Your Ability to Adapt - 4 key areas

Like many sectors, the legal sector is currently questioning what it takes to be a great lawyer. This is in part driven by a shake up of the legal education framework, providing an opportune moment for reflection and improvement across the board. One of the organisations at the forefront of this drive is the O Shaped Lawyer Movement. https://www.oshapedlawyer.com/

As an ex-lawyer, it has been brilliant to see how the O Shaped Lawyer Group has seized the opportunity to drive change and improvement in the legal profession for all those involved in it. Part of their work has been a careful analysis of what attributes the lawyer of the future needs to have, with insight gained from many areas, starting with the end-user. What strikes me each time I look at the list of attributes is how many of them are relevant for people in all sectors, particularly those around mindset.

In this piece I highlight the four attributes that sit under the heading ‘Being Adaptable’ and provide some brief insight and further reading on each. For those of you with even a bit of time booked off over the summer, and hoping for some learning and reflection time, hopefully this piece, together with the recommended further reading, will provide some food for thought.

Courage

The first of the attributes under ‘Being Adaptable’ is Courage. The O Shaped Group define this as ‘the skill to take action in the face of fear or uncertainty.’

In Spring 2011, President Barack Obama met with his senior security advisers in the White House situation room to consider what he knew would be one of the defining decisions of his presidency. Should he approve the proposed raid by US Navy SEALs on the Abbottabad compound in Pakistan where Osama bin Laden was believed to be hiding? ‘John’, the CIA team leader, was 95% certain that bin Laden was in the compound. Others were less sure, with the probability estimate for some being as low as 40%. As Obama later said, what you started getting was probabilities that disguised uncertainty as opposed to actually providing you with more useful information. Either he was there, or he wasn’t. The risk was real. And it was Obama’s to decide on. He understood that he had to arrive at a decision on the basis of limited information. 

How does this relate to what you do? Well isn’t much of your work not just deciding what to do, but more about the fundamental problem of comprehending the situation? Once you have done this, it is so much easier to assess risk, and take action in the face of fear or uncertainty.  Even more so when you are able to step up and take ownership, just like Obama did.

 Further reading on this: John Kay and Mervyn King, Radical Uncertainty – Decision-making for an unknowable future (recently published, and from which the above story came).

Resilience

The O Shaped Lawyer Group define this as ‘the skill to recover quickly from disappointment or setback.’

I want to make just one fundamental point on this attribute. Resilience can be built. Think of it like a muscle, like any other, that you can work on and develop.  How do you do that? By training. Simply, by putting yourself into stretch positions, situations where you are trying new things, and challenging yourself. Inevitably these won’t always work out perfectly, and it is in these circumstances where you get the chance to build the muscle. And how do you do this?

By ‘framing’. Some brilliant research carried out in the States (see below) has shown the power of perspective. If you can frame something in the right way, you can recover quickly and emerge stronger.

So a mistake made during a deal negotiation, a presentation that doesn’t go brilliantly, a meeting where you didn’t achieve what you needed to: frame these in the right way, and they can drive your growth and development, rather than knock you down.

Further reading: https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/the-secret-formula-for-resilience

Feedback

This is defined as ‘the skill to seek out information to identify areas for improvement.’

This is one where sport provides a brilliant illustration. Imagine that my dream is to play for my country at the Olympics. My sport is hockey. I am in the training squad of 30 something players, but I know that the squad will eventually be cut down to 16 players. I want to be in that group of 16. So I want to do everything possible to make sure this happens. Which means understanding where I am strong, but also understanding where I still need to develop. And in order to help me understand where I am currently sitting, I have regular (and clear) feedback from the coaches. And if I ever think this is not enough, I will (and can) actively seek out feedback at other times, from the appropriate people.

Sound good?

Well in fact GB Hockey put in a brilliant system of feedback in the run up to the Rio Olympics (at which they won gold). They took innovative measures such as ensuring that each feedback session included an extra player as observer. Why? Because they discovered that often the player being reviewed failed to take on board all of the messages they were being given. In particular that they were often too hard on themselves, and didn’t digest the positive messages as well as the ‘work ons.’ I suspect that this is something to which many readers may be able to relate.

Welcoming and seeking feedback is fundamental to a growth mindset, and a growth mindset really powers all four of these attributes.  That belief in, desire to, and approach for, improvement.

Which leads us nicely into the fourth attribute under Being Adaptable….

Further reading: https://hbr.org/2020/06/good-feedback-is-a-two-way-conversation

Continuous Learning

Back in 2016 UK Sport commissioned a study into what drives success in Elite and Super Elite athletes. By pairing athletes from a range of sports, in each of the two categories, they came up with a set of factors that were relevant to the distinctions in performance. They found however that three key factors were common to both groups, two of which were: (i) experience through their upbringing of a culture of striving; and (ii) a very high level of commitment to training.

World class athletes set themselves apart from others primarily by their desire to continuously improve, and the approach they take to this.  Whilst this can on occasion be taken too far, this focus on continuously learning, or as the sport world often describes it, a relentless desire to improve, is what drives continued development and ultimate success.

The O Shaped Lawyer Project defines this attribute as ‘the skill to apply new skills, techniques and information into practice.’ This second bit is of course key. Which is why the Great British Medallist Study ended with a section called From Research into Action. In order to learn, you have to do. And this is often much harder than it sounds. To paraphrase many quotes on this area,

This will be hard work, but nothing that is worth it is ever easy…

Further reading: Maria Konnikova, who wrote the New Yorker article above, wanted to put into practice everything she had learnt about skill acquisition, and the psychology around decision-making, by learning to become an expert poker player in one year. Her book, the Biggest Bluff, documents her journey, and provides some brilliant insight on continuous learning.

I will be taking a writing break over the summer, but do get in touch here if you want any coaching or consultancy help.