Professional Training: Regional Edition – Sally Hulston – E02

Transcript

Robert Hanna (00:00)

Welcome to our Legally on the Move Professional Training Regional mini-series from the Legally Speaking podcast sponsored by Clio. Recorded live in Manchester with Professional Training. We’re talking to leading voices across the legal profession about high performance, leadership, careers, innovation, and what it takes to thrive in a rapidly changing legal world. Short conversations, practical insights. So let’s get into it. Welcome to our legally on the move professional training.

Regional series recording here live at Manchester Hall and I am joined by Name Title Organization.

Sally Hulston (00:35)

Sally Hulston, I’m an Informant Lawyer by trade at Lewis Silkin and head up the Manchester office.

Robert Hanna (00:40)

Absolutely pleasure to have you on the show. And we recently had Rock, who made partner in one of the London offices featured on the show. So go and check out his episode two. today’s theme’s all about high performance and it’s often measured in revenue and utilization. So, in your view, what’s the most misunderstood driver of performance in legal teams?

Sally Hulston (00:59)

So I’d probably summarize it by saying that the metrics that you have traditionally to measure somebody’s performance show you what you’ve done, but they don’t actually explain the bits around it. So why that was important for you to do it. So I think that one of the misunderstood drivers is actually clarity of role and how your work that you do contributes to the bigger picture, whether that’s at the firm or to the bigger picture of what the client’s trying to achieve.

or more personal things of how that’s going to help you in your career. So I think explaining the bits around metrics is important and I do think that’s missing quite a lot.

Robert Hanna (01:36)

I love that you talk to clarity because I always say to people, sometimes it’s better to be clear than it is to be overly clever and over-engineer things because people just want to understand where where they’re at ultimately. Okay, we live in a hybrid world. We can’t get away from that now. So what leadership behaviour most strengthens collaboration and what quietly weakens it?

Sally Hulston (01:52)

Okay, great question. I think something that we’re grappling with at the moment is moving into a new office and making sure that people come into the office. And so what strengthens it, I’d probably summarize as deliberate visibility. So making sure that you, when you’re in, you do talk to people, you put time aside to get to know them, to ask them questions as simply as how are you? then conversely, what might weaken it? You can maybe label as sort of,

passive availability to say that I’m always on, I’m always working, you can contact me at any point, but not actually giving people permission to ask you questions and people thinking, they’re too busy, I shouldn’t contact them. But then you say, well, no, you should have done, it’s fine. So I think the deliberate side to things gives people an opening, doesn’t it? Yeah.

Robert Hanna (02:43)

I think that’s the energy you give off as well. If you give that welcoming energy to people, then people will buy into that and want to come to you. A big theme throughout the conference has obviously been psychological safety as an extension of that. And it’s widely discussed. What does it genuinely look like inside a very high pressure legal environment?

Sally Hulston (02:58)

I think it’s having the comfort that you can shout up early on if you’re worrying about something or if something’s not going well and not fearing that instant judgment and black mark against your name. And in organizations, I’ve worked where it hasn’t worked well. It’s people sit on the anxiety and the worry until it actually has gone wrong. I think building it in that people can…

challenge upwards and downwards and feel that in meetings they’ve seen it work well so they’re not scared to do it themselves. They’ve seen somebody else challenge it, been received well and actioned and therefore they think well okay the other person spoke up so I feel safe to speak up. And actually rewarding those people for challenging.

and saying thanks for doing that, you really appreciate it and we wouldn’t have got to where we got to if you hadn’t challenged it at that key early stage.

Robert Hanna (03:54)

I think that’s empowering as well, isn’t it, people of the same breath, rather than coming from a place of maybe they they’re giving something constructive that could be seen as negative, it’s actually that’s a that’s a positive and we’re grateful for that and as a result of that, want to reward people and it will encourage others to do so. Okay, what’s the difference then between a culture of accountability and a culture of fear?

Sally Hulston (04:11)

I think accountability is leading on from your previous question, that a culture of accountability will be taking responsibility that it’s on me to get this right and I’m not dependent on others to do it for me. I think with fear, then it’s more around I’m being told what to do and therefore if I do it slightly off piste and this way, then I’m going to get told off for it. So I think giving people the freedom and a bit of space.

to do it within their preference, the way they prefer to do it.

Robert Hanna (04:47)

I think so. And I think, particularly on accountability, I remember a mentor said to me it’s quite harsh at the time. Well, not harsh, so if it’s meant to be, it’s up to me. You have to take that self accountability and on your decisions and and own it. we talk a lot about collaboration on the show, collaboration being domination, something I reference all the time. Cross functional collaboration between lawyers and business services can be quite complex. So what have you seen work when aligning with different incentives and priorities?

Sally Hulston (05:12)

To me, the key to this is doing it as a team and not leaning on the business services to do one little part of a pitch or presentation or project. Sometimes you would create a brochure, let’s do it together, let’s work out how we’re going to split it as a group and not have one part, the business services doing one part of it and then you’re doing your bit. I think bringing everybody together at the outset, it’s got to be key.

Robert Hanna (05:41)

I know you’ve got that cohesion then, haven’t you, as well, of people coming together? Okay, resilience has been a key theme. We heard from Emma Wiggs, MBE twelve-time world champion earlier this morning. At what point does resilience become unhealthy endurance and how should leaders recognize that line?

Sally Hulston (05:58)

Hey, I love this kind of question. And I’ll tell you, I, I’m a big tennis fan and I remember seeing Roger Federer, think it was a couple of years ago, maybe 24 doing a, what did they call it? Keynote speech to college students. I think it’s at Dartmouth college. And he talks exactly about this. And he explained that, you know, he’s got so high in his career. He’s won all the Grand Slams, but actually when he looks at the statistics, he’s only actually won 54 % of his points. And so he said, well, why did I?

succeed in the way I did. And he said that resilience, which he defined as bouncing back quickly was absolutely key. So when he lost a point, he didn’t think, great, I’ve lost the game. I’m going to lose the match. It was like, right, well, let’s park that. Let’s go on to the next point. So I think it crosses into unhealthy endurance when somebody lacks the ability to bounce back and they are just continuing and going and putting up with it and not realizing that this is now become habit.

and it’s a bad habit. yeah, to me that’s the best example I’ve seen of this.

Robert Hanna (07:01)

And

one of the greatest, head that that’s been when it comes to tell us, the old bouncy bomb, I completely agree. Okay, why did you choose to attend this conference? You’re very busy, you’re in a stressful role. What has most stood out to you as a result of attending the conference too?

Sally Hulston (07:13)

Okay, so I think choosing to attend it really was giving me some headspace away from my day job, from doing all the legal work and the stuff back at the office and being responsible for growing the Manchester office, a large part of that is recruiting people and bringing people in. So it’s really tough on my priority just to listen and hear any tricks of the trade and talk to other people about how they’re doing things, the challenges they’re meeting. I think Emma Wiggs…

absolutely blew my mind with her talk about resilience and curiosity and defining success in your own words, not just how somebody else defines success. That’s not a bad thing. So I really enjoyed that. And then the last session, we’ve just looked at succession planning. think that’s something you’ve got to always bear in mind. You don’t want to think of your best people leaving, but I think the sensible people will have a plan in place for as and when they choose to.

Robert Hanna (08:05)

to.

Yeah, you want to always be looking forwards, don’t you? And I think back to just the Emma Wiggs thing. I think for some context for our people watching, Emma said actually she was more proud of one of her silver medals versus her gold medals due to the performance and the standards that she put in.

versus winning with a bad performance with a goal. And I think that’s just how you set your own mindset, how you set your own expectations and what’s important to you. and I think it’s been a great conference, been a great energy. You can hear the people behind us networking, meeting people. So from today, if you can go away and make one practical change within your firm tomorrow to improve the team performance, what would it be and why?

Sally Hulston (08:37)

So I’d like to think that we’re already starting this process, which is having regular one-to-ones with people. That’s nothing new, that’s what everybody does, but actually changing the format of those to simply just say, how are you? How are things? And to start it as a very open conversation as opposed to, right, we’ve got an agenda, let’s look at your utilization, what BD you’ve been doing and what training courses you’ve been delivering.

I think that that’s changing mindset. it’s an adaption of what we’re already doing, but allowing people to talk about whether it’s inside of work, outside of work, anything. It’s all impactful, isn’t it? Once you understand somebody, we’re all here.

Robert Hanna (09:14)

And I think you I talk about this a lot on the show and the watchers and listeners we fed up and we say we’re not on this B2B or B2C anymore, it’s age-to-age, it’s human-to-human connection, and that’s with our clients, our people, people around us, and trying to enhance that connection authentically as well and place from a hate place of care. it’s been so good. Sally, gender is live here in Manchester.

Sally Hulston (09:31)

Thank you so much, been a pleasure.

Robert Hanna (09:32)

Absolute pleasure. Great. Well, from all of us here recording live and the League of Speaking podcast over and out. Thank you for listening to this week’s episode. If you like the content here, why not check out our world leading content and collaboration pub, the legally speaking club, over on Discord. To our website, www.legallyspeakingpodcast.com as a link to join our community there. Over and out.