Legally on the Move: Professional Training - Susan Glenholme - E04

0:00Susan Glenholme:Welcome to Legally on the Move, professional training, a brand new mini-series from the Legally Speaking podcast sponsored by Clio. I'm Rob Hanna and in this exciting new series we're coming to you live from BMA House in London, where senior leaders from across the legal profession are gathering to explore a critical question. What really makes high-performing teams in law? From leadership and communication to resilience, trust and psychological safety, we'll be speaking to experts and industry voices about what it takes to build teams that perform at their best in today's legal world. So let's get into it.

0:39Susan Glenholme:Welcome to the Legally Speaking podcast. Name, title and organisation please. Susan Glenholm, Managing Partner at Dublin's Otterway Solicitors. And it's an absolute pleasure to have you joining us here live from conference in London. We're talking all about high performance and often it is based on revenue and utilisation. In your view, what is most misunderstood driver of performance in legal teams? What is most misunderstood? Well, I think it's something, it's around culture and making sure that people feel like they belong. The sense of belonging, the teamwork and being part of a team, I think really helps people to want to be there.

1:19Susan Glenholme:Yeah, I agree. And I think so many people miss that. But when people feel like they belong in the environment, their creativity, their positivity, the will to want to come together, it's just a massive win all round. Okay, we live in a hybrid world now, it's fair to say. What leadership behaviour do you think is most strengthening collaboration and what quietly weakens it? So we find making sure that people are involved. so when someone's at home and you're doing a meeting internally that you make sure that everyone's got their camera on, for example, so that you're part of, again, the sense of belonging, making sure that you are part of that team.

1:58So the strengthening is making sure everyone is part of the team and involved. And I think the weakening can be that people can feel lonely, they get forgotten, and it's making sure that you are telling people to look into people's diaries, see if they can come to the meeting, join in the fun. And we have quizzes where you could have at home or internally that you're involved, whether you're there or at home.

2:21Susan Glenholme:Yeah, I think, you know, these little things with big impact, I think, is really important. Psychological safety is something we must talk about. What does it generally look like inside a high pressure legal environment? Well, making sure that we spoke one of the sessions that I was on talking about psychological safety, making sure that you have connection as well as the courage. so it is that part of being safe in saying something you've got to have trust and making sure that the people feel that they are trusted means that they are going to be able to speak up more yes and that's what we all encourage because the more safe like i said before the more opportunities more creativity the more brilliance i think you bring out of your people which of course is your greatest asset as a firm what is then the difference between a culture of accountability and a culture of fear which has been discussed throughout so i think trust again making sure that people don't feel like they are being watched it's about i'm able to speak up because it's important for the bigger goal the purpose that you're there what are you trying to achieve if you know what the outcome is you're more likely to to speak up and get involved yes um so trust i think is one of the main things yes and you know once broken hard to replace so you really need to double down on that okay collaboration we talk a lot about here on the show cross-functional collaboration between lawyers and business services can be complex at times, I'm sure you know.

3:42Susan Glenholme:So what have you seen work when aligning different incentives and priorities? So again, outcomes is really important. So I was a private client lawyer before I became managing partner. So I've seen it from both sides. And I now see how the lawyers felt like their job was a lot more important. And I used to feel that as a lawyer. And now coming to the other side, where you're seeing it from marketing, HR, finance, IT, that actually understanding both sides is everyone plays their part in making sure it all runs smoothly. So now that I've gone away from law and managing the firm, it's been quite useful to just point out to everyone what we're trying to achieve together, because if you're both looking at it from each other's lens, then it's easier to collaborate.

4:25Susan Glenholme:Yes, I agree. Okay, resilience, key theme of today. at what point does resilience become unhealthy endurance and how should leaders recognize that line so i think emma explains a lot of that it's um trying sometimes it's to be perfectionists as lawyers and that resilience is to get to something that's perfect but which you might never achieve so actually being able to do a really good job and giving that giving it your all and doing your best is hopefully is not just getting to perfection where you get burnout and trying too hard instead of trying to maybe bring someone in who might have the expertise and working together again stops you from from just overdoing it I think.

5:08Susan Glenholme:Yes agreed and done is better than perfect because perfect never gets done as many will agree. Okay why did you choose to attend the conference today and what stood out to you most so far? So I've known Nadine for a while and been to conferences with her speaking and I was just really impressed by the speakers, the whole look of the conference and just to see like-minded people wanting to do better is something that attracted me to coming. Yeah, it's definitely been an inspiring day, educational day for sure. Okay, before I let you go, if you could implement one practical change in your firm tomorrow to improve team performance, what would it be and why?

5:45Oh, I think making sure that we are always striving to do better and just measuring ourselves against ourselves to see where we were instead of just looking around all the time, looking at what have we done and could we be doing that better. So like Emma said, what makes the boat go faster, looking at what we can do to make our firms be better, I think that would be one thing I've taken from today so far.

6:09Susan Glenholme:Yeah, I love that quote. It's so true, isn't it? That one question, it's not about the medals or it's about understanding how you can make better legal services or your firm run better and being specific and aligned to that question. brilliant it's been wonderful having on the show if people would like to learn more about you or indeed the firm feel free to share any websites or social media handles we'll share them as episode for you too okay that's a linkedin our um website is devonsautoa.co.uk um and i've got linkedin um we're all instagram and all social media we're on on there simple as that so it just needs me to say thank you so much for joining me it's been an absolute blast but from all of us now on the podcast over and out thank you for listening to this week's episode if you like the content here why not check out our world leading content and collaboration of the Legally Speaking Club over on Discord.

6:55Susan Glenholme:Go to our website, www.legallyspeakingpodcast.com. There's a link to join our community there. Over and out.