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Handling emotional triggers: preparing our students for the practice of law?

by BLAdmin 
By Liz Fraley

In one of my earliest days teaching, I was in the courtroom grading students as they gave their first-ever opening statement.  Nerves are common in this setting, and so we give feedback on both the structural and performance aspects of the exercise.  The last pair of students took their spots at counsel table, and I instructed the plaintiff’s attorney to proceed with her opening statement.  She stood in the center of the courtroom, spoke three words, and completely broke down.  These were not leaky tears; these were body-wracking sobs.  I confess to being caught unprepared for this.  I could not imagine what about this exercise had her emotionally distraught.  I did know, however, that I could not let her stop; I believed that would irreparably damage her confidence that she could complete the exercise.  I told her to get a drink of water (always a good move) and to continue.  She would get a few lines out and then cry again.  I kept prompting her with statements like “and then what happened” until she completed the exercise. 

After all the other students left the courtroom, she asked to talk to me about what had happened.  I readily agreed since I was mystified. She shared that when she was a first year student, she had attempted suicide.  Thankfully, she had gotten help and was much better.  However, the case packet used for opening statement by the students prior to her exercise involved an insurance dispute over death benefits: had the decedent died accidentally or by suicide? Hearing the previous students give opening statements in a case discussing suicide triggered the emotional response in this student.  I had not dealt with a “trigger” event like this before.  She assured me that having her continue and using calm, measured tones had been the right response for her.  She successfully completed my class and the bar, and happily seems to enjoy a good career.

Triggers present a lawyer-leader challenge, both in law school and in practice.  As fiduciaries, our own personal triggers cannot prevent our putting a client’s interests ahead of our own issues.  We cannot realistically expect a law firm to change its business to adapt to our triggers.  In other words, we cannot be fragile in this profession.  We have a job to do, and we must do it to the best of our abilities.  This certainly puts the onus on us as professionals either to seek the mental health help we need to manage our triggers or to be intentional about the type of practice setting we seek.  A lawyer like my young student probably does not need to work in a field where she would be likely to encounter suicide issues as part of her work.

In the law school setting, training lawyer leaders may require us to provide support and guidance to student who have unresolved trauma.  We do not serve students well by suggesting the world will adapt to their triggers, but we can help them understand both their professional obligations and how their own experiences can actually make them a more empathetic and wiser counselor.  In many settings, client have significant emotional responses to their legal issues:  sadness, anger, despair over the events and their lack of control over difficult and upsetting situations.  Transforming negatives into a positive enhancement for emotional intelligence makes a better lawyer. This type of work in law school also reinforces the internal locus of control skills that are needed for good leaders. 

CHALLENGE:

Identify a situation like mine when a student reacted in an unexpected manner to the discussion.

If you did not engage the student to discuss the situation, consider what possible reasons might have existed.

How might you handle similar situations in the future?

I would also love to hear your thoughts on this subject. Do you agree or disagree with my take on triggers?

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Emotional Intelligence: “Leadership: Agility in the Face of Fragility”

by BLAdmin

By Stephen Rispoli

This article, posted in the November 2020 Leadership Issue of the ABA’s Law Practice Magazine, examines the concepts of agility and fragility in uncertain and ever-changing times. Although it deals with the stresses of the pandemic as they relate to the need for agility and recognizing fragility within teammates, these lessons in emotional intelligence are applicable to nearly every situation where the outcome or future is not guaranteed. As the pandemic drags on nearly a year later, it is perhaps more crucial now that ever as we deal with the effects of a long-term crisis.

The article also touches upon two other concepts that I like to discuss with students – efficiency and effectiveness. As the article notes, while many firms focus upon efficiency, they should also be focused upon efficiency’s necessary twin – effectiveness. Checking in on your colleagues to make sure that they are getting their work done in stress times is focusing upon efficiency. But effectiveness is also making sure that your colleagues are doing well. As the saying goes, “you must be doing well to do good.” This approach works with all constituencies, not just work colleagues – family, friends, and clients. We can use our emotional intelligence skills to connect with those around us and help them through difficult situations.

Finally, a note about fragility. Although “fragility” often takes a negative connotation, I really liked it in this context. It does not encourage fragility, but rather helps us look for symptoms of stress and anxiety in others when they are outwardly projecting confidence and positivity. It encourages us to look for moments and ways to help others when they may be struggling. If that’s not using emotional intelligence to make the world a little better, I do not know what is.

I hope you enjoy the article as much as I did.

– SLR

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Did George Washington’s Journey to Strengthen his Emotional Intelligence Contribute to His Success?

by BLAdmin

By Leah Teague

“I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them,
to enjoy them and to dominate them.”

– Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Emotional Intelligence is the ability to be self-aware of the impact of our emotions – and control them – and it is awareness of and understanding the emotions of others. At the core, Emotional Intelligence is connecting with others through empathy to build relationships and achieve goals.

Emotional Intelligence is a modern-day concept. No studies or books could have guided Washington back in his day. But as we study Washington’s development as a leader, do his efforts provide an example of what can happen if one is dedicated to improving one’s emotional intelligence?

Last week, Baylor Law was fortunate to host a virtual presentation on Leadership Lessons from George Washington. Award-winning historian David Stewart, was interviewed by Talmage Boston, a well-respected trial lawyer and author, to discuss the leadership journey of our first president. In his research for his latest book, George Washington: The Political Rise of America’s Founding Father, Stewart discovered that “Washington’s rise constitutes one of the greatest self-reinvention in history.”

David Stewart described George Washington as a brash and arrogant young man – far from the respected father figure we see in portraits. Stewart notes, “From his earliest days, Washington hungered for distinction, for a high reputation that would validate his worth. Washington wrote in his early twenties that ‘the chief part of my happiness’ was ‘the esteem and notice the country has been pleased to honor me with.’” His judgment in early years appeared to have been guided, or misguided, by an excessive ego. And his failures were many in those early military years. Stewart writes of a transformation that took place in his mid-twenties. “Through that prolonged period of forced introspection, Washington evidently resolved on a fundamental change of direction.” By his mid-forties, Washington had transformed himself into the legendary leader known as a caring and quite gentleman who wrote much later in life that his “only ambition is to do my duty in this world as well as I am capable of performing it and to merit the good opinion of all good men.” 

The respected leader at the First Continental Congress in 1774 was “almost unrecognizable when compared to the man who led the Virginia Regiment two decades before,” wrote Stewart. To what does Stewart attribute this transformation?

Washington studied his flaws. From a young age, he struggled against his own nature. His early missteps might have crippled the prospects of a person with less dogged commitment to self-improvement. He ruthlessly suppressed qualities that could hinder his advancement and mastered those that could assist it. Washington’s story is not one of effortless superiority, but one of excellence achieved with great effort.

As we shared in our last blog on Emotional Intelligence, willingness to earnestly and honestly examine yourself and seek self-control are hallmarks of Emotional Intelligence. Awareness of other people and their circumstances with a desire to build relationships and work well with others represent two more key components of EI. George Washington may not have possessed it at the beginning of his career, but his later unanimous election victories indicate he earned it in abundance.

Stewart’s book is, according to the Wall Street Journal, “an outstanding biography that both avoids hagiography and acknowledges the greatness of Washington’s character.” I also learned that while Washington was not a lawyer, he served as Fairfax County Court justice for six years and presided over hundreds of matters. His time as a judge “season[ed] his judgment,” “bolstered his habits of acting cooperatively with peers, listening to differing views, and reconciling his ideas with those of others,” all of which well prepared him for his role as our Founding Father and First President. Washington’s willingness to listen to others with differing opinions and his selfless leadership were essential to seeing our nation through its fragile beginnings. Stewart stated, “Washington gave the United States something every nation needs, but few get: a national hero who understands that heroism includes giving up power and trusting your neighbors, that integrity and virtue – old-fashion concepts even in the eighteenth century – are a greater legacy than personal aggrandizement and national conquest.”   

In the interview, we appreciate Stewart’s thoughtful response to questions about Washington’s unwillingness to free his slaves during his lifetime which provides yet another reason to include Washington in our leadership studies. Washington could make an ideal subject for a class discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of our leaders and the complicated nature of leading in the midst of challenging times. We highly recommend the book, and we hope you enjoy the interview!

– LEAH

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Join Us This Thursday: Leadership Lessons from George Washington

by BLAdmin

VIRTUAL EVENT
THURSDAY, SEPT. 16, 2021 @ 4:30PM CDT

Baylor Law invites you to join us this Thursday as Talmage Boston interviews David O. Stewart about his latest book, George Washington – The Political Rise of America’s Founding Father, and they discuss the leadership lessons we can all learn from our first President. 

Stewart’s book has been described as an “outstanding biography” by the Wall Street Journal and was recently awarded the “History Prize” by the Society of the Cincinnati. (The Society of the Cincinnati was “founded in 1783 by officers of the Continental Army who served together in the American Revolution.” President Washington was a founding member and first president of the organization.)

Pleae RSVP at baylor.edu/law/EventRSVP. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, please contact Stephen Rispoli at 254.710.3927 or [email protected].

CLICK HERE TO RSVP

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Can a lawyer’s emotional intelligence really be more predictive of success than IQ?

by BLAdmin

By Leah Teague

In a profession filled with high IQs, there is evidence that working on your emotional intelligence (or EI) can pay dividends in your professional and personal life.

The education and training in law schools traditionally focused almost exclusively on developing the cognitive ability to solve legal problems. Emotions were discouraged and even criticized as a sign of weakness. Research in more recent years confirms the relevance of emotions in decision-making and the benefit of well-managed emotions to career success and personal satisfaction.

The Yale researcher in the 1990s who coined the term Emotional Intelligence found that the most sophisticated information processing and decision-making occur when we employ not only cognitive ability but also emotion. For a brief history and explanation of Emotional Intelligence, please see the ABA article by Ronda Muir, Emotional Intelligence for Lawyers. She explains,

research has established that rational decision-making is impaired if the area of the brain relating to emotions is damaged or excised. It has now been scientifically demonstrated that the best analyses and decisions are made when we engage the emotions, as well as the intellect. For lawyers, the message is clearly that, in order to upgrade their performance, they should use the additional data available from their own and others’ emotions to enhance their cognitive skills.

In his best-selling book, Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman reported research showing the traditional IQ test only accounts for 20% of a person’s success in life. “Psychologists have concluded that a portion of the missing factors lies in Emotional Intelligence. Emotional Intelligence is the ability to be aware of our own emotions and others and to control our own emotions while empathizing with the emotions of others.

Law schools place a high value on intellect and cognitive ability and we are not wrong to do so. Lawyers as a group have higher than average IQ scores. Some assume the IQ is an accurate predictor of success after law school, and it is – but only to a point. Lawyers “exhibit high average IQ scores (in the 115-130 range), while at the same time scoring lower than the general population on Emotional Intelligence (85-95).” Emotional intelligence is a better predictor of success when IQ is similar, according to Ronda Muir, in “Emotional Intelligence for Lawyers.”

What is Emotional Intelligence?

As a general matter, emotional intelligence refers to a person’s ability to recognize, understand, and manage one’s own and others’ emotional state to relate and work well with others. One approach to EI is to consider four aspects:

  1. What a person knows about themselves (self-awareness);
  2. What a person does with this understanding of their emotions to control or guide their impulses (self-management or regulation);
  3. What a person knows about others (social awareness); and
  4. What a person does with the awareness of others to use that information to build relationships and work well with others (relationship management).

Enhancing one’s Emotional Intelligence takes commitment to developing emotional competencies (self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills) through sustained practice, coaching, and feedback.

Our Challenge:

Spend time this month exploring emotional intelligence. If you are unfamiliar with the concept, start with:

Record Your Observation

Pick two different scenarios where you can observe a group without participating in the group. You also should be far enough away that you cannot hear what the individuals are saying to one another. Write down what actions you observe and what you think they mean. For example, if someone frowns, do you think that person is angry, is sad, disagreed with another person, or something else? Was the emotion directed at another person in the group or someone who you do not think was present? Spend at least ten minutes observing each group.

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Back to School, Back to Advocating that Leadership Development Programming is Valuable!

by BLAdmin

By Leah Teague

On top of the traditional busyness that comes with starting a new academic year, we know many face difficulties during these challenging times. To all of you, we send you our heartfelt greetings and best wishes!

As you resume your work preparing law students to be problem-solvers and influencers, please continue your efforts to increase leadership development activities at your school. For August, we challenge you to try the following:

For readers in the legal academy: Help at least two colleagues find ways to incorporate leadership development in their classes, programs, or other work within the school. Offer specific, concrete ideas or exercises to facilitate their efforts.

For readers who do not hold a full-time position in a law school: Inquire about leadership programming at your alma mater or one with which you have a relationship and offer to help. Feel free to use some of the modules and examples from Fundamentals of Lawyer Leadership for a guest lecture, a CLE offering, or a professional development program.

We believe leadership development is helpful and essential, and leadership programs are gaining traction nationally. Please note that the ABA has proposed amendments to the ABA Standard on Legal Education which impact lawyer leadership. Three important topics may become mandatory for law schools, and they are fundamental topics in well-developed leadership programs. The proposed amendments to Standards 206, 303, and 508 will be voted on at the February 2022 meeting of the Council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar. If adopted, the following topics will be required in legal education:

  • Diversity and inclusion, (now specifically including bias and cross-cultural competency);
  • professional identity including lawyers’ special obligations to clients and society (which includes topics such as ethics, influence, and leadership); and
  • student well-being.

In our opinion, these three concepts must be addressed in leadership development courses or programs as they enrich any study of leadership. Deborah Rhode’s inclusion of these concepts in the Introduction and Conclusion of her Leadership for Lawyers textbook reveals her focus upon these concepts. We address these subjects both in individual chapters and woven in discussions throughout our textbook, Fundamentals of Lawyer Leadership. To explain the relevance, the language of the proposed amendments to Standards 206, 303, and 508 are included in our Teacher’s Manual (See pages 3, 18, 81, and 124, available as part of the Professor Resources) at the beginning of these three chapters:

Chapter 17: Diversity, Inclusion, and Cultural Intelligence
Chapter 1: What is Leadership?
Chapter 11: The Importance of Well-Being: Thriving in the Legal Profession.

This is NOT a sales pitch for our book. Our primary goal is to help as you advocate for, create, or enhance leadership development programming at your school. Whether a school or program chooses to adopt our book has nothing to do with that goal. The “leadership team” (Stephen, Liz, Pat, and me) at Baylor Law stands ready to work with other law schools fully embracing the need to develop lawyers who are not only competent practitioners in their chosen career pursuits but also well-rounded professionals who seek to be positive influencers among their family, friends, and clients and to have a meaningful impact on their communities.

We want to be a resource for – and learn from – others. Please let us know how we can work together to make leadership development programs, and legal education generally, better. That IS the reason we wrote the textbook. It was designed not only for use in leadership courses, but also so that individual chapters can be used as modules in orientation, professional identity programs, clinics, academic support programs, career development and student success centers, and any other courses or programs with the goal of better equipping our students for success in their future role as difference makers.

To read the full version of the proposed amendments to ABA Standards 206, 303, and 508, we direct you to the August 16, 2021, Memo from the Standards Committee to the Council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar. The Memo eventually should be posted in the Notes and Comments Section of the ABA website. For now, Dean Paul Caren posted the Memo on his TaxProf Blog at ABA Standards Committee Approves Anti-Racism, Bias Training as New Accreditation Standards for Law Schools.

We note that the proposed amendments are not without critics. We share concerns about the lack of attention to the assessment of the effectiveness of any new training. But we are encouraged by the work of the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions, and its Co-Directors, Professors Neil Hamilton and Jerry Organ, who are leading the national effort to help law schools develop and adopt assessment tools in the form of stage development rubrics. Effective use of such rubrics can help law schools not only satisfy compliance with ABA Standards but also be more intentional about developing law students who are better prepared for the obligations they will assume as practitioners, professionals, and leaders.

We wish you a great start to the new academic year!

– LEAH

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Simone Biles: The Mark of a Leader

by BLAdmin

By Pat Wilson

The true mark of a leader is not so much how she leads when times are good, but how she responds in the face of adversity. In the past weeks, we all got a front-row seat to Simone Bile’s leadership when she was forced to limit her participation in the Olympics Women’s Gymnastics competition because of the “twisties.” I doubt that many predicted the profound effect she would have that would extend beyond the USA team, and even the gymnastics world. Forbes recently published an article that lists seven leadership lessons for business executives. 

Perhaps the most important take-away from all that happened in Women’s Gymnastics during the Olympics is, as the Forbes article suggests, to prioritize mental health. As leaders who are training other leaders, we must model for our students empathy and support when those with whom we work as students or colleagues are struggling. Just as importantly, we must prioritize our own mental health. It’s okay to step back when life’s challenges become overwhelming. It may be the best thing one can do for the team.

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Back to School, Back to Basics

by BLAdmin

By Leah Teague

As the end of summer nears and return to school looms, we are returning to the basics. For me, that means back to the beginning of this effort to support the growth of leadership development programming in legal education. I remember the early morning breakfast at the 2016 AALS meeting where Deborah Rhode and I hosted a small but enthusiastic group in the first conversation about this effort to encourage law schools to better prepare students as leaders. Encouraged by the energy at that gathering, we planned a formal Group Discussion for the 2017 AALS Annual Meeting entitled Introducing Leadership Development into the Law School Curriculum (see notes linked).The room was packed and over-flowing! The appetite for action was exciting. We all agreed that it was time! Lawyers are leaders and leadership development should be an integral part of legal education and training.

After all manner of justifications for why we need to emphasize leadership development in legal education, we identified and acknowledge challenges and we generated ideas. Two of the challenges identified at that time were:

  • How do we get colleagues to support the creation of leadership development initiatives?
  • How do we help professors and staff colleagues incorporate leadership development into all aspects of their legal education (class, clinics, professional identity formation, career development, etc.).

The progress that has been made since those initial meetings is impressive (see Making Progress in Legal Education: Leadership Development Training in Law Schools), but much more is needed. We challenge you to take an active role in helping with creation or growth of leadership development programming at your school.

Our August challenge is:

For readers in the legal academy: Help at least two colleagues find ways to incorporate leadership development in their classes, programs, or other work within the school.

For readers who do not hold a full-time position in a law school: Inquire about leadership programming at your alma mater or one with which you have a relationship and offer to help.

In a case of colleagues who still think “leaders are born, not made,” victory may be convincing them that leadership development is relevant and important and can be done in law school. Even if they are not yet comfortable that they can effectively include discussions or lessons of leadership in their classrooms, maybe they will be supportive of leadership development efforts of other colleagues.  

In future posts, we will discuss some suggestions for influence and action, which is after all our definition of leadership.

-LEAH

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Monthly wrap-up, July 2021

by BLAdmin

By Pat Wilson

Got a little time to kill?  As we wrap up this month’s leadership challenge to develop or enhance your cultural intelligence, take a few minutes to watch a series of ads run by HSBC Bank.  This link takes you to my favorite among the group of ads, but all these clever ads make the point of the importance of cultural intelligence.  They are good reminders to your students and those whom you mentor that being culturally aware or culturally ignorant can be the difference between successful encounters with clients, business contacts, and others, and being perceived as boorish, insensitive, uncaring, or offensive.     

Cultural intelligence helps to temper, for example, one’s expectation that a Chinese business partner will push through a proposal with the urgency and expedience of Western business culture when that individual is influenced by her culture that values harmony and waiting until the right moment.  Cultural intelligence avoids wrongly concluding that an individual has nothing to contribute during a meeting when in their culture, one does not speak unless invited or questioned.   

Developing and continuing to enhance one’s cultural intelligence is hard, and the learning is never done. Impressing that lesson on our students is an extremely valuable gift for their future success.

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Developing an Attitude of Openness to Gain Knowledge of Different Cultural Practices

by BLAdmin

By Pat Wilson

Something interesting happens at my predominantly white church the Sundays we are slated to worship in the sanctuary of our sister church, a predominantly black congregation. This happens only every other year, with our sister church visiting our sanctuary in the off years. However, there are always a few from my church who shy away from attending the service at our sister church, expecting the service to be too different for their liking. But those who opt to attend church despite their hesitancy often note how enriched they were to experience something very different in terms of music and worship style as compared to our usual Sunday fare. Their openness to experiencing the culture of the black church gives them valuable insight into their neighbors who worship differently. And someone invariably remarks that those who opted to stay home missed something very special. Indeed, they did.

As leaders, it is important to maintain an openness to learning about and even experiencing different cultures as part of our goal to enhance cultural intelligence.  According to the experts, the personality trait of openness is generally believed to influence an individual’s ability to deal effectively with people from different cultural backgrounds.

That attitude of openness opens the door to new and different experiences and opportunities to gain an understanding of different cultures.  People in other cultures do things differently, have different views, and follow different traditions.  To fail to be open to learning about those cultures and, when possible, experiencing them, risks stunting one’s growth in cultural intelligence.  The “ugly American” who travels abroad only to spend her time criticizing the different customs and cultures because they aren’t like we do it back home, misses the richness of those customs and cultural traditions.  And one doesn’t have to leave the country to be the ugly American and to miss out on fantastic opportunities to connect with those from other cultures in our own backyards.

The good news is we don’t have to leave the country to enhance our knowledge of other cultures.  By all means, never miss the chance to visit a new place or to become more at home in a place you’ve visited before, but there are plenty of opportunities even locally.  Try the food at the new Ethiopian restaurant, spend a few hours at the Czech festival, visit the Brazilian art exhibit, or even visit the worship service of a different denomination or faith tradition.  And talk to the individuals you meet along the way.  People are generally happy to share their culture with outsiders who are respectful, non-judgmental, and genuinely curious. 

There are certainly plenty of books, blogs, and television shows that provide a glimpse into other cultures, but dare to venture outside your cultural comfort zone, and encourage those who you teach or otherwise influence to do the same.  Just as accepting failure as a learning opportunity is a vital component of a growth mindset, embracing uncomfortableness in new environments is a worthwhile endeavor as you open yourself to different cultural experiences. Maybe you’ll like what you experience, maybe not—and that’s okay. It’s the learning, and the openness to learning, that matters.