Addressing ambivalence: The role of partners in junior talent development

The role of partners in achieving success for their firms demands the delivery of a multitude of skill sets and ?a wealth of experience. Not only are partners expected to have a thorough knowledge of their area of law, but they must also demonstrate that they have the ability to build and maintain client relationships and bring in profitable work. They are expected to be rainmakers, matter, case and project managers, great networkers and inspiring leaders. They are ?also increasingly asked to mentor, coach and develop those around them.

The development of partners in this multitude of skill sets, including management and leadership, before they join their partnerships, varies from partnership track programmes to nothing other than developing management skills by osmosis, through observing the behaviours of other partners and relying on a sixth sense of what they should be doing.

This contrast between full pre-partnership development programmes and 'learning by luck' does not address the importance of the individual partner being motivated to want to deliver across all the elements of the role of a partner in the current marketplace.

It is human nature to focus on one's strengths and, as ?a result, it can become easy and ultimately a habit to ignore areas in which we have little or no experience or motivation. When this is coupled with an absence of any desire to ?develop those weaker areas, gaps in partners' capabilities ?soon become apparent.

If the area being overlooked is learning and development, the partner can be perceived as being ambivalent towards the development of their associates or assistants and other members of the team.

Learning and development (L&D) is an area of law firm practice which is frequently regarded as ?not being very important or high priority on an everyday basis, especially when lawyers see themselves as being time poor and therefore unable to invest in L&D.

Such ambivalence, real or perceived, is not sustainable for a thriving, successful law firm because of the changing and constant demands that partners face, not only from their clients, but also from their employees.

Inter-generational attitudes

Partners who come from the generations of 'baby boomers' or Generation X will find that an ambivalent attitude towards L&D will not be tolerated by those individuals from Gen Y or ?Gen Z coming up through the ranks; these people have a very different perspective of L&D. Partners ?will find that they are managing and leading people ?who demand proactive management, feedback ?and development.

Studies have shown that Gen Y and Gen Z are seeking clarity, encouragement, support, training and opportunities in a more exacting fashion than baby boomers and Gen X will have done at the same stages of their careers. There is therefore no room for ambivalence or complacency regarding L&D if these employees are to be motivated to work to their full potential.

In their work on value creation, London Business School and Harvard Business School professors Sumantra Ghoshal, Peter Moran and Christopher Bartlett have highlighted the new 'moral contract' required to manage successful businesses in the 21st century. This new contract, they say, results in empowered employees responsible for the company's competitiveness and for their own learning, instead of the traditional contract focusing on job security.

They suggest that L&D is not an altruistic activity, but something that is essential to the creation of an exciting and vibrant workplace that enables businesses to create value for their people. These people, in turn, will create value for clients because they are motivated and engaged with the firm. This, they argue, ultimately leads to the creation of competitiveness.

As the legal marketplace emerges from the recession of the past five years, talented individuals will be expecting to be a part of ambitious and competitive firms. They will be expecting to take responsibility for their own learning. But, in order to do this, they will need to be able to rely on a positive attitude within the firm towards L&D and that it will have the right L&D infrastructure in place.

Talented lawyers will be expecting partners to coach, mentor and lead them, while allowing them to forge and explore their own ways of working, problem solving and building their business and client relationships.

Increasingly, partners are being expected to ensure that those working for and with them have access to L&D through:

• substantive and meaningful work;

• technical knowledge development;

• opportunities to continuously upgrade skills; and

• guidance towards clear and achievable career milestones and career pathways.

Partners will also find that they are expected to provide feedback on a frequent basis away from the annual ?appraisal process.

Building and maintaining this approach to L&D requires a proactive continuous effort and hard work. Those firms that will emerge successfully from the current economic climate will have made strides to move from the traditional contract to new moral contracts with their employees. They will have achieved this paradigm shift by responding positively to the ever-growing demands on partners to develop their mentoring and coaching capabilities. As leading business and six sigma author Subir Chowdhury says, this is the talent era; talent is the engine of the next economy.

The role of L&D in this space is critical. Partners who mentor and coach those around them will find that they are not working with people who are bored, burned out or disillusioned. This is because they will be encouraged by the partners to upgrade their skills, to seek out opportunities to take responsibility for initiatives and to themselves mentor and develop others.

This approach will, however, be new for many partners in firms that have taken a traditional approach towards the training and career progression of their staff. Time served progression for all does not sit comfortably with the emerging picture of career expectations of Gen Y and Gen Z, for whom curiosity and development are key to personal and professional success.

Investing in L&D

Management guru Clayton Christensen advocates the role of innovation and disruptive innovation as the key to future profitability and success in business.

Christensen suggests that the common denominator found in innovation is the ability of individuals to deliver it through a combination of critical thinking and a flexible attitude to change. Those who are curious and seek to learn and develop are more naturally disposed to both of these attributes. They are capable of delivering work that will result in the ability to sustain innovation and rapidly respond to the unrelenting pace of change, including technological change.

This combination of partners managing talent and fostering innovation and creativity is a powerful enabler for individuals, but only if they are linked to the firm's strategy and vision. The partnership as a whole also needs to be committed to an integrated approach to talent nurturing and management through the generation of real experiences and opportunities for talented people in their teams.

The business case for investing partner time and resources in learning and development to achieve competitive advantage is supported by the research of Ann Bartel of ?Columbia University.

Bartel discovered that skills depreciate at a rate of ten per cent a year, so the need to train and practice is important to simply maintain a competitive position. Her research showed that training programmes could improve productivity and profitability by up to 35 per cent, with ?a return on investment of between 30 and 7,000 per cent in major programmes.

These are astonishing figures which relate to manufacturing production, but the lessons of this research for law firms lie in the return on investment found in retention figures, reception and response to change.

Returns are also gained by the openness of employees to new ways of working and the ability of firms to offer higher levels of value to their client activities as a result ?of higher levels of skills. This is assuming, of course, ?that the training is designed to meet the specific needs ?of the business.

The drive for continuous improvement, which is so essential to the innovation associated with those firms that will emerge from the recession, will come from often small percentage changes. This is evidenced by people at the elite echelons of their specialisms, such as top sports men and women, groundbreaking medical professionals and scientists. These talented individuals and teams work together to learn from one another. They share their learning, are open to feedback and ideas, and are not prejudiced or unduly biased in their assessment of opportunities.

Consider, for example, the cardiothoracic team at ?Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. The team sought ?the help of the Ferrari Formula One pit crew to solve the problem of handing over patients from the operating theatre to the intensive therapy unit. This team found a new, more efficient and quicker way of working that only came about because of their active and positive attitude towards learning and development.

Another example of curiosity and creativity in learning can be seen by Columbia Business School in New York, which uses jazz musicians on one of its programmes to help business leaders understand more about improvisation, creativity and innovation.

An active approach

Partners who are perceived as being ambivalent towards the development of their associates or assistants and other members of the team may ?find that they are also seen to be ambivalent ?about innovation and change. In order to ?avoid being misunderstood or labelled ?as ambivalent, partners need to ensure ?they demonstrate that they are ?interested in those around them and ?that they can be reliable coaches, ?teachers and mentors.

Feedback conversations, "what if" and "if you were in my shoes" discussions are simple but highly effective techniques that can be immediately adopted. Taking 20 minutes ?to sit down with a cup of coffee and have a conversation with an assistant or associate about their current work, interaction with clients or other departments is time well spent.

Some firms have 'careers partners', others have mentors, but many have neither. Those firms that have identified these ?specific roles for some, but not all partners, have found the happy medium of ensuring that talent is identified and managed by partners, without expecting partners who are less well suited to such conversations to be forced ?into doing so.

It is crucial, however, that all partners recognise, at the very least, the importance of learning and developing their people so that, as their firm emerges from the recession, they have engaged, capable and energetic individuals ready to deliver excellent client services.

Successful partners get the balance right between delivering client work and embracing L&D as a vital part of their jobs, which in turns creates profits for their firm and themselves. The argument for managing and developing talent is simple when you put it like that.

?Sue Beavil is the senior learning and development manager at international law firm Mayer Brown (www.mayerbrown.com)