How to lead a global legal team in an era of exponential change

Some skills never change and remain at the core of legal leadership. Foremost among these are superior judgment, legal acumen and experience.  However, as the legal landscape shifts and becomes ever more complex, many non-legal skills are increasingly important. Five in particular are “mission-critical”. We’ll consider each of these but first, let’s consider what has changed:

Globalisation has increased the complexity of running a legal organisation. At a human level, GCs must now lead, unify and inspire diverse groups of people in very different parts of the world. That requires subtlety, diplomacy and a fine nose for when to “go local” (and when not to). More broadly, virtually every major matter has new angles that need to be considered. Whether you’re dealing with a commercial arrangement, a regulatory investigation or a dispute, things rarely stay put in one place. The actions you take in one market will impact things in others and those effects need to be taken into account and there are many moving parts.

Regulatory expansion: Government regulation has raised the stakes. Dodd-Frank, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the UK Bribery Act, sanctions, antitrust, data privacy, health care and consumer protection are some of the recent challenges. In many cases, rules are inconsistent across – or even within – markets. At the same time, the consequences of getting it wrong are ever more serious. In some cases, fines have reached existential levels. Often, they are followed on by private litigation. The speed and impact of reputational harm in an era of social media makes matters even worse.

Risk convergence: “Pure” legal matters have become as common as pink unicorns. Today, the legal, economic, reputational and political dimensions of risk blend together. But while this trend makes it more important than ever for experts to solve problems holistically, we often continue to work in silos. As Gillian Tett notes in her brilliant new book “The Silo Effect”, the traditional way of organising things around functional departments can cause blindness because it limits information and restricts thinking.

Cost pressures: Corporate legal departments are under pressure like never before. It seems that every year, GCs must do more with less. And it’s no longer only outside counsel spend that gets targeted – all costs are fair game. To meet these demands and still remain sustainable, cost-cutting efforts must be sophisticated and nuanced. GCs have to put away the financial machete and learn to work with a scalpel, leveraging sophisticated procurement techniques that previously were only used by purchasing experts.

Innovative disruption: The legal industry is under massive disruption. Powerful new technologies, including cloud-based self-help tools (PLC, CEB, etc.), efficiency tools (contract and matter management, e-discovery, etc.), and transparency tools (e-billing, online bidding platforms, dashboards etc) have emerged. And we’re still in the early phases. If Moore’s Law, which states that processing power doubles every two years, continues to hold true, technology and artificial intelligence will change our industry beyond all recognition. At the same time, alternative legal providers have gone mainstream, providing offshoring, in-shoring, outsourcing and contracting options. Substantive legal advice will increasingly become a commodity and “value-add” will lie in hybrid advice, management support, process optimisation, metrics, etc. Traditional law firm models that rely on charging hourly fees for substantive legal advice will come under pressure. Ditto GCs who see their job as merely providing such advice. Don’t get me wrong: excellent legal advice will always be a core capability but it will increasingly be a baseline rather than a destination.

So this is the “new normal”. What are the new non-legal skills the GC must possess to navigate this space? Clearly, there are many, but five in particular are critical:

Innate curiosity: To stay ahead, GCs must continuously learn new things about many topics, including business, leadership, technology, psychology and finance, in addition to the law. GCs must become “future literate” (as Braintree founder Bryan Johnson calls it). That requires innate and avid curiosity. A good reading habit is one way to foster that. As Charlie Munger (Warren Buffet’s partner and vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway) puts it: “In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time–none, zero.”

But reading is not the only way to accumulate knowledge; nor is it enough. Podcasts, webcasts, magazines, talks and interviews, blogs; online courses. The list of options is endless. I believe one of the most important ways to gather knowledge is networking. Only by relentlessly developing and leveraging personal networks can you import and export new ideas and best practice. Books and other materials provide food for thought, but people with experience are still the best sounding boards.

Cultural intelligence: While it is important to avoid cultural stereotypes, it is equally critical to possess “CQ” or cultural intelligence. GCs that operate globally need to be familiar with how different cultures approach a range is issues, including:

• Leadership: Are leadership models hierarchical or flat?
• “Face”: Do people from that culture view disapproval as a rejection of the idea or the person behind the idea? Is disagreement seen as a positive or destructive force?
• Trust: How does it get built? Through cognitive or emotional contact? How important is it to build a personal relationship before getting down to business?
• Reasoning: How do people in a given culture typically reason? Do they tackle practical problems up front? Or do they prefer to build a theoretical case first?
• Communication: How direct you should be when communicating? Is the culture a “high context” one where things can be understood without being said or a “low context” one where everything needs to be clarified openly?

For an excellent discussion of the above read Erin Meyer’s book “The Culture Map”. GCs should also carefully listen and learn from their teams and foreign assignments, where possible, can be key to acquiring CQ.

Flexible leadership: Today’s GC needs to maintain a flexible approach to leadership that leverages both different sources of power and different leadership styles. It requires EQ to know when to leverage what source and style.

As for power, there are three core sources to draw upon: positional power, which comes from the authority of the GCs office; expert power, which comes from the GC’s specialised legal skills; and personal power, which comes from the GC’s ability to connect and inspire people, ask the right questions, listen, provide support and encouragement, create a safe environment, etc. The GC needs to be aware of these different power sources and apply them appropriately to the context and audience.

In addition, the GC needs to understand and leverage a broad range of leadership styles. Everyone has a particular style that they are most comfortable with, but today’s GC must match the best style to the situation/person. For instance, some people may need “big picture” directional leadership, whereas others may need more detailed hand-holding. GCs need to get out of their comfort zones to develop a range of styles. As Erica Peitler, author of “Leadership Rigor!” says, “if you are a hammer, don’t always treat everyone as a nail.” A good place to start learning about all of this is this podcast with Erica.

Communication and inspiration: In an era of exponential change and mobile talent, the GC’s ability to persuade and inspire is critical. To succeed, GCs must learn to lead from the heart and not just the head. Unfortunately, this is alien to the way many lawyers have been taught.

In his famous TED talk “Start with Why”, Simon Sinek explains why leading from the heart is so critical. People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. To take people with you, you must trigger those parts of the brain that drive behaviour.  As Sinek notes, in the 1963 Civil Rights “March on Washington”, Dr. Martin Luther King inspired millions by telling them why change was needed; by focusing on the deeper truths that connected everyone. He didn’t dwell on the “how”. Most GCs will never rise to the level of a Martin Luther King but simply focusing on why something needs to happen can move mountains.

Superior business skills: GCs need to approach the law more as a business and less as a profession. Understanding the client’s business needs is essential in a world where substantive legal knowledge is becoming a commodity. GCs must join their clients in market visits, attend sales conferences and invite themselves to strategic business planning meetings. They need to be curious about, and have a passion for, the businesses they serve. They need to ask lots of questions. The point is that it is no longer enough to sit behind a desk in an ivory tower and dispense legal advice. Doing just that is a surefire way to become a corporate dinosaur.

The above are not the only non-legal skills today’s GC needs. Nor are they specific to the legal profession. All senior executives, regardless of function, need to acquire them. Therein lies an important point: in an exponential world, many of the core capabilities for C-suite success are converging. Food for thought.

Bjarne Tellmann, SVP and general counsel, Pearson