Developing Law Firm Leaders

Earlier this week, I attended an event put on by LIWA (the Long Island Women’s Agenda, a local women’s organization), of which I am a board member, about leadership. The speaker at the event was Ann Marie Thigpen, Director of Adelphi University’s Long Island Center for Nonprofit Leadership, which puts on a leadership certificate program. Ms. Thigpen led a discussion about what it means to be a great leader, the difference between leadership and management and how to develop great leaders within an organization.

I’ve been thinking a lot about law firm leadership lately, in part because I’ve been working with some law firms who want to make positive changes with regard to the leadership and management of their firms in 2011, but I’ve been interested in those issues for some time. Back when I was working in my old firm, even before I became a partner, I had a chart on my desk showing the differences between and characteristics of great leaders and managers. The leadership event this week reminded me of that chart again (which I still have, though I no longer recall its origin).

While on occasion the leader and the manager are one and the same, to me the biggest difference between a leader and a manager has always been that, as Ms. Thigpen noted during her talk the other evening, “the leader holds the vision; the manager carries it out.”

One interesting observation made during the discussion was that *great leaders take time out to recharge their batteries.* After all, no one follows a haggard, worn out, overly stressed person; people follow those who are inspired and seem to have it all together.

So what are the characteristics of a great leader? Our discussion the other night identified some.

A great leader is:

• A visionary
• An excellent communicator (and a great listener)
• Inspiring; a motivator
• Respected and respectful of others
• Trustworthy; a person of integrity
• Decisive; assertive
• Fair; just and consistent in decisionmaking; open to new ideas
• A model of the behavior he/she wants to see (lives the vision)
• Generous;magnanimous (shares the fame and holds the blame)
• Creative
• Posessed of a sense of humor

What do you think makes a great law firm leader?