INSEAD professor Herminia Ibarra’s insights on leading and developing your own role, as well as that of your team, are surprising in the fact they are rooted very much in the here and now. We outline her pragmatic thinking and ask general counsel to weigh in with their thoughts on Ibarra’s work.
Autumn 2016 | Skills in management and leadershipSo you keep hearing from people like us that you need to function more like a leader in your legal role. The problem is, you’re too busy dealing with all the other requirements that your role keeps throwing at you, to even get a moment to think about how to develop like a leader.
Ibarra advocates that to act like a leader you need to devote time to four key tasks:
Easier said than done some might argue – particularly if you are still engrossed in the demands of your current role. But according to Ibarra, there are five steps you can take immediately to make your current role more of a platform for expanding your leadership outsight:
In her research, Ibarra points to one key characteristic successful leaders have: understanding the context and bigger picture in which they operate. To do this effectively, she argues you need to develop sensors to orient yourself to what’s really important in a vast sea of information. This is more key the more senior you become, and the more widespread your responsibilities and purview.
How this works is via developing a very broad understanding of your business. It also requires the ability to synthesise information and not completely get lost when finance is speaking numbers or supply chain is speaking supply-chain-ese. Ibarra argues, ‘If you are not very quickly able to distil and understand the big themes, you are going to be completely overwhelmed when your boss suddenly pulls a question you weren’t expecting out of the hat.’
Tim Murphy, general counsel at MasterCard, who spent ten years in management roles inside the business before transitioning back to legal, echoes this point. He says, ‘Being conscious of the different forms of human intelligence and things you know you don’t know, can help you and your team as executive leaders and partners to the business.’
Peter Wexler, general counsel at French energy management and automation company Schneider Electric, adds that to really excel in a company in a senior legal role you have to think big picture. ‘One of the most critical things to do is lose the lawyering. To make a decision you have to understand the broader context and you have to think outside the law – then you are three quarters of the way there. You really have to understand not just the legal implications, but whether it’s a strategic play, a defensive play; all those things are really important and have a huge impact on the bottom line of the corporation.’
A hugely pertinent example for many general counsel in today’s world is the issue of cyber crime. Arguably no one is going to realistically be able to have the expertise of an IT specialist, however, getting IT to explain as clearly as possibly in layperson’s terms and gaining an understanding of the core issues is vital, as many commentators have argued that cyber issues are going to be one of the fundamental front lines of the GC role over the next 10 to 20 years. Arguably, too many people are still acting in a reactive way, partly due to a lack of understanding and engagement.
Peter Beshar in his role at Marsh & McLennan has made cyber something of a personal mission. This has given both his role and insights new value and pertinence with the c-suite. He explains, ‘Cyber is in the GC bailiwick, although not entirely so. But three years ago, I decided that I would make it a focus of my professional life. I also saw this as an opportunity to make a contribution to an issue that society was grappling with. Through making this a dedicated focus of mine it has really developed me as leader. I have been invited to testify in front of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and meet with foreign governments on the issue. As a result, the business begins to see you as someone who can contribute to bottom line.’ This of course not only has ramification for Beshar, but for the business generally, ‘It all contributes to the wider perception of Marsh as a thought leader in this field – business for us in advisory work is up and significant people are beginning to understand that there is a public-private partnership that can be struck in issues like cyber. So as general counsel, there really is an important role you can play in trying to help the bottom line of the enterprise.’
‘Arguably, too many people are still acting in a reactive way, partly due to a lack of understanding.’
Ibarra’s research with managers who are more successfully developing as leaders show that they are able to, as one puts it, ‘develop a nose for the trends’, which allows them to take initiatives. Sabine Chalmers, general counsel at Anheuser-Busch InBev, concurs with this, both for existing and prospective GCs: ‘At the end of the day the folks who will rise to the top are, I believe, better described as generalists. They have a perspective on everything and are naturally intellectually curious, including with out-of-the-box areas like popular culture. They are constantly aware of the bigger picture – both within the company and in the world around us.’
One of the key ways to develop sensors is to find a project that takes you outside of your regular day-to-day mandate. As part of her research, Ibarra has conducted surveys around what most helps people step up to leadership and one of the consistently most successful tactics is ‘experience in an internal project outside of my usual responsibilities’.
While Ibarra realises that for busy people, the idea of doing more outside core competencies may seem counterproductive, she cautions that doing more of the same doesn’t develop us in the same way that working across business lines will do. She explains that in terms of big picture career progression, generally speaking, hierarchical ascension is being replaced by ‘jungle gym careers’ consisting more of lateral moves and that ‘hot projects’ are a key component of this type of career mapping.
However, sexy, innovative internal projects may not always be available. In that case, Ibarra advises, it makes sense to look outside of your organisation and therefore also outside of colleagues’ preconceptions of you. One challenge that many in-house lawyers face can be that of being pigeon holed as ‘the lawyer’ or ‘the department that says no’. Even if this designation is historical, it can be hard to shift and show proactivity in other areas within one’s own company. In this case stepping outside of the organisation can be incredibly beneficial. Beshar at Marsh & McLennan concurs:
‘I feel strongly that as a general counsel you should be out trying to build relationships and getting to know other GCs as this can be an incredible resource. You build a c-suite contact in another institution and when business alliances or issues occur in the future, it is helpful to be seen having high placed contacts and to be cultivating opportunities and to diffuse difficulties that have arisen. I would start with cultivating general counsel who are key participants in your particular industry and then go beyond that.’
Interestingly one of the fundamental skills that Ibarra links to good leadership is the ability to tell stories – but not in the sense of covering ones back! Rather, this is in the sense of communicating why and conveying what is important through story telling. Ibarra references the work of psychologist Jerome Bruner, who claims that a message is more likely to be remembered accurately and for longer when conveyed through a well-constructed story. Ibarra points out that it doesn’t occur to many of us at work to reveal our personal sides and that this becomes a lost opportunity. She says, ‘You probably already know which stories are your best ones. What you need to learn now is how and when to tell them in the service of your leadership.’
This is an interesting point for lawyers. On the one hand, many lawyer’s fetishisation of their professionalism can potentially allow them to lose sight of the individual beneath the legalese. But on the other hand, lawyers as part of their skill set have to be consummate story tellers, particularly in regards to litigation and trials. Stating a case can obviously draw very strongly on the skills of telling a well-constructed narrative.
For our general counsel interviewees, the story-telling aspect and drawing on their personal narrative resonated very strongly as something that enhanced their leadership styles. Peter Beshar remarks that, ‘The use of metaphors and analogies are great in breaking through the clutter; people’s attention spans are not as extended as they used to be – it’s best to jettison power points and dry treatises and rely on tools like video and within that tell a story that humanise the individuals.’
For Beshar this point was really driven home when he was asked to merge legal and compliance. To illustrate this, he told a story about his recently deceased father and his love of Stetson cowboy hats, despite not coming from Texas. ‘I distributed hats to the team to demonstrate the idea of many hats, one team. So that was using what is personal to me in a way that was relevant. What was fantastic was that members of the newly merged team from all over the world took photos of people, individually or in groups wearing the hats. We had a town hall meeting around the merger and did a slide show of these photos; so that showed how that piece of authentic communication really resonated and got the message across.’
Chalmers also cites the value of using stories based on personal experience. She says, ‘One of the presentations that I most enjoy making is to our new hires and relates to career planning. I structure it around personal stories and experiences – my childhood, the role models in my life, people that have inspired me and how I have learnt from successes and failures.’ However, Chalmers adds the caveat that while personal stories are powerful, they have to be delivered in the right way – and for the leader who is not truly comfortable with the sharing of themselves honestly, the tactic can misfire. Authenticity is key.
In the same way for Wexler, at Schneider, the use of examples from his personal life in work is a key factor to operating as an effective leader. ‘It’s a package deal. The biggest strength of you is yourself. Everyone can smell BS and you have to walk your talk, authenticity equals consistency.’
