legal sanity

A couple of months ago, I wrote about the nexus between leading and serving in the law. Contemplating “how many law firm leaders and managers think that – and act like - they’re in the business of serving the attorneys they lead and manage,” I concluded that, to “really embrace the role of a servant, they would also have to embrace the kind of business intimacy that lawyers typically eschew.”

Addressing a related topic in a recent post titled You Gotta Serve Someone, David Maister stresses the importance of cultivating a server mentality when you work for a customer or client. Noting that human beings “look for relationships, even in minor transactions,” Maister observes that the “more you focus on serving others, the more they want to be with you and give you what you want.” In a post expanding on Maister’s insights, Michelle Golden of Golden Practices notes that “service types” are often the “real stars in firms.” They’re carried to the top, in her estimation, by a potent fusion of “great attitude” and skill.

From the above commentary, it seems that law firms would be wise to consider how serving others - clients, client prospects and their own lawyers – factors into their firm culture and business philosophy. To help them along, Dick Richards of Come Gather Round shares an article he wrote on Creating A Mythology Of Customer Service.

Richards posits that, in addition to the “physical, mental, emotional and spiritual;” there’s a fifth dimension of human energy that leaders looking to optimize customer service must understand and harness. It’s the dimension that poet Robert Bly calls mythic energy. As Richards interprets it, we might “better understand customer service by examining myths about people serving other people.” Unfortunately, he continues, our culture’s “mythologies do contain tales about serving a country or god, but not serving one another.”

Given this dearth of mythic reference points about “service to others,” Richards suggests that business leaders “practice the art of leadership by creating” them. They can accomplish this by: (1) culling and sharing stories of extraordinary service from “their organization’s past and present;” and (2) encouraging employees to engage in dialogue about exceptional customer service they’ve received.