Why Emotional Intelligence Is the Real Career Differentiator

In this episode of Lawyer Launcher: Behind the Bar, Susan Van Dyke sits down with leadership coach and former Big Law professional Megan Mallister to unpack one of the most misunderstood success factors in law firms: emotional intelligence.

Law school teaches you how to think. It does not teach you how to navigate personalities, manage pressure, receive feedback, or build trust inside a firm.

Megan reframes “soft skills” as power skills — the capabilities that differentiate lawyers who simply survive from those who thrive.

They discuss:

• What emotional intelligence really means in a law firm environment
  
  
• Why stress is where EQ actually gets tested
  
  
• How to “manage up” and clarify expectations with partners
  
  
• The right way to receive constructive feedback
  
  
• How to create your own development plan as a summer or articling student
  
  
• Why you need an internal “board of directors” instead of just one mentor
  
  
• How to zoom out when early-career pressure feels overwhelming
  
  

If you are preparing to enter your first firm — or trying to stand out in a competitive environment — this episode offers practical tools, scripts, and mindset shifts that will serve you for your entire career.

These are not soft skills.
They are career-defining skills.

EPISODE NOTES:

Megan McAllister Consulting and Coaching: https://www.meganmcallister.ca/ 

Megan’s LinkedIn profile is https://www.linkedin.com/in/megan-mcallister/ 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

If you've ever wanted to get some advice and some tips on how to come into a law firm feeling empowered, how to use your superpowers, how to take responsibility for your practice, this episode is for you. I got to spend some time with Megan McAllister, who is uh uh both a coach and a consultant. She's been in this space in law, working for many, many years. She's worked in big law, she's worked in large law, and for the last five and a half years or so, she's been working in a consulting practice, working for working with leadership of firms, working with um uh culture issues, working with juniors and everything, everything in between, everybody in between. And she's gonna talk about empowerment and leaning into your role and what you can do to take responsibility for your own practice. And she is highly credible, she's very generous, and I'm really looking forward to interviewing her. She's a great person, and I think she would be an amazing coach for anybody who uh is inclined to get their own coach to ensure their success. So let's have a listen to Megan and see what she'll share. Enjoy. Welcome to the Lawyer Launcher Podcast. Hello, friends, I'm your host, Susan Van Dyke. If you're a law student or a new lawyer eager to launch a successful career, you're in the right place. Drawing on more than 25 years of experience, I'll demystify the business of law and help you understand just what it takes to succeed. We'll empower you, help build confidence, and reduce anxiety. Our experts will share tips and advice, and I can't wait for you to hear from them. Now, let's dive in. Megan McAllister, thank you so much, and welcome to the Lawyer Launcher Behind the Bar podcast. It's really great to have you here. Thanks so much for your time. Oh, I'm excited to be here. Thank you for having me. It's gonna be a juicy conversation. I know you have a lot of stuff to share, and I know you have a ton of experience. And um as I was just saying to you, I love sort of digging into these topics, and I feel very lucky to have people like you who I get to talk with and kind of nerd out with a little bit, if I can put it that way, and just indulge in our passions for helping all kinds of lawyers in all kinds of spaces in law. My own passion, and I think you share this too, is the opportunity for a student to cross that threshold to their first law firm and be as prepared, have those truths, really know what they're going into, develop some skills, some self-awareness, some empowerment, which is a space I know you have a lot to share on, can set somebody up for their future hardly like anything else. Would you agree?

SPEAKER_00 2:45

Yes, yes. I mean, I think it's uh such a huge point of growth for a student to uh when they're entering into those first stages of their career and to have to have tools, to have uh empowerment, to feel good about that shift, uh is yeah, it's it's really valuable, all of the conversations that you're bringing to students.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Oh, good. And and I think, you know, we talk a lot about emotional intelligence. And I want to get a little bit more granular about what is emotional intelligence, why is it so important? You know, you learn the skills in law school, you learn how to think, you learn, you know, you learn your technical skills and so forth. But when you bring that into a law firm, it's just so different. It's so very different. The environment is different. This there's no structure really. Um, there's just so much different about it. And we're dropping these grads into an environment that I feel strongly we haven't really prepared them for. And emotional intelligence is one of those nebulous topics for some people that is hard to kind of get a grasp on. So, um, what are your thoughts on? Give me some framework on what you've seen, maybe on the junior years. I know you work with everybody, right? You work with senior people and all that, but we're gonna just focus on the student and junior level. What have you seen on emotional intelligence? Anything there you can share?

SPEAKER_00 4:01

Yeah, I mean, I suppose the way that I think about this when you're entering into a law firm environment, your school smarts are sort of the table stakes, right? That's an that's an expectation that you're bringing certain skill sets and certain knowledge to the table that law school has prepared you for. Uh, and then the shift, the shift becomes around the emotional intelligence. And I've I've heard this talked about as soft skills, and I dispute uh that characterization. I think that these are sort of power skills that can really differentiate people and set them apart. And I also think, I also think that emotional intelligence is maybe simplified a little bit and thought about in terms of, you know, emotional intelligence at a very obvious level is like, do you get along with others? But I think that there's a lot more depth to it if we really want to sort of exercise emotional intelligence as a two-power skill. Um, so when I think about emotional intelligence and thinking about somebody that is thinking about how they build trust within the organization, um, thinking about your interactions with others, what's the ratio of sort of positive interactions versus interactions that might not be so positive? And are we thinking about things in those terms? Uh, all the different touch points, all the different opportunities that we have to make an impression, whether it's our work product or just the way that we show up in a meeting with a partner or an associate uh at an event that is hosted by a firm. So uh being being mindful of the way that we present, both in terms of our work product, but also in terms of who we are and the way that we show up. Um, I think emotional intelligence is also about how we show up, how we manage ourselves in less than perfect conditions. So when we are feeling uh stressed out, when things are not going as well as they should, how are we able to manage that? Are we able to catch ourselves in those moments of stress and sort of self-regulate and adapt and notice what's going on? Um, and in a similar way, in our interactions with others, it's really easy to have emotional intelligence when we see things exactly the same way, when we have the exact same communication styles or work delivery styles. Uh, those skills really get tested when we have to work with people that are different, or we have different ideas about how to approach a task or a project, or we're noticing different communication styles. So that's what I think about emotional intelligence. I think, you know, on a very surface level, we can think about it in terms of how we interact with others. Um, but but really it really gets tested, shown, displayed in less than ideal circumstances.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

And we both know that law can be very stressful. Yeah. In all areas of law, it can be very stressful. And I think that's where those disciplines get stressed. And I just I was writing down some notes as you were talking because I loved everything that you just said. And I love the reframing of it being a power skill, that it's not just a soft skill, but it is actually it's a differentiator, in my opinion. And I think, and you can probably do this too, Megan, when you think about the people that you work with, what the those that are the most successful, and success is defined differently from other people, but in the classical sense of success, they attract work, they keep clients, you know, they're making good compensation, et cetera. Most of them, I'm gonna say probably 80 to 90 percent of them have high EQ, high emotional intelligence. Um, and the other thing I loved what you said is around self-awareness, being aware of when maybe you are not showing up in the way that you intend to, um, that you're under stressed and you need to take a beat before you respond or what have you. And um, and and the stress can't be um, I think I don't think it can be emphasized enough, whether it's internal stress that you're experiencing in a file with opposing counsel, with your client, or you're subjected to the stress of others. The partner you're working with on a file is feeling stress. You may not actually feel the stress in that moment, but somebody comes charging into your workspace, their hair's on fire, and you think, holy crap, you know, your internal alarms are going off, and now you're, you know. So I just want to acknowledge that that it can be, it's not an easy thing to develop that some people make it look easy. I think the leaders that you and I get to work with, some of them make it look easy, some need help, and some need more skills. Some that I've worked with and rainmakers and people who are successful, some of them make it look really easy. But I know, and you probably know Megan because you work with them, they've trained themselves. They've worked at it, right? So do you think is it would you agree with that?

SPEAKER_00 8:42

Yeah, I'd absolutely agree with it. I mean, it's a high, it's a high pressure, high performance profession, right? So I think the um developing the internal skills and the practices to be able to manage ourselves and ground ourselves and and show up at our best and have compassion for ourselves when we don't show up at our best. All of that is in love that's yeah, that's that's a whole other conversation, I think, in and of itself, but it is embedded into this sort of power skill of emotional intelligence. And it's absolutely necessary when you're in a profession that has these sorts of pressures and stressors on yourself, or as you said, coming coming from other people as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:21

So you've worked in big law, you've worked in large law, you now, as a consultant for the last five plus years, have worked probably with a whole bunch of characters across a whole bunch of types of firms and practice areas, and I use the word characters intentionally. Um, what do you see on a day-to-day basis? Are there any specific things you can think of that would help somebody dial into improving their emotional intelligence and examples and specifics? Like, can you put us into a day-to-day setting where somebody could actually apply some skills?

SPEAKER_00 9:53

Yeah, let me let me try and tell me, tell me if I'm being too general and tell me if you see if I can break it down into more specifics. I mean, one sort of subcompetency of emotional intelligence that I that I think about a lot is the idea of empathy. And I think empathy can also really be viewed as a soft skill. But if we if we think about empathy as putting ourselves in the shoes of other people, and if we think about that within the student context, uh, that may be a student feeling like maybe they're not getting all of the feedback that they would like to get. They feel like their mentor doesn't have the time for them or isn't giving them as much feedback as they'd like. And the empathetic approach to that would be what might be going on for this other person. And if they put themselves in the shoes of that person, they might, they might understand that they're dealing with a partner that's pulled in a million different directions, who um is struggling to get everything done, uh, who would really love to provide feedback, but really a zero time in order to be able to offer it. And with that empathetic position, then we might in turn think about what are the things that we could do to make it easier on that partner to give us that feedback, right? How can we, how can we operate? And I talk a lot about this from a state of sort of agency in terms of, hey, how can I influence this relationship or make it easier for this person to give me this feedback? So that would be that's sort of one example that immediately comes to mind. But this topic of empathy and putting ourselves in the shoes of others, uh, both in terms of getting what we want or what we need from that relationship, uh, but also in terms of how we might make that person's life easier, uh, I think is is always gonna be a winning strategy, uh, no matter where you're at in your career.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

So the two things I just wrote down that you said, which I thought were brilliant, um, which is so probably the most empowering thing I've heard, is somebody to ask themselves, how can I influence this relationship? And I want to I want to answer that question, the two of us, for any students or juniors who are listening. Um and the second thing you said that I think is also as important is how can I make life easier for the lawyer I'm working with? And this is translatable, by the way, to clients. Everything you're saying. I just want to just note that we're not focused on that in this uh discussion, but it it translates beautifully if we have somebody who's more senior listening to this. So when we talk about how can I influence this relationship, do they ask? Do they are they forthcoming? I mean, that takes a bit of nerve for a student, a junior associate to ask. So they need to probably get comfortable with language that feels more um safer and more authentic to them. So, what could they say about that? How do they step into that? Because I love that question.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

Yeah, yeah. So I think I think about this as the idea or the competency of like being coachable. Um, so there's there's a few different ways that we could that we could sort of think about this. So um if we convey through our actions and our words to someone that I deeply care about doing a good job for you, and I'm gonna do my part in this relationship, we're gonna greatly increase the likelihood that that person's gonna be invested in our success, right? Yes, communicating that through our through our energy, through our actions, through our words, through our behaviors. Um, so there could be language uh that we could use the first time that we're working with someone, um, we could say, hey, it's my first time working with you, or this is the first time that I've taken on this task. You know, I really care about giving you a work product that's gonna add value. Uh, is there anything I need to know about working with you? Could you give me a sense of what the work product should look like at the end of the project? Uh are you expecting me to check in along the way of the project, or would you like me to deliver as near the final of a draft as possible? So we can take it upon ourselves to sort of proactively clarify expectations with some questions, recognizing that we're gonna make it a lot easier for that person to give us direct feedback that we need in order to enable the degree to which we deliver the work product that they're looking for. We're also gonna convey that we really care through asking those questions. And something that feels like a secret that maybe should be revealed in law firm environments, but I think all work environments is much of the constructive critique or feedback that people get, it actually is less of a right or wrong. And most of the time it has more to do with preferences. And many people have preferred ways of working or expectations around work product that maybe they think are obvious to other people, but aren't. So if we can take the position of agency and almost manage up in terms of the way that we're asking questions, we're we're doing two things. Again, we're setting ourselves up for success and we're sending a really powerful message that we care about adding value.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

Oh, Megan, 100%. And there may be an assumption that students believe that um the way instructions are delivered are is just the way it's delivered. But actually, what you're saying, and I know this to be true too, managing up, meaning you're the junior, you're managing somebody senior to you, you're managing them to give you instructions and to lay out exactly how they like things. Because I think most senior people know that this person likes their drafting done this way, this person likes it that way. We all have, we're a bit idiosyncratic in the way that we like our work. And I've sat in meetings with partners at the boardroom table talking about a student, a junior, a mid-level associate, and there can be very different experiences with different partners, right? You're nodding, different partners as well. And they look at each other like aliens and they go, What? They're fantastic. What do you mean? Oh no, they, you know, they did way too much research on something. Yeah, but that's their superpower. And when they do that for me, that, you know, they go off and they explain how they really suited their style. But they may not have suited another partner's style of work. And what you're saying, which I think is brilliant, and I love the way you you call it a secret, is to actually ask them, lay it out. And you might even say, as a student, I know different lawyers, or I believe different lawyers like to work in slightly different ways. And it's important to me that I deliver in a way that works for you. So I would love to know, et cetera, et cetera, you know, how what the deliveral should deliverable should be. I think that kind of clarity. If a student had that kind of clarity, honestly, Megan, I think that could be a complete, an utter game changer.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

I yeah, I think I think so too. I can feel I can feel both of us getting excited about that.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

Provided you oh, but here's the here's the key though, provided you deliver as best you can on what you heard is needed. So you ask the question, always take a notebook into the office or on the Zoom call or however you're meeting, and do your best to deliver. Follow those instructions. Don't think you know better, follow the instructions of the lawyer.

SPEAKER_00 17:07

Yeah, a hundred percent. If if you know we when people are taking the time to give us really explicit instructions or feedback, um we can we can choose to think of that as like a gift of setting ourselves up for success. And we can recognize that not everyone will do that. So if someone is taking the time um to give us clear and explicit instructions or feedback, we really want to show that we're paying attention. So I think, you know, listening deeply, right, for for what this explicit instruction is, but also maybe listening under the surface for some of the values that are important to that partner. Um, noting it down, you're probably, you know, if you're if you're keeping notes about different partners' preferences, you're going to want to save it in a confidential place, right? You don't want anyone coming across that. Um, but having a system for for tracking all of that, I still do that in my work with clients. I note down the preferences that we pick up on and um I keep sort of an inventory of what all of that is. Um, yeah, that's that's that's a huge piece of it is that follow through. If they're giving you the gift of that clarity and that feedback, showing that you're following through on it. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

And would you say just to tie up this topic, would you agree as you're sitting? I always think of it in a physical space because that's where I grew up in law, is in a physical space with partners. Um tying up that conversation with, okay, if I understood you correctly, I am to spend four hours on this memo, do two hours of research, draft it with bullet points, um, check in with you tomorrow afternoon, and then deliver the final draft to you by Friday at four, whatever, right? Yeah. Like to tie it all up. Because they might go, oh, wait, wait, wait a second. No, actually, and they might make a correction to their instructions. And then you have like that's just such clarity that I that alone, that process alone, I think would be super impressive.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

Yeah, I agree. And and and as we're talking about it, it feels that there's just there's the practicality of doing that in terms of catching everything and making sure that you've caught the instruction. And it's also the signal of caring. And and that really sends an important message.

SPEAKER_01 19:10

An important message and it builds trust, right? When you deliver as best you can on the instructions and not second guess the instructions, that builds trust. Why is trust important? Because people keep bringing you work. You want to be busy. You want those senior associates and those lawyers, mid-level associates too, to continue to count on you and send you work. I think that's so important. You you talk a lot about taking um ownership of your development, Megan. You you really believe in kind of stepping into the responsibility of taking on your career and and whatnot. Um, what does that look like concretely for let's just use a summer and articling student? Because I know many of them are now looking ahead, a few months ahead to their summer articling or in the US an internship. What are your thoughts on what somebody can do in a concrete kind of manner to take responsibility for themselves in that space? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:59

I've got I've got some ideas. And this comes from I'm also a um certified leadership coach, and and so much of coaching is about um being responsible for what we can do in any given situation, right? And and really looking at our at our zone of of control. So uh big passion of mine to talk about this sort of thing. Um a few ideas. Uh so one, I'm gonna group this into what I would call like creating your own, we can call it creating your own development plan. We could call it creating your own success plan. Put whatever terminology you want on it, but it's um it's it's thinking about the things that we can do to influence our chances of of success and learning. Um one, I would probably be creating a list of specific experiences that I would want to have during that summer or articling to articling term. So that could be tasks, projects, people that I want exposure to, but I'm creating some sort of list so that I have some sort of internal metrics that can guide my development. Now, maybe I do or maybe I don't get to tackle all of that in my summer term or in my articling term, because maybe not all of that is within my control, but at least I'd created a little bit of an internal mapping or framework that I can keep sort of checking in on along the way. And that if I'm having conversations with people that are able to influence the work that I'm able to get, that I'm able to say, hey, these are some of the things that I was hoping to do. These are some of the things that I'm interested in. Um, so I'd have I'd have that sort of task or project plan for myself. Um I feel like you want to, I feel like you might want to build on that. I'm so excited about what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 21:37

I'm thinking of it as a wish list. And I love the idea of a student coming in and actually sharing that list and saying, you know, whatever we can do to knock off this wish list. And as my I know I may not get all of my items checked off, but if there's anybody who can help me, I mean, it'd be so impressive for a student at the end of whatever period to say, Oh my gosh, I actually worked through my entire Entire list and then share it with others within the firm would be, I think, incredibly empowering. Um, so I love that. Please carry on. That I love that. Yeah. Okay. So we're creating a wish list. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 22:10

We're creating a wish list, which is something, frankly, we can continue doing in our career, right? As we hit off different benchmarks and then we think about what we want to do next in terms of, again, taking control of our own development. So yeah, the task or project or exposure list, it would be point number one. Point number two would be um what I would call some sort of like reflection practice. And I look at this through two angles. One, where am I growing and developing, and what are some of the wins that I have? And the other is my key lessons. So the wins, uh, why it's important to capture this uh is because many of us need to remind ourselves of all the positive things that we have learned in the ways that we have grown and developed, because as humans we have a negativity bias. And especially if we are in a period of steep learning, we might find that we're making mistakes and things aren't going our way. So it can be really important to positively reinforce all of the things that we're able to do today that we weren't able to do yesterday, right? So uh some people call this, yeah, a wins list, a kudos list, whatever you want to call it, but some sort of tracking mechanism around here's all of the areas that I'm developing in. And then related to that would be my lessons. What are what are some of the things that I have learned that I would do differently? And doing this again with a really compassionate and growth mindset lens, uh, not from the perspective of beating ourselves up about where we went wrong, but more from the perspective of like, hey, I'm an imperfect human being in a learning curve. And on any given day and on any given week, I'm probably going to learn some things and have some refinements to the way that I work that are important to capture. Um, this could be something substantive, like I was given a research task and I approached it too narrowly and I needed to be a lot more broad about it. Or it could be um, I showed off on a video call and I didn't test my video equipment and I didn't make the best impression at the start of that call, right? Um, so I still keep a list like this for myself and I look at it weekly, probably 15 minutes on Friday, and it's a quick little um one column for my wins and one column for my lessons. And then from time to time I go back and I and I note it up and I reflect on it, and it's affirming in terms of uh all the ways that I'm growing. And it also sort of keeps me accountable to what some of my learning and growth edges are. Um, so that would be sort of my second sort of tangible uh suggestion. Um the and I'll and I'll pause there in case because I have I have a couple more, Susan, but I want to I want to give pause if you want to jump in on it.

SPEAKER_01 24:53

I just quickly want to, I love, I love this as well. And what what came to mind for me is two things. One, it can be quick to do, because a student listening might think, oh, for the love of God, I've got to now do something more, right? But it can be as quick as you're on transit going home or you're walking to your car and you could just dictate into a private note on your phone. It can be messy. It doesn't need to be on a beautiful spreadsheet that's all color-coded. It can be or on a sticky note, like a you know, analog method, whatever. Just do it because what I'm loving that you you still, Megan, you've got um teen years of experience and you're still doing it. I do it in a different fashion as well. I love, I love the idea of where's my growth opportunity, and I love the idea of going back and seeing where you've actually grown. You think, oh, I don't do that anymore. That's fantastic. I don't really need that reminder because I now have the muscle memory and I've worked myself through that issue and I don't do that anymore. So I can almost cross that off my list because it shouldn't, it's not a current thing that I'm working on. And to know that you've made progress and growth can be very empowering.

SPEAKER_00 25:57

Yeah, it's actually quite motivational. As humans, we kind of need to know and have practices to reinforce where we're learning and growing because of that human negativity bias that we can have. So it can be, yeah, it can be really important in terms of our motivation. And I know many senior people that have similar practices. It looks different for everyone, how frequently we do it, how much time we spend on it, to your point, whether it's in a spreadsheet or on a piece of paper. Um, but if we want to show up with excellence, we're probably gonna have some sort of practice around growth and learning and keeping ourselves accountable to that.

SPEAKER_01 26:32

Yes, I want to keep going, but let me insert this really quickly. And I've talked about this on other interviews and in other forums. Growth is uncomfortable. So don't shy away from the discomfort that represents growth. Discomfort means you're okay, lean in, you don't need to be perfect, et cetera, et cetera. So I've talked about this a lot in other podcasts, but I want to note it here because it's important not to avoid it.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right. And I I the lens that I try to bring to it myself, and if I was coaching people on this sort of thing would be the compassionate lens, right? It's not, it's not tracking the lesson for the sake of beating ourselves up. It's it's tracking the lesson in service of, okay, so that happened. Is there something that I can learn from that in terms of how do I move forward? I said it feels productive.

SPEAKER_01 27:23

Okay, so we've got ref the reflection practice. So number one was list your experiences um and the exposure that you want. Number two was the reflection practice. Are we on to number three? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:34

Yeah. I'm gonna, yeah, I'm gonna say it's either number three or it's a sub of number two. Okay. And that is um self-assessing ourselves. Um, so anytime if you are a summer student or an articling student, especially early in your in your career, you're gonna have a lot of firsts uh that you're doing. So self-assessing yourself on the task at hand, and we can ask ourselves two simple questions. What went well? What would I do differently next time? Again, that's reinforcing that growth mechanism. And the other thing that it's doing is it's giving us another mechanism for feedback uh that's not dependent on someone else offering it to us. So I'd love to say, you know, in people's early career years that they're getting lots of plentiful, clear feedback that is immediate and specific and objective. And the reality is that many people are busy in law firms. And also, point number two is it's incredibly hard for people to give constructive feedback, even senior people that you would think would not shy away from giving constructive feedback. It's actually really difficult. And I know that to be true because I coach a lot of senior people on giving feedback more regularly. It's tough. So something that we can do again to take uh our career into our own hands is to do what we can to reflect on feedback. So if we get a document back and it is redlined all over the place, we might look at that and we might try to notice what are some of the patterns, like what is emerging in terms of the red lines? What did we miss? So we can do our own sort of self-learning on the task. So having your own uh practice for doing that, that feedback and almost giving yourself your own feedback is something that I'd really recommend. And maybe it falls into that reflection practice.

SPEAKER_01 29:25

And I want to share a story as well. I I was at a business event just very recently, and I was speaking with a woman at the table that I was at, and she asked me what I do for a living. And aside from my consulting practice, I talked about Lawyer Launcher. She said, What's lawyer launcher about? One of the things I mentioned within the lawyer launcher framework was how do how lawyers give feedback, how and how that feedback represents growth and opportunity for somebody new in their career. Well, she is a surgeon. So if we just stop and think about it, she's somebody who's at the by and large the pinnacle of her career. She spent, you know, uh decades at school or whatever, right? Like I'm exaggerating, but so many years in school. And she's like, yeah, I need to get better at that. I need to get better at giving feedback to those that I'm working with. So I would love some advice on that. So that was kind of interesting. So, you know, I think we make assumptions that people that who are really senior, really established, really smart are also going to be good at this and they need help giving feedback too. But I love the idea of taking the responsibility one of oneself taking responsibility for that. I think that's really empowering.

SPEAKER_00 30:29

Yeah, yeah. And maybe I'll just made a point there that I feel an opportunity to build on around this feedback. It's really hard for people to give constructive feedback. And you'd be, I think people would be really surprised by how hard it is for some senior people to give feedback. Um, people think, oh, this senior partner, that should be easy for them. They're the senior partner of the firm. It's not. It can be really, really tricky. So one of the things that we can do to increase the likelihood that we're going to get feedback is some of what we've been talking about, giving the feedback to ourselves, clarifying expectations, uh, but also falling into this coachable sort of mode of being is how do you respond when people do give you constructive feedback, right? And and I want to recognize here that it's like pretty normal if our if we feel a little defensive, maybe when we get some constructive feedback. It's not, it's not easy. None of this is easy that I'm talking about. But if we want people to give us more constructive feedback, we really need to be good about managing our responses when it's when when we're offered constructive feedback. So if we're getting into defensive territory or sort of coming up with excuses maybe for what happened, we're gonna make that feedback experience feel bumpier for the person giving us feedback. So if we can learn to manage ourselves again, manage our response, listen, listen for what the lesson is. Um maybe we might need some clarity on the feedback, but maybe like giving ourselves a pause to like take in the feedback, think about what the lesson is, and then follow up when we're out of that kind of defensive zone, uh, that can just really go a long way. So I I say this coming from the experience of being in HR roles where I've needed to deliver feedback to people and they say, well, why didn't that person deliver it to me directly? Um and what I can see is the person shows up really defensively in a feedback situation. Um so I can I can see why they're not getting the feedback directly because it's actually it can be quite tricky to deliver it to them. So yeah, I just felt like that was a an appropriate addition at this point.

SPEAKER_01 32:34

That is excellent, Megan. And I'll add to that that that is, I think, one of the characteristics that partners in a firm would look for is how coachable a student or junior associate is. And you've just nailed it. And I think that one of the best responses, and we can build muscle memory around this. One of the best responses to receiving any kind of feedback is thank you for sharing. Whether you agree with it or not, or you understand it, the initial response in my view should be thank you so much for sharing. Why? Because we believe and know that it's probably difficult for that person to give us that feedback. So we want to acknowledge them. That's a that's an emotional intelligence uh practice right there. Thank you for the feedback. Perfectly fine to say, can I go and think about that? Can I go away? You've given me a lot to think about, and I want to process that. Is there anything else I need to know? Right? You don't have to respond fully to feedback in that moment. And a lot of lawyers are introverts, as we know, and so they need processing time. They need to go away and really think about not to build your defense, not to make excuses, but you know, I had a really good piece of advice from a chief marketing officer many years ago, uh, Julianne Ward. I'll call her out because she's wonderful. Um, she said, you know, we have to get into the practice of de-emotionalizing communication because sometimes communication is delivered with a lot of heightened emotion. And what we hear as the recipient is the emotion and we miss that nugget of truth. And I've used that tool my whole career to de-emotionalize a message so I don't miss the message. So I need a beat. I want to take a minute. Yeah, and I want to process that and recover if I need to recover. Everybody sometimes needs to recover if it's really hard feedback. But then look for okay, what's my lesson in that? I don't want to lose it because somebody's gone to the effort to share that with me. Right.

SPEAKER_00 34:36

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's a full connect back to the uh emotional intelligence and what we talked about around the self-regulation, particularly in the stressful moments. And yeah, I think what we're talking, I mean, we we're talking about buying some time to decide how we want to respond to the compact, right? And then that's totally fine for the moment.

unknown 34:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:54

Yeah. Sorry, I mean that's totally fair. But I think to so show some grace, some maturity, some professionalism in that moment, and then allow yourself a minute, say, I'll come back to you tomorrow. Let me process, I'll come back to you tomorrow and can we talk more about it? Which takes some courage. I'm not gonna lie. I mean, that really takes some courage, but I think to give yourself some grace and buy yourself some time to give it a think, have a look at your documents, have a look at, you know, you know, revisit what you did and then um and then own it. And the best, you know, I've I've said, you know, I've led teams as well, and I've always said the best way to take the the the sting out of an issue or a complaint is to just quickly own it and apologize. If you really, you know, misstepped to say, oh my gosh, you're right. Uh that was regrettable. I wish I thought about behaving or responding to something differently. And I apologize. Let me go away and think about that. As soon as you apologize and own it, it takes a lot of the fight out of somebody who's come to you mad, right?

SPEAKER_00 35:54

Yeah.

unknown 35:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:55

I hear the word accountability come up a lot in terms of the sort of qualities that that are that are really valued in a law firm. And I think that's it's important because mistakes will happen, right? So the question is Is it easy for people to raise things with you? How do you learn from it? How do you respond to it?

SPEAKER_01 36:13

Yeah, 100%. Are we finished with your list? Because I wanted to move in a slightly different direction, but I don't want to rush you.

SPEAKER_00 36:20

I have one more I that I hope could be valuable. So I'll I'll I'll I'll throw it at you. And that's this idea of um I call it like an internal board of directors. So a group of people that can mentor and influence you within your career. And I tend to think about it as looking for a really diverse board in terms of um what you admire about different people. So there might be someone that you admire in terms of how they manage their career from a work-life balance perspective. There could be someone that you admire at the firm that's a junior associate that seems to get really great work and with work with a lot of the different partners, and you really want to pay attention to what they're doing to navigate those relationships. There might be someone that you really admire the way that they show up in a meeting or how they do public speaking. Um, so this personal board of directors or mentors, they might know that they are mentors to you. You might actually approach them and say, hey, I really admire the way you seem to do this in your career. How do you do that? I'd love to learn from you. By the way, people love talking about themselves. So generally, when you approach people with those sorts of questions and affirm and acknowledge them for something that you admire about them, generally they're probably going to be pretty open to sharing with you. Um, so it could be sort of a direct mentorship relationship in that way. Um, or it could be a little bit covert. Um, I'm thinking back to mentors that I had in my career, where I'm thinking to a former managing partner where I really admired their public speaking skills and the way that they could hold a room. And I don't think that they knew that they were my mentor, uh, but every time I saw them doing public speaking and holding a room, I was paying attention and I was like taking notes about what they did. So if we can develop these people that we admire for whether it's the technical qualities, whether it's the relationship building, or whether it's their sense of leadership or the way that they manage their career and their life, I think that can be really, really helpful and empowering to us. We can take little bits from different people versus presuming that the mentor that gets assigned to us is the one and only person that we need to learn from.

SPEAKER_01 38:32

And isn't that a myth that we should only ever have one mentor?

unknown 38:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:35

I believe in many. And I love the framework of a board of directors. And I love the idea of being really intentional and using your observation skills to look across the field to see who you admire and who you would like to um mimic, right? Who like I'd like to show up like that. I'd like to show up in a boardroom and you know, be the most articulate in the room, or you know, uh be the person who's the best prepared, whatever, right? I think that's that's great advice. I love that. And I love um, and you can have covert or very intentional mentors. And I've I've had mentors my whole career. And um I think a lot of people that have seen any success will say you it's hard to be successful without one. Yeah, I think there's some pieces that we can pull from different people. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you could create a human, I've said that in recruitment sometimes. If I could create a candidate, I would take this piece from this person, this priest, and I would create this, you know, this perfect human that obviously doesn't exist. So it we're kind of talking about the same thing, borrowing you know, attributes from others.

SPEAKER_02 39:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:39

Let me change, um, let me change horses here for a sec. And I want to talk about the competitive environment that students find themselves in. And, you know, we're at a time of year where there's interviews going on and, you know, there's OCIs at different times and different things where people are feeling really very competitive. And I know when I talk to students, they're thinking about they're they're probably not sharing the advice I'm giving them unless it's on this podcast. They're probably keeping some things to themselves. They're feeling very competitive. And I get that, because it we are in a competitive environment and law, you know, attracting work is competitive. And I've certainly worked in business development, and I know that you know, good work is competitive. Um what are some common things? Um what when you when what would you suggest to a student that they could tip the scales in their favor in a competitive environment? Is there anything that comes to mind? If you have two equally capable students, I mean, I think a lot of it comes down to kind of personality and fit, which is hard to uh create because you want to show up as your authentic self. But is there anything that you would say about that? If you have two equally marks are around the same, undergrad might be around the same. Is there anything that they can do to tip the skills?

SPEAKER_00 40:56

Yeah, a lot of it is what we talked about today. Like the first thing that comes to mind is be coachable, right? It's it's part of it is how you do the work and doing good work, the others, the experience of working with you, right? Right. Um so so much of what we talked about today is like the soft skills, not actually being the soft skills, being the power skills, being the things that set you apart, being the one that you're um that people can trust when things are difficult, uh, being the one who is adaptable and shows a growth mindset. I think all of those are the differentiating factors. And I say that with a whole lot of compassion for the reality that sometimes there's only one position available at a firm or two positions available at a firm. And it it just comes down to that, right? And a friend just has constraints and they just have to choose. And that doesn't mean that you've done anything wrong. Um, and there may not be anything you can do to tip the scales because it's it's it's just a real constraint issue. Um, yeah, you've touched on something that's so tricky about this point in someone's career, right? And and um yeah, I I'm offering my response from the from the perspective of do everything you can to be coachable. And there's a certain reality here of there only being there only being so many positions available and getting into that what's next. If there's not a position available at the firm, okay, then how do you set yourself up uh for what the next steps in your career are going to be and getting into agency around that mode versus versus what did I do wrong or what could I have done differently?

SPEAKER_01 42:31

Right, right. I think there's also an opportunity to showcase your communication skills and interviews and showcase that you are coachable and talk about that, right?

SPEAKER_00 42:40

Yeah, yeah, that's that's that's a great way to pull uh some of what we talked about today into the how do we move forward.

SPEAKER_01 42:46

Yeah. And it could even be, I listened to the Lawyer Launcher podcast and I heard Megan talking about XYZ. No, really, like I think to do research and to to be aware of how firms want you to show up and what's gonna make your career successful. I think doing that homework and bringing that forward, I think would be fantastic. Fantastic. Megan, what haven't I asked you that I should ask you? What in the final moments that we have, is there anything left that I have? We've covered so much ground and I loved our conversation. I want to make sure that we're not leaving anything critical behind.

SPEAKER_00 43:25

That is such a coaching question that you're asking a coach and you're and you're leaving your piece down to LFS.

SPEAKER_01 43:31

Well, we covered a lot of ground. So maybe when you're thinking on the top of your head, we we we covered what we needed to. Um and I love all the lessons. You kind of took us through a journey and we covered a lot of different pieces, and you coached us kind of along the way with maybe not realizing you're coaching us. And I love the specifics and the language that you gave. And I hear that from students a lot. They need the language, they want to know what to say. It's easy for you and I to say, oh, you know, just figure out you know this and that what okay that makes sense but how do I do that how do I actually lean in and do that so to give them scripts give give them frameworks I think is really helpful I'm glad it's really really helpful and you you asked a lot of wonderful questions and I guess if I if I could think about maybe like one like a last sort of piece of advice that I would offer is this time in your career can be so filled with so many pressure, so so much of a sense of pressure, I would say and um easy for people to say, but there's a zooming out that we can do and recognizing that this is one piece of a much longer and broader and bigger career.

SPEAKER_00 44:37

And there's so many ways to have a successful practice and what might feel really make or break right now is just a small piece and a much longer career journey that you're going to have and you're going to have so many opportunities to put all of this stuff into practice and really find your way and find the place that you're going to land that's going to be a good fit for you. So so just to try to keep that big picture in mind, recognizing it's probably hard to do.

SPEAKER_01 45:01

And the skills that you're suggesting that they build are career long skills. It's not it's going to serve them well now, but are going to be skills that are going to serve them so very well throughout their career.

SPEAKER_00 45:12

I think so.

SPEAKER_01 45:13

Yeah Megan thank you so much you've just kind of squished all your years of experience into this 45 minutes or half an hour however long this podcast ends up being and I'm so grateful for you to share your gifts and um people can reach you by email. I know we're going to share your email or excuse me your LinkedIn and your website address. What is the best way to reach you through email on your website? Yeah absolutely yeah and you coach juniors too right not just the senior folks you you coach everybody and you bring that what's so magical about your experience is you bring that full 360 degree view of a firm leadership juniors and everything in between to the benefit of juniors. So I think people can appreciate your coaching style which is so beautiful on this podcast. So people should not hesitate to reach out to you, right? And uh and you I know you do lots of presentations to firms and whatnot and I think you'd be amazing in that space. So uh reach out to Megan and uh get her working for your firm or individually as a coach. Go look at her website and anything she puts out on LinkedIn and in articles because it's going to be time well spent. Megan thank you so much. I really appreciate your time.

SPEAKER_00 46:21

Uh thank you Susan you're doing a great thing in bringing this podcast to students so thank you.

SPEAKER_01 46:26

Thank you. Stay tuned for our lawyer launcher debrief. I hope you enjoyed listening to that podcast as much as I enjoyed listening and having a conversation with Megan. She's so passionate about what she does. She has so much value to share. I loved her success plan and the tips that she shared the list of um experiences and exposure that you want to get the reflection practice the self-assessment and the internal board of directors internal board of directors I thought she was brilliant in that space and providing some insight into each of those areas and why they're important to your self-development and the whole conversation around feedback might be insightful to some people who believe that if you're a senior person it's easy to give feedback and I think that's a real myth and how you can take responsibility to ensure that you get the feedback that you need so that you're experiencing growth, so that you're signaling to your firm that you are highly coachable. These are high value tips and I hope you just take them to heart and make them your own. And if you need some coaching reach out to Amigan. She's wonderful she's on Pacific Times she's out of Vancouver and you can see how effective she would be and I know that there's a lot of firms that rely on her expertise and uh she's just highly credible and she's really seen a lot having big and worked in big law and large law and everything in between. So uh thanks for joining us and I'll see you next time. Don't forget to subscribe. Thanks again