It’s impossible these days to avoid hearing or reading about “Web 2.0”—the trend to interactivity on the Internet that is epitomized by the give and take between online users of blogs and social networking sites. The idea is that the Internet experience is far more meaningful if the visitor to a site is an active, participatory user rather than a passive viewer.
Active and Engaged
This same premise of interaction and involvement can have a tremendous impact on another activity that would benefit any lawyer—the engagement of a professional coach who combines experience as a lawyer and questioning to help you access your own wisdom and unique abilities and use them to improve your practice.
As a coach with many years of experience counseling only lawyers of all ages in all practices, I often find that the biggest barrier to a successful coaching process is a lawyer’s expectation that the coach has all the answers. This reflects the lawyer’s training that finding the right authority or citation is the key to arguing a case successfully. An almost equally counterproductive belief is that a coach should be a mentor—a friend who does nothing but compliment and encourage rather than a leader who occasionally pushes and challenges.
Passively waiting for answers or a pat on the back is not making proper use of a coach. I have written before about what to look for and what to avoid in choosing a coach. Let’s take the analysis to the next stage, the 2.0 level, and present some thoughts on the best way to work with a coach—to be active and engaged, asking questions and applying challenging answers. The lawyer who does this will find the coaching process to be infinitely more rewarding in every way—just as many professional athletes have found in their own use of coaches.
Athletic Experience
Coaching, of course, is most commonly identified with athletic achievement. Many of us treasure the memory of a supportive coach who encouraged our efforts at sports in school or children’s leagues. However, for athletes who are deadly serious, the professionals for whom excelling at sports is their passion and their livelihood, the role of a coach is far tougher and more dynamic. Consider just a few representative examples from widely different sports:
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When Lance Armstrong was a young, aggressive rider, the “experts” said that he would never win the Tour de France because of the structure of his body mass. Then Armstrong fell ill with cancer, and when he emerged from treatment his body structure and attitude were entirely different. His coach saw the potential to remake Armstrong’s entire approach, and in so doing created the greatest champion in cycling history.
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When skater Michelle Kwan was in a post-Olympic competitive lull, she dismissed a longtime coach who had been a friend and adviser. For a time she was essentially self-coached, and her performance suffered. Then before a major world championship she hired a new coach, a disciplined and experienced Russian who challenged her competitively and revitalized her career.
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When Tiger Woods was seemingly at his peak earlier this decade, he shocked the golfing world by dismissing his longtime coach and hiring a new one who he felt could help him get more out of his swing. For two years Woods failed to win a major championship as he worked with his coach to reconstruct what he did on the golf course. Then, with his new swing, he won the 2005 Masters tournament, and has been unstoppable since.
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When American football quarterback Tom Brady talked about what has helped him win three Super Bowls, he didn’t mention his professional coaches. Instead he cited a coach who has worked with him since he was 13 years, a man he called his “passing guru.” Brady said this coach “is a key reason why I've been fortunate to have success in college and the NFL ... I still consult with him, and he tunes me up when I need him.”
Lessons for Lawyers
For lawyers who want to consider using a coach, there are three lessons to draw from these athletic examples, and they go to the heart of what the Coaching 2.0 model means.
1. Successful people engage coaches throughout their careers to reach pinnacles of success. They continually reinvent themselves through coaching to stay on top. It is not an episodic engagement—that’s consulting. Coaching is the development of a career-long team approach to identifying the challenges of your endeavor and to overcoming them.
2. An arrangement with a specific coach does not have to be permanent. As a successful person’s career and personal needs change, the coaching dynamic likely will change also. Remember that a coach is someone who pushes, not nurtures. When the push of a given coach is no longer the right one to compel excellence, the successful person will seek out new stimuli. Note that change does not have to be a given—Tom Brady has gone through various professional coaches, but for two decades has gone back to the one who “tunes me up when I need him.”
3. Those who make the best use of coaches do so interactively. As they gain more experience in their careers, they give feedback to the coach, participate in the dialog, and sometimes change the dialog (or the coach) completely. Active participation in the coaching process is the complete opposite of sitting back and waiting for the coach to give you all the answers, and it produces much better results. In a real sense it reflects the increasing expectation of business clients that their lawyers give up a pure hourly billing rate and adopt a compensation method that involves performance targets as incentives for greater rewards, in effect giving the lawyer “skin in the game.” When you have your “skin in the game” of coaching, it means more to you.
Coaching 2.0 in Action
I know the value of what my coaching clients can bring to the process because I have seen it myself as a practicing lawyer. Years ago, one of my most successful trial experiences involved the active participation of my client. He worked with me to develop our case strategy, and went over the list of potential witnesses with me and offered guidance on which ones would best support our approach. Then he truly went the extra mile—because he and the witnesses he chose were from the same small town, he knew that the witnesses would be reluctant to talk to a “big city lawyer”, so he went with me on the witness interviews and vouched for me to the people we had chosen to interview.
My inclination as the trial lawyer on the case might have been to tell the client to step back and let me handle the process, and if I had done so we likely would have lost. The value of interaction and “skin in the game” has stayed with me to this day, and I constantly encourage it in the coaching process.
Consider this actual example of what active participation can do. A coaching client called me, frustrated because she and her staff were missing the filing deadlines on key litigation steps. She had explored case management software programs but found them too expensive and cumbersome. She didn’t have the staff for complicated record-keeping notations.
I recognized her frustration because I had heard it many times before. More important, I recognized that she had actively tried to find a solution on her own, and that her past experience would make her more open to experimentation. I suggested she take a sheet of paper for each case and mark out four columns:
| Task to do |
Person to do it |
Date for Completion |
Completion Confirmed |
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My caller instantly recognized that this simple system was what she needed. She in fact extended and improved it, customizing the approach to the capabilities of her staff and the requirements of specific matters. I found her reaction rewarding because it validated the essence of good coaching.
Commit to Success
The best coaching experience is an active and interactive process; a dynamic partnership between coach and lawyer, and one in which roles and approaches can change. It is essential that the lawyer defines and conveys to the coach what he or she “really wants” and works in partnership to achieve it. In this dynamic, a coach can provide the discipline for lawyers to answer a crucial question: “Am I committed to my own success?”
A number of clients with whom I’ve worked over the years have seen their level of success increase, as defined by specific, reasonable and measurable achievements. Expressing “success” in relative terms such as “more revenue” or “better marketing” sets a subjective standard that is difficult to discuss, let alone achieve. The truly successful person wants and needs a target to aim at.
The extra work and effort this requires reflects the saying posed to me by my mother many years ago: “Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it!” Be sure that “success” is what you want; that you are willing to do what is required to reach the level of success you envision and that you are prepared to accept this success. It will come—you just have to want it and be willing to commit yourself to be an active participant in the coaching process in order to get it.
Edward Poll (edpoll@lawbiz.com) is a certified management consultant and coach in Los Angeles who coaches attorneys and law firms on how to deliver their services more profitably. He is the author of Attorney and Law Firm Guide to the Business of Law: Planning and Operating for Survival and Growth, 2nd ed. (ABA, 2002), Collecting Your Fee: Getting Paid from Intake to Invoice (ABA, 2003) and, most recently, Selling Your Law Practice: The Profitable Exit Strategy (LawBiz, 2005).