How General Counsel can overcome leadership challenges in the workplace

How General Counsel can overcome leadership challenges in the workplace

What challenges do General Counsel face as business leaders? Mark Smith, Director of Strategic Markets at 老司机午夜福利, explains how adopting a new approach to leadership, 鈥榯he paradox mindset,鈥 can help today鈥檚 in-house leaders address complex challenges they face in the workplace.

Watch this short three-minute video as Mark Smith explores leadership challenges for legal teams and offers one quick win.

 

 

In-house leadership: from complexity to paradox

What types of leadership challenges are typically faced by in-house legal teams? The recently coined phrase, BOCA 鈥 鈥淏lurred boundaries, Overload, Complexity, Ambiguity鈥 鈥 reflects the characteristics faced by leaders in today鈥檚 workplace. As business leaders, General Counsel can identify with these more than ever 鈥 particularly the challenge of increasing complexity in the workplace.

As Mark Smith notes, 鈥淭raditional problems usually have a right or best solution. But increasingly as in-house leaders we鈥檙e facing a paradox, where we have a seemingly insoluble problem that is characterised by two opposing ideas.鈥

老司机午夜福利 recently commissioned the Center for Creative Leadership to explore this question further: how can in-house leaders think more thoroughly and work through paradox with our stakeholders to create better results for our organisations?

Read: 鈥業n-house leadership 鈥 from complexity to paradox鈥 to learn more

What is an organisational paradox?

A paradox is used as a general term to describe the tensions leaders face when conflicting demands emerge. Unlike problems, where a solution exists to solve it, paradoxes are dilemmas that are ongoing, unsolvable and contain seemingly opposing ideas.

Here are some examples of organisational paradoxes:

In house legal organisational structure paradoxesParadox mindset as leadership practice

The research provides a framework with a series of practical steps that General Counsel and in-house lawyers can take to address these organisational paradoxes. These practical steps help to bring clarity to the challenge legal leaders are facing, how it shows up and how stakeholders involved can work together to find goals in common.

  • Step 1: See the paradox
  • Step 2: Map the paradox
  • Step 3: Accept the affects
  • Step 4: Learn from the situation
  • Step 5: Learn from tangible actions

Leadership is the result of what an in-house leader does, not just what they know. The evidence suggests that bringing a paradoxical mindset to how you practice being an in-house leader can benefit you, those around you, and your organisation.

Read: 鈥業n-house leadership 鈥 from complexity to paradox鈥 to learn more

One quick win for in-house teams

While no easy solutions exist, Mark Smith offers some suggestions on how General Counsel and legal team leaders can make immediate progress with a quick win.

Can you build time in for you and your team to reflect on your week鈥檚 work? Think about key incidents that took place, and reflect as a team:

  1. What were the objectives?
  2. What assumptions were we making?
  3. What happened?
  4. What lessons have we learnt?

Use these quick learnings to prepare to be fundamentally better next week. Incremental learning can make a big difference to our performance.

Practical support for in-house leadership

is packed with practical content to support your development and thinking around effective in-house leadership, from guidance on building trust and managing conflict in a legal team, to short bite-sized videos to guide your team鈥檚 development.

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About the author:
Sarah leads marketing for the In-House and Academic legal communities. She is passionate about customer-centric marketing and delivering data-based insights to help clients get the best use out of 老司机午夜福利 solutions and products, and ensure they succeed in their roles.

Prior to her role at 老司机午夜福利, Sarah specialised in delivering large B2B marketing programmes across a number of industries, including Financial Services, Technology and Manufacturing.