legal sanity

I’m taking some time off for the upcoming holiday. I wish everyone celebrating a very happy Thanksgiving. I thought I’d leave you off with a sampling of posts and articles that provide some great food for thought on managing the people that law firms rely on for everyday success.

First up is a post from Client Service Insight that relays a story-excerpt from a book called The Leadership Challenge. The story is about a young girl who, when asked why she’s learning sign language, explains that she’s doing so to better communicate with her best friend, who is deaf. Continuing, the girl says: Now “I listen with my eyes and my heart, not just my ears and my brain.”

The ability to listen to others with our “eyes and heart” is a great leadership asset. This heart quotient is also considered in a recent article from CareerJournal.com called Business Is Personal, So Managers Need to harness Their Emotions. The piece quotes one of my favoriite authors, Daniel Goleman, who states: "Good [manager-employee] relationships act like vitamins, while bad ones are like poison -- undermining our cognitive efficiency and creativity."

Last, but not least, on the roster is this mediate.com commentary on Deceiving Others. In it, author Manie Spoelstra explores the act and art of lying - a topic that “has captured the attention of managers” given the recent spate of highly publicized business deceptions.