A bill of rights for direct reports

Every in-house counsel is a direct report of someone (you have at least one boss).  For you, and for those who are bosses (and thus have direct reports), here is a "bill of rights for direct reports" -- a short-list of management competencies of good bosses -- from the perspective of direct reports:
1.  Be trustworthy.
2.  Exercise influence beyond your team/group.
3.  Develop your teams (a spirit of "we").
4.  Recognize individuals and support their development.
How does your boss fare (and if you're a boss, how do you fare) under this list?  The list, some explanation, and the catchy phrase "direct reports' bill of rights" are in a post by Linda Hill & Kent Lineback, The Right to Management Competence.

The Good Fight: How Conflict Can Help Your Idea

I am a fan of using conflict to help develop a team.  So I enjoyed The Good Fight: How Conflict Can Help Your Idea, a blog post of Paul Kotter (author of Leading Change).  Paul writes:  "Some leaders value consensus so much that they feel they need complete agreement on everything. They stamp out disagreements over the issues because they fear their subordinates might get their feelings hurt, some teammates will harbor grudges, or the team could lose cohesiveness. . . . I will say that avoiding conflict can actually be ruinous for achieving buy-in for an idea."

Paul advises:  "Good ideas need active, engaged support for a considerable time until they reshape how we think about and do things for the better. To make positive, lasting change, you need to energize people, and at a deep enough level to make buy-in — then ultimate implementation — achievable. And you need conflict to accomplish that."

Read Kotter's blog post at: The Good Fight: How Conflict Can Help Your Idea.

When Your Team Turns on You

I have seen this happen and it is not pretty.  An overly-confident leader thinks that everything is under control, only to be contronted with the brutal facts that her own team has turned on her.  Recovery from this messy situation is difficult (at best).

If you find yourself going down this path, you might begin the process of restoring your team dynamics by following Amy Gallo's suggested do's and don'ts:

"Do:

·  Be open to hearing your team's complaints and feedback

·  Institute a "no gossip" policy so that people deal directly with one another

·  Take responsibility for your role in creating the situation"

Getting Past "We Already Tried That"

Funny how non-legal business units confront the same issues as legal teams when managing through a difficult change.  For corporate law departments, recent challenges include cutting costs, increasing response timeliness, and accomidating changes in the business units.

For those who have been in-house for some time, you may have heard the familiar refrain "we tried that" already.  John Kotter provides a few suggestions for responding to that refrain and encourages us to "never get sucked into the black hole of " what happened before.  Read Kotter's blog at Getting Past the "But We Already Tried That" Response.