Mental health is as important in the legal sector as it is in any other. In this episode of the Legally Speaking Podcast, we were joined by Kate Franklin, the Co-Founder and Director of Nkuzi Change, to talk about the ways that we can best maintain our well-being at work. We also touched on the story behind Nkuzi Change, including the inspiration behind the name.  

So why should you be listening in?  

You can hear Rob and Kate discussing: 

• The importance of wellbeing in the legal profession 

• How to manage burnout as a lawyer 

• Nkuzi Change’s founding story  

• Misconceptions around work-life balance 

• How to prioritise wellbeing and productivity equally 

Transcript

Robert Hanna 00:00 

Welcome to the legally speaking podcast. I’m your host Rob Hanna. This Lynn Kate is the co founder of in cosy change. Kate has experience in HR change management and training roles in financial services trained, trained at the world’s leading coach training company in America qualifying as an executive coach before launching white and lime her own people development consultancy, Kate is committed. She has worked with clients including lawyers, technologists, financiers and leaders from the BBC. Freshfields and even karen millen flew to Save the Children and Unilever. Then in 2020, Kate took the bold move to co found in because he changed the mission of changing beliefs and behaviours. So big companies can drive meaningful change. So a very big warm welcome, Kate. 

Kate Franklin 00:46 

Thank you, Rob. It is wonderful to be here. 

Robert Hanna 00:49 

Oh, it’s a pleasure to have you on the show. Before we dive into on the legally speaking podcast, which is on a scale of one to 1010 being very real. What would you rate the hit TV series suits in terms of its reality of the law? If you’ve seen it?  

Kate Franklin 01:05 

I watched it with my 16 year old daughter and she says is it really like this? And I would say zero. But for the fact that that are every office of every one of the many, many law firms I’ve been in, in Washington, DC and London do look beautiful. So I would say the beautiful office. Yeah, give it a nine for that. 

Robert Hanna 01:28 

Fair enough. So aesthetics nine and then reality zero. So with that, I think we’ll move swiftly on to talk all about you. So Kate, we were very kindly connected by former guests actually on the show. So half a rookie violence and career journey. I think there’s a weird story in there as well. 

Kate Franklin 01:46 

Yeah, there’s a weird story. But I wonder if it makes sense to start from the reason we were connected. Because there was some quite heightened emotions for all of us around that time. In February after the really tragic news broke about the suicide, the death by suicide of a partner at Pinsent Masons. So I want to see if we can go there first, if I may, and then we’ll come to some of the more hopeful and optimistic offerings I think we you and I can come up with together. I’d actually not been working much with lawyers over this last four years, I’ve done probably over the last 19 coached hundreds. But this last four years, the appetite for what we do, which is to make work better, one team at a time, has come much more from financial services. So lawyers were really front of mind for me, but then I saw that story. And it was it just took me right back, it came flooding back. All the lawyers in all the private conversations I’ve ever had about the misery and the stress. And my own experience, in my 20s, I was a secret stress head. And I often think if it if I’d been if I’d landed in law, which I could have done, because I was really interested, I could have been one of those people who ended in a really, really, really tragic way. Because I think if people are wired to be really diligent and conscientious and push themselves incredibly hard. And they find themselves in an environment where a lot of those really strange excessive practices are normalised, which unfortunately, still is a lot of law firms. It can end very, very badly. And so it fired me up to start talking, again, about how simple changes that the legal sector could make, I could have such a profound difference. It doesn’t have to be like this, there’s so much of what we’ve accepted as just the way it is. And we could do it so differently. So I think I was ranting about something along those lines, when you came across me on LinkedIn, and very generously invited to me to take part in one of your podcasts. Yeah, I just feel so passionately robbed, that there’s a different way we could be doing it. And and more than that, like if we want to really create the law firms of the future, where we’re embracing all of the innovation and generative AI and all of the things that are coming, whether we like it or not, we’ve got to find different ways of working together. Because we’re not going to get innovation from people who are stressed out and exhausted. 

Robert Hanna 04:30 

No, we’re not. And I think it’s a good point. And we’re going to kind of dive deep into a lot of strategies, tactics as well. But I want to sort of learn just a little bit more about sort of where you’ve got to at this point because you’ve had an exciting background because you trained as an executive coach training, where do you most enjoy about your time out there? 

Kate Franklin 04:45 

Yeah, I loved being in the USA and I loved I loved everything about my early years working did a lot of coaching with law firms in Washington DC because of course, if you live in DC, then everybody every On your rub shoulders with a lawyer. But I think I think you might be interested in the kind of how I got there. Because before I went into coach training, I’d had a good sort of 15 or so years in my corporate career. And that was where I learned firsthand what it’s like to be to make yourself miserable in your job. I was in such a positive environment that didn’t practice excessive hours and sleeping bags under desks and all of the stories we hear from law firms. And yet, I still managed to make myself extremely stressed, and often miserable, even though I loved my job. And I had great people around me. And I think that that’s the story of the secret stress head when I tell it, it’s amazing how many people it resonates for. So that’s the first point of hope I suppose for, for if you’re listening to this, as somebody who is concealing a secret level of stress, you’re like me for doing a very good job back then I was projecting perfect and making it look easy and never let them see you sweat was one of my mantras. What what’s often going on underneath is something very, very different. And and it’s so important for us all to remember, when we’re brutally comparing ourselves with others, and thinking everybody else has got it under control. If only I could be as smart as them. If only I could get through my workload as fast as they do. The reality is they’re all thinking the same about you. So one of the most pious things we can do to ourselves is to remember that that habit of comparing our insights with their outsides is really unhelpful and really dangerous to us. I like that. And instead, like, just, we need to normalise the fact that one way or another all of us are having a hard time no one’s got it figured out. No. If they tell you they have they’re not telling the truth. 

Robert Hanna 06:57 

Well, that’s it isn’t, then there’s a real cry for authenticity. It’s a really potent point, isn’t it? And I think that’s the key, I always say run your own race at your own pace, because it’s so true. But what I like about what you’ve obviously gone through your corporate career, then you’ve moved into this, you know, now you’re providing solutions, right? And I’m all about we can fascinate about problems. And we can keep talking about problems. But if we’re not going to do it, you took that bold step and you co founded your current firm, as part of your third career chapter. So what is in because you change and also tell us where the name orange is from? Because I like the language. And I know it’s got a meaning connected to it as well. So just tell us a bit about about that as well. 

Kate Franklin 07:38 

Yeah, so Well, the, the the wording because he is borrowed from my father in law’s language, he’s the closest person I have who’s bilingual. So he happened to be with me on the Sunday afternoon where I was brainstorming. And the word we were looking for the word coaching or, or growth or learning or that enables change. And then koozie means coaching or training in EBO, which is se Nigerian language. And it just happened very beautifully that it that fitted so well with what I know of the EBO culture, which is one that is like deeply committed to learning and growth. Like he’s probably the most well read most determined learner that I’ve ever come across in his 80s. Now he’s still got that incredible curiosity for everything always. We’re always wanting to know more. So that’s just like such an inspiration to to us and what we’re about. What what we set out to do is to make work better one team at a time. That’s what we’re all about. We we see that big organisations could and can be the most incredible place to work, right? There’s this intersection of global people global opportunities, global thought leaders, in big organisations, there could be like this rich learning environment where you get to collaborate with incredible thought leaders and to do your best possible work. And yet, for for me and the people I’ve coached for the previous 17 years before I started it, and for my co founders who’ve been through between them about 50 years worth of corporate experience, we saw that that just wasn’t the reality that there are so many people stuck in quite miserable experience of corporate life and how that then holds back the innovation and the change that the organisations want to make. So you know, for example, one of our big findings is that at a personal growth level, the main blocker to success for individuals and this is across 3000 coaching sessions that we’ve had completed in the last four years, where we’ve been tracking the data on every single everything In your individual session, what comes up one of the topics? That what would you guess is the main barrier that comes up more commonly than any any other barrier in terms of personal development? Things like influence communication skills, team working career career management? What do you think is the number one thing that comes up more than any other? Confidence? 

Robert Hanna 10:22 

I’ve said that many times, if I could bottle that up and sell it, you’d be a billionaire over? 

Kate Franklin 10:29 

Yeah, well, that’s exactly what we’re doing. Because we’re getting outcomes like it within a six month programme, uplifting confidence and courage by by in the region of 30, to 40%. So like, yes, you can bottle that and see what that does to your ability to embrace change, to overcome silos to work with that team over there that we don’t like that much. In order to create something new for customer experience, to push ourselves out of our comfort zone with technology. All of that starts with how I’m feeling about myself and the stories I’m telling myself about what I’m capable of right. But whenever we present that, at that data back to a big employer, the learning and development team are always flabbergasted because of course, nobody walks around with a T shirt saying I’m working on myself confidence, right? It just doesn’t come up in the standard old ways of doing training needs analysis. So we’re like, just so excited to be leveraging technology and all the things that we’re doing and data collection to be enabling organisations to get to the heart of what’s underneath the blockers, what is really going on in what people believe about themselves, and believe about the capability around them. That is blocking or enabling change. 

Robert Hanna 11:42 

Yeah, and it’s a really good point. And I want to dive a bit deeper it safe enough spaces where like you say, we can almost work on a wearing a t shirt saying today I’m working on it, you know, we talk about finessing certain technical, or people hate the term soft skills. But this is the number one thing if you’re full of competence, you’re gonna be full of energy and filling, wanting to go out there and do it. But let’s dive a bit deeper. Because alongside your co founders, you’ve obviously given tense, you say, deliver successful transformational change, unlock capability and upscale leadership with existing teams and breathe fun. Love that word and purpose love that word to back into work. So why have you chosen these three areas specifically? 

Kate Franklin 12:28 

Brilliant, brilliant question. I mean, if you if you start from where most senior buyers start from when they come to us, right, senior leaders generally, they’re not necessarily concerned about culture, or even wellbeing and making this a more joyous place to work. They’re coming from a place of frustration about why can’t we get stuff done? Why is it so painful to execute any change? Why are things moving so slowly? Why do people seem to be resisting all these new technologies that we’re offering? Why is there so much resistance or so much drag that that tends to be the starting point for most of the people who approach us? So coming at it from that point of view, what we what we aim to do is to get under the skin of those questions, right? By asking very, very open questions in our discovery process. Where we want to answer for this particular team or for this particular business unit. And that note, that’s important, that’s very different from looking at the whole firm, because we always want to drive relevance by looking at what is it? What is the challenge in this particular area? For this particular business unit? What is it that’s actually holding people back? Now, of course, senior leaders know, generally, a lot of the top line, but they don’t necessarily have the wealth of data and the real richness and the flavour of the detail. So they may know, for example, that, you know, there’s legacy systems that are frustrating for our frontline people. Do they know that maybe 30% of their time is spent wasting wasted on on workarounds on those legacy systems? Probably not. Because we all want to present a positive story to our senior leaders, don’t we? We don’t want to be the one that Negative Nelly, who’s saying Oh, yeah, do you realise this is taking up this much about headspace? And we don’t you know that it’s just fair. I think the more senior you become in organisational life, the harder it is to understand what’s really going on. So the first thing we offer is that real insight into what is actually holding your people back a level of depth. And then we are very disciplined in a structure of recommendations which narrow in In to focus on no more than three behaviours that we can see will drive the change that matters to this entity. So if the if it’s a growth agenda, for example, that’s the big three year strategy that everybody cares about, what are the behaviours that are going to really unlock growth in this environment. And so it might be, for example, proactivity, courage, accountability. And then we build a programme around those around those three behaviours really carefully focused on driving those. And we do that leveraging the magic of one to one coaching, because that is where individual behaviour change happens, people have to really be supported individually met where they are, because everyone on in your team will be in a different place on the journey and that needs to be honoured and worked with. But we bring it together in a programme where everyone is having a collective experience. So they’re coming together regularly to talk about what does this mean for me? And what does it mean for us collectively? And how can we support each other to change? Because we all know, like, think about a behaviour change that you that you’re working on? At the moment, I know, for me, it’s like, trying to try to embed a walk at lunchtime, in addition to my morning workout, if I talk about want to write about that to one of my colleagues, and they know that that’s a really big part of what’s creating me more productivity and energy in the afternoons. And I really want to stick to it. And they start asking me, how’d you get on with that? Have you been Have you done your walk today, my ability to execute that change is exponentially higher, right? Because that’s just how we all tick. We’re, we’re all motivated by accounts of by sort of Team accountability, and so much of the thing, so much of the stuff we need to do for ourselves to increase our energy and effectiveness at work is often like stuff that is too boring to chat about as a team, we wouldn’t mention it to each other, because we don’t think there’s a space for it. But when you get the team to have those conversations, it has this profound impact on everybody’s ability to get better together. And that is like really at the heart of of our methodology and why it’s so powerful. 

Robert Hanna 17:21 

Yeah, I always talk about when my mentor said to me, you know, accountability is everything, like you can dress it up whatever way but I think you’d like that shared accountability is great. But I also remember one of my mentors said, We got to find a way and I think you’ve got a great example there of having the right people around you that can help you be accountable. And you know, just these little things. It’s like not reinventing the wheel, but it’s that one phrase of question, have you done the walk today? Or what time you off on your walk? Can I join you? It just triggers that emotions Right? Right. Okay, I’m on this. I’ve got people who are championing me want to support me and get me through? Let’s talk about burnout because a everyone has their own typical chronicle overachievers, imposter syndrome. I feel everyone gets to a point of having some level of burnout. What are some of the common signs of burnout you’ve observed, particularly amongst maybe associate senior associates partners in firms? And you said, you can offer hope and you’ve touched on it before, to any tired lawyers who are out there listening in today? So what advice would you have for anyone suffering from overwhelm and burnout in the legal profession? 

Kate Franklin 18:21 

Right, so the first thing is to know that you are not alone, that it really is the norm for I think all of us in any professional space. Well, for if we care about at creating great outcomes and excellence, there’s always going to be days where it all just feels too much and unbearable, in our heads exploding. As one of our recent clients said to me, my head is exploding today. Like, that’s normal. And it’s okay. And it doesn’t mean that you’re failing, it doesn’t make you bad or wrong. And if your colleagues looked like their heads are not exploding, that just means they’re doing a great job of covering up it doesn’t mean that it’s not going on for them. So the first thing is to just normalise it. And I think all of us can have such a profoundly important role in changing workplace culture. However Junior you are, I don’t care if you’re a trainee or a paralegal, if you can start asking more real questions and being more real in your answers to people about how you’re doing today. We love we we use a checking question of how you doing on a scale of one to 10, where 10 is fantastic. And zero is really not not good at all, as a way of just getting a very quick read on the temperature in the room. And if anybody’s like reporting a five or or maybe even a six, then there’s a follow up question, right, you know, anything you need from us today. And then maybe a follow up conversation afterwards. I think anything we can do to start being a bit more real with each other and to break down some of the taboos that still exist in our very kind of conventionally patriarchal, quite toxic like male environments about it’s, you know, we all have to stiff upper lip, we have to pretend that we’re okay when we’re not. I got a tonne of other tips. What I mean, what goes alongside normalising it is also don’t feel you have to fix it all for yourself, that would be my starting point, right? You know, we I think one of the things that adrenaline and cortisol the stress hormones do to us is they they create a wall around us, they make us less pleasant to others. So I’m pretty sure that 90% of toxic behaviour in law firms will be caused by stress. Ironically, it creates stress and, and it is the stress is the underlying cause. But, but when we can remember, even in those moments of real heightened tension, that I don’t have to solve this all on my own, I’ve got a whole group of amazing people and resources all around me. And nobody said you had to figure this out alone. Don’t make that roll in your head, it’s never ever going to serve you. And know that it’s alright. You know, like, when I started opening up, I was a secret stress head, all through my 20s. And when I started to be more open about it, I was predominantly motivated by what I read, read was recognising I needed for myself, and my coach was pushing me to do but to my amazement, I realised I was immediately having an effect on the people around me. Everyone else was going Oh, yeah. I’m glad it’s not just me. Oh, wow. Okay, I could have had that useful effect a long time ago, just the secrecy really, really doesn’t help us. The other thing that I always say to lawyers, and I think this is so useful if you’re still in your 20s. And you’re you’re still learning all these habits, because my goodness, they get harder to unlearn as we get older, is treat the skill of workload management, with as much emphasis and dedication as you treat the technical knowledge that you’re learning in your legal discipline. You know, I know how much you care about that. I see. I see the hours that you put into the study of that. But you’ve also got to study the skills involved in workload management, right? The ability to you know, when you have that conversation, in the elevator with somebody more senior, the new who says, What are you working on at the moment? You know, we all when we’re stressed and busy, we all go Oh, really busy. It’s that question. Such a wasted opportunity, because there’s an opportunity there to sell some success. Me and the team have just done this. We’re so proud of ourselves, it went really well. That’s critical for your career. And it’s also an opportunity to say, we’re really struggling, you know, could I have a conversation with you about prioritisation? Because three new things have just come in in the last two days? And we’re looking at we’re looking at a bit of a moment, you know, a risk to the firm? Can we kind of can you help me with it? And then I think no matter how senior you are, it’s okay to keep on needing to have those prioritisation conversations. Because even if you’re a managing partner, you’re not necessarily seeing the full picture of the firm’s priorities. And which client at this moment is the most critical to us, which matter at this moment is the most critical. So the more we surface, the conversation about which of these things should come first, which is the urgent and which is the important because they’re not necessarily the same, right? differentiating between those two is a lifesaver. You actually doing a favour when you’re raising that question? Even if you get an initial response, that of irritability doesn’t mean you’re not doing the firm a favour and asking the question, and in pursuing it, like it is just a useful conversation to keep having, and nobody knows your workload as well as you do. It was such a revelation to me when I sort of hit probably my late 20s. And I realised that all these people asking me to do things and passing on work to me, hadn’t actually paid any attention at all to what they what it is they are asking me to do. They’ve thought broadly about the good outcome. And if I ask good questions, I’m gonna get some really great data about what that what good looks like for them and what they want to see from from this piece of work, but they haven’t sat and analysed who needs to be involved. How many conversations will that be? What’s the lead time for each of those decisions? How long is it actually going to take? They might have a passing reference point based on the last thing that was similar that they delegated. But if I come back to them a week later, and I say look, I’ve done the work on looking at this And I’ve realised it’s actually four times the size than we thought it was for these reasons. So can I have some help here? And here and here? And can we push back on this particular part of the deadline? They’re never going to look at me and go use slacker. They’re going to look at me and go, well, brilliantly well managed. That’s fantastic. Thanks for Thanks for bringing this to my attention. 

Robert Hanna 25:23 

Yeah, I love that there’s so many learns in there. I think, you know, the point I want to highlight is the normalisation piece that you referenced, you know, we do need to normalise this conversation through that patient. It’s so important, you know, being able to communicate clearly. And then like you say, once you’ve got information, like you just gave an example of the backend there with information just not sort of going in willy nilly, you can actually have a constructive conversation to try and implement change, try and manage things better. And I love the fact that you say, you know, working on your technical skills, but working on your management, and it’s so true, because you know, if you can really get questions, AI is instructing humans to do projects, they can work 20 477 hours a day and never burn out, that’s fine. We’re not wired like that. We’re emotional. We have things going on. We have families, we have lives. And let’s use this Tech for Good to balance a bit more of what traditionally was was done. So yeah, I think it’s a really important point about that management question, because it’s well discussed in the legal industry, as it sure is, in many other industries, you know, what are some of the common misconceptions about maintaining a work life balance in the legal industry, in your opinion? 

Kate Franklin 26:23 

Well, I think this is for humans universally, We all tell ourselves, I’m not going to work like this forever. I’m just going to wait until I get this next promotion. And then I will start paying attention to my work life balance. And I think that is probably one of the most dangerous myths of them all. And I’ve worked with people at every stage from from trainee to senior partner in law firms. And it’s, that’s such a common thing, like, I’ve put this off, and I’ve put it off because I thought, once I turned this next chapter, once I achieved the next milestone, then I would get to the point where I would pay attention to it. And the reality is, the time is now you know, if you are subjugating your fitness, the quality of your sleep, your relationships, your health, any of those things, you are kidding yourself, if you think that you are doing your best work. So stop that now. Do work out how to do your best work, and it will accelerate your progress, it will not get in the way of it. You know, that was my big learning. I think, you know, when I when I came out of my my years of overwork was I thought the year that I turned 30. And I started making big changes, I thought this is going to be the year that I drop, my performance rating is going to go from excellent down to kind of you know, the the good 60% blob that no none of us direct driven people want to be in, I thought this will be the year that I’m good. And that’s fine. You know, my relationship with my husband is more important. My back and my my mind the quality of my sleep are more important for this year. What happened that year 2004, it was I can I can show you the paperwork I’ve got I’ve got the receipts, is because I had this amazing coach helping me figure out what really matters, what’s the 20% of your work, that’s going to have the greatest impact, and find the confidence to ditch the rest. What happened with my performance that year is I actually moved up a notch into the outstanding box that the top 10% In my organisation. So it’s not about choosing between our well being and our performance. It’s about this is what these are the conditions we need to create from really optimal performance. It’s never about sacrificing our well being does that is it might in the short term have some productivity gains to work crazy hours for a little burst. But in the in the medium to long term. It’s never going to do our our overall performance any good. Because if I’m a client, as I have been a client of magic circle law firms don’t do not give me the person who hasn’t been to bed for three days. Thank you very much. Not only do they smell but their thinking is completely warped. I want the person who’s had a good night’s sleep to be working on my case, because they’re the ones who’ve got the brilliant insight and the creative solutions and the clever workarounds. And if we think we’re doing our best work, when we’re exhausted and stressed, we are massively kidding ourselves. You can’t kill a kid I was there for a long time. So I know what that looks like. 

Robert Hanna 29:40 

Kate, how do you suggest individuals prioritise and I emphasise the word prioritise because we’ve talked a little bit about this before self care, mental health omit the sort of demanding work schedules because there’s just the priority client that’s put the phone down, who’s demanded X, Y and Zed. What do you do? 

Kate Franklin 30:00 

A brilliant question. And it’s so much about having the confidence to make the judgement call it because I think when we are higher, hardwired to be driven, ambitious people who really, you know, want to achieve excellent outcomes, one of the traps that we can fall into is that we make everything really important, and everything really urgent. And unfortunately, when we’re stressed, I think that amplifies that, if that’s a default behaviour in me already, which is, by the way, then you just chuck a bit of adrenaline into the mix, and I go there even more and make everything the most important problem to solve. Now, that’s useful up to a point, but it can very, very rapidly lead us to quite unhealthy place where we’re just never allowing ourselves to calm down and break. So the most successful lawyers I’ve seen, are the ones who know how to be incredibly discerning about what is a genuine fire, and what is something we can wait for. So if you’ve planned to have Sunday off with your family, and you know, it’s really important for your energy levels, that you just have a bit of time to do some exercise, get out in the fresh air and have a nice day off connecting with your loved ones. And then you see that email arrive in your inbox. And it’s labelled urgent from a from a very key client. The best lawyers are the ones who can look at that, and decide calmly and rationally, is this really worth me giving up that Sunday for and that is going to have an impact on my productivity for the rest of the week? So it’s going to impact all the other matters that I’m touching for the next five days? Is it worth it? And it may be you know, sometimes it is right, sometimes there is genuinely enough cause for us to say, really sorry, everyone, I’ve got planned to completely change my plan for the day. I’ve got a I’ve got to attend to this for the next four or five hours. That might be the answer. But it won’t always be the answer. And what I learned about myself when I was recovering from stress is that all too often, I would take the clients demand at face value, I would make it the truth that it had to be attended to that day, when actually just because somebody else is saying this is urgent, they might not mean it needs to be dealt with today, they might have a language that is it needs to be dealt with urgently in this week. Or it might be or they need to merge a reassurance which actually only takes me 15 minutes to think about send them a voice note and say honestly, we’re on this, the team are on it, we’re going to be able to give you all you need from tomorrow, you’re going to hear from me at this time on Tuesday, just calm it all down and put it away doesn’t have to be something we subjugate our own needs for. So it’s that piece I think is like the the ability to take a step back and say, Does this really matter? And how much? How much are we prepared to sacrifice for? The other piece that’s really important, which is related to that is to take the recovery periods where they where you possibly can. I think often seniors in law firms are completely oblivious to the fact that the juniors won’t say, when they’ve come you know what it’s like when you’ve come to the end of a really intense matter. Maybe it’s been going on for two or three weeks, and everybody needed to pull out all the stops, and absolutely go for it. And there was day after day of really long hours. And then the juniors find themselves in a week where suddenly there’s hardly any demand on them at all. What happens in that week, and honestly, I’ve been in so many private conversations where they’ve admitted to me, they just hang around the office out of bad habit, because they haven’t got the confidence to say, is it right if I go to the gym, and actually I’m going to cut early today because I haven’t seen my mum for two weeks, and I want to go and see her at four o’clock. And what what I say to them in that situation is if there’s no need to be there, nobody cares. Don’t stay there just so that you can look like you’re there, get out, get catch up on your sleep, do your laundry, go see your mum, because when you’re back in the thick of it next week, you’ll be so much better able to give your best because you’ve taken that time. So I you know, we kill ourselves with stress because we don’t take the recovery. It’s not necessarily the stress itself. It’s the it’s the unrelenting nature of it. So that means you have to have the courage to say, this week is a quiet week for me. So I’m going to be gone by five. And you know, let people raise their eyebrows at that in envy because they didn’t think of it themselves when they were at your level. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not the right thing to do. Right. 

Robert Hanna 34:50 

Well, you know, I was always taught there’s power in the pause right? So the batteries to where they need to be you’re going to be far better off than continuously operating it Got a 25%? Because you’re still just going chugging along, right? So you need to give yourself the chance to do that. But you made a good point about it. Again, it comes down to communication. Because if you can articulate, you know, and there’s information, and then you can evidence based back, look, I’ve been working on this for three weeks, you know, I’ve done this, this, this, this delivered, you’ve signed this off, you’ve been very happy with what I’ve, what I’ve produced this week is looking a little bit, listen, you know, I don’t think you you’re not getting into office politics, you’re getting into, I want to maintain my best standard for the firm and operate at my best and sort of I want to work within the parameters. So yeah, I really like the way you sort of phrase that. And I really like the point around urgent reassurance, because, again, if you can have people that can give you that, it just things fall flat, and so much worry and so much stress, and so much leadership is due to poor communication. So I think you’ve done some really good examples throughout this podcast of how you could do that. I want to before we look to try and close talk a bit about cultural differences, because, you know, have you seen differences in approaches to work culture between London and Washington firms? And if so, what are they and as you probably know, there’s a growing trend of US firms growing in penetrating the London picture. 

Kate Franklin 36:06 

Yeah, it’s really interesting, because it wasn’t what I expected at all. Because if you talk to London lawyers, about the US firms, they will all tell you, they’re much more demanding much more cutthroat. That was not necessarily my experience. When I talked to the seniors in DC, a lot of them, were recognising that the problem of lawyer burnout and suicide was becoming derailing to their effectiveness. And they wanted, they genuinely did have an appetite to change. And some of the most interesting work I did was with firms where they’d set up this desire to change and to be less demanding. But the lawyers didn’t believe it, and they and they wouldn’t go home at a sensible time. And they wouldn’t, there was almost like a, it can’t be acceptable. So I’m going to carry on and that I think that I have seen echoes of that in lots of different environments globally. I mean, the other thing that I think is really important about organisation culture is it’s, it can be very, very different within a firm, right, because every firm has its macro culture, you know, what it desires it to be what it sets out overall. But the reality of life, as a lawyer is actually determined by the micro culture, the local environment. So we say, to get to the firms we work with, you know, you’ve got as many different cultures as you have senior associates, or, or, or line managers, because it’s really that, you know, my entire experience of what it’s like to work at this firm, or at least 80% of my experience as a lawyer is determined by the people who are giving me the work and the people who are who are either supporting and encouraging and enabling me or making me feel dreadful about depending on the way they respond, and the way that the way they interact with me. And I think that offers hope. So for say a, you know, a relatively junior leader listening to this in a law firm, maybe a line manager or a senior associate, you might be very frustrated with the overall culture of your firm, and you may be looking at it as dysfunctional not working. But I would say to you, there is so much you can do to make a difference to the people who who you are influencing. We all create the culture around us, we are all culture creators, and just by upping the level of human connection, and interest in the people around you, you will make a profound difference. You don’t have to wait for the firm above you to make those changes, you can do it yourself. And I’ve seen so much evidence of that in the teams we work with. So, you know, I think we can the problem about talking about culture in the biggest sense, you know, whether it’s national culture, like where you started with a question, or whether it’s the culture of a huge big firm, is it can make us feel a bit helpless, it can be a bit like, oh, well, it’s always been like this. There’s nothing I can do. I’m never going to change that. But I think there is so much we can all do to increase our positive influence on on the colleagues around us. And that’s very much at the heart of the latest innovation we’ve had, in terms of how we work with teams of just as few as five people at a time or going through what we call our culture sprint experience, where we amplify the positive change that that group can make for itself, without necessarily needing to wait for the the organisation around them to be committed to those changes. There’s so much we can all do. 

Robert Hanna 39:52 

Yeah, and that’s the point. I always say everyone has a voltmeter written about human connection because I’ve been saying it for time and time and time. We’re no longer in this b2b World or b2c world, we’re in this h two h world, which is human to human. So you’re collaborating with stakeholders, whether they’re clients, whether they’re internal employees or colleagues. We’re all humans. And you know, the more we get down with that, rather than sort of look at things from the other lenses of, let’s finish, Kate, I’ve really enjoyed your insights. And you’ve shared some really important points that hopefully are going to help people out if they might be finding themselves struggling or in high pressure environments or feeling like they’re burning out and some practical and tactical tips, which is what we’re all about on the show. But what would be your final words of wisdom? For those looking to take their first steps to finding a career coach or consultancy? Coach? 

Kate Franklin 40:37 

Great question. Well, first of all, don’t let yourself have a story about that, you know, the reasons you can’t do it, because you can’t access, great coaching because there are fantastic coaches out there at any budget. You know, when I started and I was 17 years ago, I was needing to get my hours, I was working pretty much with anyone at any budget just to get the the hours that I needed to, to achieve accreditation. So don’t allow yourself to have a scarcity story about how this isn’t the right time, because I can help you find someone, no matter what your constraints. I think it’s really important to like your coach, and it’s really important to be matched intellectually by your coach, you’ve got to be at the same pace. They do not need to know your world intimately. I’ve never been a lawyer, but who knows, I hope you can tell from the way I’ve talked on this, I’ve had a profound impact on plenty of lawyers careers, because it’s not really about my understanding. Coke, a great coach helps you unlock your own understanding and your own solutions. They don’t need to tell you the answers, they can help you work it out for yourself. Yeah, I don’t know if that’s really too broad to be useful. But there’s is the most profound thing I ever did for myself for the quality of my life and my relationships was to decide to invest in coaching and I, and that was in the first coach I had was in 2004. And I’ve never been without a coach for more than about six months. It’s just it’s just such a powerful way to stay honest with ourselves. Because there’s always for whatever it is we’re trying to do in life, there’s always that the intention and then there’s the reality, right, whether you’re whether you’re a senior leader trying to bring bring about a massive transformation in your organisation or whether you’re a trainee, trying to get fit. The gap between intention and reality is huge. And a great coach will create the space for us to be much more honest with ourselves about meeting that gap. 

Robert Hanna 42:45 

I always say it’s well documented as in yourself. So this has been an absolute masterclass. So if our listeners want to learn more about you your career journey and because he changed, where can they go to find out more? 

Kate Franklin 42:59 

Well, LinkedIn is where I hang out, as you know, with you and I spent we’re supposed to spend a lot of time every morning connecting on LinkedIn. I love the opportunity to meet people from all over the world to have meaningful debate. It’s where you can easily connect with me. So find me on LinkedIn. I’m Kate Franklin one.  

Robert Hanna 43:18 

There we go. Easy enough. Kate, thank you so much. It’s been a real pleasure having you on the legally speaking podcast wishing you lots of continued success with your coaching and career but for now from all of us. Over and out.