Herding Cats: Is Leading Lawyers Really Mission Impossible?

Do you remember that EDS commercial that aired during the Super Bowl a few years ago?  The scene was the Wild West, compete with rugged Stetson wearing cowboys riding galloping horses.  A young man with leather gloves and denim jacket points to a faded black and white photo and says in a

Montana

drawl, “This man right here is my great-grandfather.  He’s the first cat herder in our family.”  The minute-long commercial shows thousands of cats being wrangled over the prairie, crossing rivers, and off into the sunset, interspersed by cat-herding quotes, such as, “Herding cats – don’t let anyone tell you its easy” and, “Anyone can herd cattle.  Holding together ten thousand, half-wild, short-hairs –now that’s another thing altogether.” A man with a handlebar mustache and a black hat says, “Being a cat-herder… that’s probably the toughest thing I’ve ever done. Not everyone can do what we do.” 

The last cat-herder says, “It’s not an easy job, but when you bring a herd into town and you ain’t lost a one of ‘em, there ain’t a feeling like it in the world.”

I love that commercial.  If you google “herding cats video” you can watch it on the internet.

Leading lawyers is a lot like herding cats, nearly impossible, but in the end, ‘there ain’t a feeling like in the world.”  But easy, it’s not. 

Capital

University

law professor Susan Daicoff researched personality differences between lawyers and the general public from early childhood through law school to one’s legal career.  In her book, “Lawyer, Know Thyself”, she illustrates that lawyers are measurably more competitive, argumentative, aggressive, dominant, cold, quarrelsome, and less agreeable than the general public. 

While much has been learned about emotional intelligence and its key role in leadership, Daicoff reports that lawyers come up short here too.  She writes that lawyers tend to have low interest in people, low concern about emotional issues and interpersonal matters and that there is a disproportionate preference for ‘thinking’ over ‘feeling’ among lawyers.  Add to this mix: attorneys have a higher incidence of psychological distress, substance abuse and pessimistic view of life.

In subsequent research, she also reports on studies conducted on testosterone levels of trial lawyers, which tend to be 30% more than the average lawyer, and equal to a ‘typical blue-collar worker’.  She comments that higher testosterone levels are associated with dominance, combativeness, antisocial behavior, martial discord, violent crime, and fewer smiles. 

Sounds like most cats I’ve known.

Dr. Larry Richard of the Hildebrandt Institute reported at a recent conference that lawyers are nearly off the charts on several personality traits, as measured by the Caliper Profile, an assessment tool validated over the past 40 years.  Attorneys, on average, score more than two standard deviations (that’s a lot) from the general population in six areas.  They are significantly more skeptical, more autonomous, less sociable, less resilient to criticism, better at abstract reasoning (problem solving) and have a higher sense of urgency than everyone else on the planet.

The good news is that these traits tend to make lawyers more effective representing clients in both the board room and the court room.  The bad news is that while lawyers value strong leadership, their personality, formal training, and the organizational structure of law firms conspire against them to be neither good leaders or followers.

Some

U.S.

firms, however, are not letting this bad news prevent them from improving their cat-herding skills.  Pittsburgh-based Reed Smith has partnered with Wharton’s

Business

School

to create a leadership development program for their lawyers and senior staff.  DLA Piper sends their leading lawyers to a week-long leadership and management program at Harvard. 

Law schools are beginning to recognize the need for leadership training as well.  This year,

Santa Clara

University

offered a class called, “Leadership for Lawyers: Teaching Students and Lawyers to be Ethical and Innovative Leaders”.  Professor Robert Cullen worked with Barry Posner, dean of SCU’s

School

of

Business

and co-author of the popular leadership book, “The Leadership Challenge”.  Posner is quoted in Santa Clara Law Magazine, “If you understand the impact that law and lawyers have on our society, it seems almost criminal that we don’t offer leadership training as part of our legal education.  Leadership isn’t the responsibility of some hero or famous person; it’s everyone’s responsibility.”

Can a leadership class at SCU or a week at Harvard compensate for strong personality traits, an anti-teamwork culture and high testosterone?  Probably not, but Posner’s (and James Kouzes’) Leadership Challenge offers hope.  Their model for leadership development relies on specific behaviors and attitudes, not personality or hormones, to indicate leadership effectiveness.  According to them, respected leaders are honest, competent, forward-looking and inspiring and effective leaders “challenge the process, inspire a shared vision, enable others to act, model the way, and encourage the heart.”

Leading lawyers will probably be a lot like herding cats for years to come, but the lawyers and law firms that figure out how to raise up the best cat wranglers in the country will certainly have a strategic advantage.

This article originally appeared in Managing Partner Magazine.

Comments

[Stephanie West Allen]

Thanks, Mark! I think this is an important and compelling topic as I know you do.

Here's a chart created by Susan Daicoff showing what she has found on how lawyers differ from the general population:

http://users.law.capital.edu/sdaicoff/scla99.html

I have not announced it yet but she has agreed to be interviewed for idealawg in the near future. Also I soon will be announcing on idealawg that I will be posting an interview of Donald Polden (law school dean) and Robert Cullen (professor) about the program on leadership for lawyers created at Santa Clara University School of Law; that interview is in process as I write. I am excited about both interviews as you might imagine. All three interviewees have much to add to the conversation about lawyers and leadership. So do you.