Frequently, legal professionals find themselves in a dual role – leaders and managers. While there are many similarities between those two roles, the primary distinction is that a leader focuses more on people while a manager focuses more on the technical aspects of completing a project. Legal professionals need both skill sets to be effective in their organizations.

If you take one thing away from this article, let it be this. Leaders are thermostats. They set the temperature of their organization. Staff, volunteers, and team members are thermometers. They read the temperature of their organization. This “setting” and “reading” of temperatures is your organizational culture. It affects how your members work together. Organizational culture can be an engine propelling a mission forward or a blockade stifling every opportunity for improvement. To create a healthy work environment, legal professionals must create and maintain a functional organizational culture that is informed, effective, respectful, candid, compassionate, and just.

Elephants

It’s easy to be a fan of these gentle giants with their long trunks and sense of fun. But organizational elephants are anything but enjoyable. The expression “the elephant in the room,” as I’m sure you’ve heard, is a metaphor for an important issue that everyone knows about but no one mentions or discusses because it makes people feel uncomfortable and is personally, socially, or politically embarrassing, controversial, or inflammatory. You are probably able to name one or two elephants that exist in your legal organization right now.

The most common elephants are dysfunctional workplace behaviors, such as gossip and destructive politics. Left unbridled, these big guys can quickly disrupt an organization’s productivity, undermine innovation, and decrease morale sending your best producers running for the hills or siloed in their office.

Dynamic leaders address elephants head-on while fostering an enjoyable work environment. But, moving these five-ton problems out of an organization (whether a business or an association) takes adroitness, discernment, and emotional intelligence. With these three important traits, leaders can evict the elephants by:

encouraging team members to communicate in honest, candid, respectful, and constructive ways;
involving teammates at every level in setting healthy boundaries for communication and expectations for conflict resolution;
creating an atmosphere where team members are permitted to hold each other accountable for their behaviors and restore each other gently; and
modeling and teaching healthy ways to work with others.

Here are some strategies for evicting the elephants from your organization.

Elephant 1: Expel gossip, invite candor (and respect).

People who lack healthy communication skills may unknowingly project their insecurities in unproductive ways. Rather than taking appropriate steps to address their concerns, individuals sometimes work in the shadows sowing seeds of discord by discussing the shortcomings of others or undermining the ideas of others. Gossip is the enemy of trust – trust that your organization needs to move forward. To expel gossip, leaders must encourage team members to communicate in candid, constructive ways, and to hold others accountable to do the same.

To deal with the talebearers, leaders shouldn’t hide from confrontation. They should pull the offending party aside and ask, “What is the issue?” and “How can we resolve it?” By modeling candor and accepting someone as deserving of trust even though there are doubts, you can depersonalize the conflict. When you open the lines of communication, you can then move toward problem-solving.

Remember that occasionally, a gossiper may have a legitimate complaint but needs a constructive way to address it. By beginning with diplomacy, and reserving judgment, the offending party is less likely to become defensive and derail the conversation. These conversations can teach what is acceptable in your organization while also giving them a role and ownership in solving the problem.

In addition to providing a constructive way to problem-solve, leaders should work with teams to set ground rules for effective communication and to hold each other accountable for those ground rules. Most people will choose better behavior rather than face the judgment of the team. However, when a person continues to cause problems, even after agreeing to those ground rules, he or she probably does not share the values of the organization. Conflict over organizational values is difficult, if not impossible, for leaders to resolve. Ultimately, individuals decide whether to change their behavior, but leaders must still set clear standards and hold people accountable for their commitments.

Elephant 2: Overcome Destructive Politics.

Like it or not, politics are part of every leader’s job. Leaders accomplish goals by influencing others; inspiring buy-in; and focusing on the primary mission. Each of those responsibilities is political in nature. However, when politics degenerate into destructive politics, teams unravel in a quagmire of competing goals and agendas. When vocal individuals try to change the culture of an organization to meet their specific needs at the expense of others’ needs, factions form. Instead of being receptive to the exchange of ideas, the factions double down on their positions and discussions become destructive debates.

As with resolving gossip, the solution is to overcome destructive politics by bringing people together to jointly solve problems and by modeling the behavior you want to see in others. That means you cannot be hypocritical in your approach to managing human resources. You must walk the talk.

To start, you might just say, “Let’s talk about the elephant in the room.” Sometimes this one move can break the ice and open up communication. Typical examples of destructive politics in organizations include withholding key information that could be helpful to a team member, using body language that undermines speakers in a meeting, and saying one thing to a team member but something else to another.

Frequently, healthy boundaries, coaching, and attention can help everyone to become comfortable communicating in more constructive ways. Because we all come from different backgrounds, and many learned dysfunctional communication from their family of origin and were never challenged to relearn, they may not perceive their communication style as unhealthy because it seems normal to them. When coaching, observe, guide, and then role-play so that others can become comfortable with using healthy communication.

Ignoring Problems Invites Elephants

One of the biggest mistakes leaders make in the workplace and in professional associations is failing to address conflict because they want to avoid confrontation. First, issues related to toxic culture rarely go away on their own. An issue may seem to resolve itself only to show up later in another form because the root of the problem remains. Second, when you fail to address toxic behaviors, you rob team members of the opportunity for professional growth and development. Iron sharpens iron, and many times people need gentle correction to acknowledge the need for change. Third, when you fail to address toxic behaviors, you risk losing good people, who know it is better for their mental health to move on from that toxic environment.

Creating an organizational culture where team members thrive begins with leadership taking responsibility for the potential of all team members to be candid, honest, respectful, responsible, and professional teammates. By setting healthy boundaries, engaging and involving the team, and equipping people to become responsible, leaders can transform the cultures of their organizations by modeling positive alternatives to negative behaviors. When all of the individuals within an organization agree to hold each other accountable for exhibiting constructive behaviors, the changes tend to stick.

To make this kind of cultural change requires confidence, skill, and determination. As leaders, we have limited time and energy. We can either use that energy to clean up messes that elephants leave behind or invest in strategies to keep the elephants away. What issues exist in your legal organization? Is it time to face the elephants?

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May 11, 2021/by Paralegals