Last week I was asked:

How can I help my young lawyers achieve greater success?

That was an awesome question on a topic that I focus on continuously. A lawyer I coach met another lawyer I coach from a different part of the country at a conference. When they found out I coach both of them, one paid me a nice compliment. She said:

Cordell always encourages me to do more than I would do on my own and he does it in a way that does not make me feel guilty.

How can you do it? I got this one from reading an Interview with Carol Dweck. The Stanford Professor of Psychology  talked about a 90 minute workshop  Peter Heslin Don Wanderwalle, and Gary Latham conducted for managers.

If you are a senior lawyer mentoring or supervising junior lawyers, I want you to do the four things Heslin had the workshop participants do.

  1. Think of three reasons why it would be important for you to have your associates develop their abilities.
  2. Think of an area where you developed your own skill set, and write down how you were able to develop those skills.
  3. Write a draft email to each of your associates with ideas on how they can further develop their skills. Include examples in the draft of how they developed other skills while they’ve worked for you.
  4. Remember times you have seen someone learn to do something you never thought this person could do, and reflect upon how this happened and what it means.

I like this quote from the interview:

In fact, more and more research is showing that people’s level of commitment, effort, and continued training is what eventually separates the most successful people from their equally talented, but less successful, peers. This is true in sports, science, and the arts-and it is becoming clear that it is true in business, too.