare a deck that it's
going to be shared by Mayway for
everyone here at this session and those
two workflows here I going to transform
into a workflow template in legal boards
and you also can download from our
website. Okay. So, thank you so much,
Sandra. Was amazing. It was really good.
Thank you. I hope you enjoy it. Yeah,
that was that was great. I love the
partnership. I love how you took the
ideas we talked about and created these
workflows in it and made it so visual.
Thank you. Yeah, thank you too for your
time. I hope we can do this more often.
So, bye everyone. Have a great rest of week.
Click on any text or timestamp to jump to that moment in the video
Share:
Most transcripts ready in under 5 seconds
One-Click Copy125+ LanguagesSearch ContentJump to Timestamps
Paste YouTube URL
Enter any YouTube video link to get the full transcript
Transcript Extraction Form
Most transcripts ready in under 5 seconds
Get Our Chrome Extension
Get transcripts instantly without leaving YouTube. Install our Chrome extension for one-click access to any video's transcript directly on the watch page.
