Leadership In Law Podcast

S02E55 Leading with Emotional Intelligence with Lexlee Overton

• Marilyn Jenkins • Season 2 • Episode 55

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From courtroom panic attacks to coaching thousands of attorneys nationwide, Lexlee Overton's journey reveals the profound connection between emotional intelligence and law firm success. This eye-opening conversation explores why managing energy—not just time—determines whether your firm thrives or merely survives.

Lexlee shares the science behind why lawyers struggle: when we're stressed, our bodies trigger 1,400 biochemical responses that block access to our creative, strategic thinking abilities. The result? Decreased performance, burnout, health issues, and ultimately, diminished profitability. What began as Lexlee's personal quest to manage courtroom anxiety evolved into a transformative coaching methodology that's changing how law firms approach leadership.

Discover practical, science-backed techniques to shift your team's energy immediately. Learn why Google's research identified psychological safety—not intelligence or education—as the foundation of high-performing teams. Lexlee explains how simple practices like morning gratitude routines and team "wins" create neural pathways that boost happiness, engagement, and performance.

For firm owners, the message becomes clear: team coherence depends on individual coherence, starting with leadership. "If your team isn't performing the way you want, it has something to do with you," Lexlee notes. Whether you're managing stress, building resilience, or creating a culture where vulnerability is valued, this episode delivers actionable wisdom to transform your practice.

Ready to revolutionize your leadership approach? Connect with Lexlee at mindoverlaw.com or mention "Leadership in Law" on her social media to receive her exclusive energy practice tools designed specifically for attorneys.

Reach Lexlee here:

Website: http://www.mindoverlaw.com
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexleeoverton
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexlee.overton
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@mindoverlaw
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexleeoverton
Energy Practices: https://lexlee-overton.kit.com/63773a1c71

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Leadership in Law podcast with host Marilyn Jenkins. Cut through the noise, get actionable insights and inspiring stories delivered straight to your ears your ultimate podcast for navigating the ever-changing world of law firm ownership. In each episode, we dive deep into the critical topics that matter most to you, from unlocking explosive growth to building a thriving team. We connect you with successful firm leaders and industry experts who share their proven strategies and hard-won wisdom. So, whether you're a seasoned leader or just starting your journey as a law firm owner, the Leadership in Law podcast is here to equip you with the knowledge and tools you need to build a successful and fulfilling legal practice.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to another episode of the Leadership in Law podcast. I'm your host, marilyn Jenkins. Please join me in welcoming my guest, lex Lee Overton, to the show today. Lex Lee is a 30-year veteran of the legal industry who has transformed her career from being a successful trial lawyer into a sought-after leadership and team performance coach. Today, she's a trusted peak performance expert, working with thousands of attorneys and law firms nationwide. She's created a holistic, results-driven approach that blends science-backed mindfulness practices, emotional intelligence and strategic leadership principles. Her signature coaching method empowers lawyers to excel in their careers in every aspect of their lives. She teaches lawyers how to manage stress, maximize productivity and confidently lead, ultimately transforming law firms into high-performance teams that thrive under pressure. Whether you're a solo practitioner or managing a large law firm, lex's powerful message resonates with intention anything is possible. I love that. I'm excited to have you here, lexley, welcome.

Speaker 3:

I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely so. What made you transition from being a trial lawyer to being a coach and helping people perform better?

Speaker 3:

It was sort of a natural transition that I didn't even realize was happening, but I started as a young trial lawyer. When I was about 30 years old, I walked out of a courtroom in northern Louisiana after a motion hearing and thought I was having a heart attack and went to the emergency room and they actually thought I was too. It was a whole ordeal but ends up that I ended up doing all this kind of testing and everything and they're like you know, what's happening is your esophagus is contracting down and you need to take the medication for this, and I was like this is insane. What's happening is is that I am full throttled in a profession that is very stressful, with a lot of anxiety because of the adversarial pressure, and I had a young child at the time I think he was like three years old, and I was like I don't want to be on medication for the rest of my life just to figure out how to survive in this. I want to know how to thrive, and so it set me on a path literally 25 years ago, of studying how do we manage our state and emotional awareness and emotional intelligence and all the things to be better performing, and I built that into my practice over the next 15 years.

Speaker 3:

And then what happened was, as I was just teaching in some national trial, where I was teaching trial skills, and lawyers started coming to me and saying, you know, we love the trial skill part, but with that little bit of magic that you seem to have about how, knowing how to manage everything and your presence and all of that, and it just opened up the opportunity for me to start doing coaching, one-on-one with people. That then blew up into well, if I'm working with leaders, why am I not teaching their people, their team, how to be high performing? So I decided, over a three years process, to start to close my practice this is about 10 years ago and build this business, because it was where my heart was, or as my passion was so much fulfillment and helping people to be healthier and happier in what they're doing.

Speaker 2:

Well, that's, I absolutely agree. Just to see the transition and the light bulb moment. Whenever someone's like right, I can have what I want and be happy with it.

Speaker 3:

Yes, and you know it's. It's not something. We all know that in the legal profession there is a different type of pressure. That happens and we know. The statistics say that we're four times as likely to be depressed and twice as likely to abuse substances like alcohol. They're the higher suicide rate in our profession and that's a little scary, and you know where we are because of the nature of the practice.

Speaker 3:

Besides, that is the idea that if we are not performing well, then that affects the bottom line right. So for us in our businesses as a law firm you know if you're a law firm owner, but you know all of your team members it really affects performance, and performance is productivity and productivity affects profitability. So, looking at it not just because we should be and I think as leaders we should be inspiring greatness in others, and that I think as leaders, we should be talking about that means how are you doing? And teaching people how to perform well has a lot to do with teaching them to manage their energy, and energy is about managing emotions and that leads us into leading with emotional intelligence, I think is something that is missing in a lot of environments.

Speaker 3:

So yes, and you know when I talk, you know I think about my own path and not knowing how to manage all this. When I came in and you know, we're usually over performers, we're high achievers, but that leads into burnout, right, and so this idea of what does that mean? Emotional intelligence? And I like to start with the why behind things, because I think when we understand the why, then we're more likely to take action, to do things. And the fact is is that emotions are the primary drivers of all of our physiological systems. They really drive not only the major body systems, more than thoughts. The thoughts can trigger the emotions, but the emotions are what are in charge, and so they drive our physiology, including nervous system and hormonal activity, and they affect our engagement in life. Right. So our motivation to do things, and when we have an understanding that, when we know how to manage our state, which is managing our energy I think of energy as two things the state, which is has to do with the emotion, and then also the story, because the story is the thing that drives the state right the thoughts, the belief I have about this situation. If I wake up today and I think today is hard I've already set myself up to be in an energy that it's going to be hard, right, and I've already set my. But probably if I'm waking up and you know, I work with lawyers all the time and I woke up like this, a lot of like when you wake up, you're already in this angst kind of state of like oh my God, there's so much to do, and is it going to go okay, right, much to do, and is it going to go okay, right. And really, what this body says as a result of that story is you automatically trigger the part of the nervous system that puts you in the fight or flight or freeze, so that, literally in seconds, puts in place 1400 biochemical, hormonal responses that happen in our system just like that, right. And so when we are in that state, the brain literally is focused on a story of survival. Right, it might be survival today, but it's really the system that we're.

Speaker 3:

This reptilian response that we're having is very powerful and the brain is using all of its resources just to be like what's the threat here? Because that's what it's familiar with, right, and it might not be, you know, I might just have a busy day and I might be worried about performing well at something, but in the brain and your body's response to it is like this, really fight or flight, like I have to do something to survive this. And so what happens is, when I'm talking about the brain's resources and what's happening that it's trying to just deal with, that is that we're not as powerful as we could be, we're not as engaged as we could be. When I talk to law students, I talk to them about like if you learn to manage your state and to manage your emotions, you're actually smarter, because your brain has full access to the prefrontal cortex and to all of the executive functioning that we need to have as lawyers and the work that we're doing. But when we're in fight or flight, we don't have access to that. So the example of that is being, if you've ever been like I can think about being in a courtroom and making an argument and and coming out later and you know, two or three hours later, when you know you've sort of reset and you're not in the moment of the intense anxiety of that of being like, oh darn, I wish I had said that, right, and all these things we all do that, don't we? Yep, right? Or you're in a fight with someone you know, with your spouse, and like, oh, I should have said that. Well, that's because in the moment your brain was so intense, right Focused in that fight or flight response, that you didn't have access to the creativity, the part that gives you that argument that you really really needed. Then you have access to all of that, and so that makes us higher performing, and that's true for all of our team too.

Speaker 3:

If we could not just teaching lawyers that, but teaching everyone on your team, because everybody's in that energy, we're all in this energy of you know, it's very adversarial, it's high pressure, it's usually tight deadlines, all of those things that are things that trigger in those kind of emotions, which can be anything from anxiety to impatience, to anger, to frustration. Then we're in that system where it's really draining on us. So you know, every day if we think about ourselves as energy systems. I say it's about energy management. Time management is important, but it's just a small piece of what's important for high performance.

Speaker 3:

Energy management is this emotional intelligence, awareness of your state, awareness of the story and knowing how to shift it, because we're going to go into that. There's, you know, there. We're human, we're meant to have, we're going to have these type of responses, but having the ability to recognize what's happening in the environment, that I don't, that I have a choice in what the response is. So there's this moment when something happens out here in my environment, there's this moment that I have the ability, if I develop it, to actually choose what the response is, instead of automatically being triggered into that fight or flight freeze state Do you know what I mean.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, when you take it, it's like just taking that breath and having it instead of just immediately reacting. So to build that, do you look at your intention in the morning Like, instead of letting your I mean the moment you get up you're letting your day get away from you. Exactly, you know, you haven't even had your coffee yet. Your, your, your day has gotten away from you. And that's not. That's just not true. That's in your head.

Speaker 3:

So right, yeah, that's a story. Yeah, so the intention part. That is why I say that with intention, anything is possible, but intention is really about awareness. So we have to build, to start to build in and teach people awareness. And yeah, first thing in the morning is a great, but you need to want to be thinking about besides what the story is. How do I start this day in a way that's more empowering?

Speaker 3:

So what we know is because we're energy beings, we wake up every morning with a certain amount of energy, and that's a lot of factors the amount of sleep I've had, the kind of food I've eaten, you know, exercise, all you know. And then what's on my have? I been in a fight or flight state that I haven't reset from? Because when you stay in that state, it's very draining on our systems, it's draining of energy and unfortunately, in our modern world we're living in a fight or flight state, even if it's a low volume of that. So that's why I get frustrated driving to work because of traffic. You're in a mild fight or fight state. You're in this anxiety state that is draining on your system, and because we stay in that all day long and we don't reset and we don't know how to reset. That's why we have burnout, that's why we have health problems. When I have lawyers that come to me and they're like I'm just exhausted and I don't know how I'm going to get through, I'm like, yeah, and you're going to get sick, because what it takes energy to fuel our immune system and if we're in fight or flight, our body is using all of that Be in the fight or flight state it's. It takes away the energy from the immune system, which is why when you say it from arm, you will see yourself get sick or have some kind of physical response that way. There is a statistic out there that says in the Western world, like 80% of the people who are walking into a hospital are doing so because of a long-term, chronic state of firefight, that this anxiety state that has then affected the immune system and it's the underlying cause of a lot of our disorders, our physical disorders that we have to have medical treatment for. This is very powerful when you think about that, because if we, as you know, business owners, going back to you know, productivity equals profitability, one besides having very engaged employees, that's higher productivity. If we, you know, it's reducing the rate of sickness, so you're not having the cost of that. But when people stay in long-term disengagement, then you have higher turnover, which is so costly it's. You know, when labor happens the cost to the business is so it's just so great you think you could handle it, but when you have repeated of that, it's affecting your profitability.

Speaker 3:

So what we want to think about is energy beans Back to. We wake up with a certain amount of energy. We want to think about what are the things that recharge and fuel our energy, and when we're in that state that's really draining frustration, anger, anxiety. How do we shift out of it? It's both of those like knowing it and recognizing it, recognizing that you have tools to switch out of that. And it's very important because if we're energy beings, then you know if your battery's low, you're not going to be good at anything. As you think about it, it's just the same thing as your cell phone being an energy. You know you have to charge it at night to function well. The lower it gets, the worse it functions right. Like all of a sudden it's doing weird things. It's the same thing with us. You think of it like that, knowing how to what is to charge your own energy.

Speaker 3:

So what we do is is we teach with teams. We talk about high-performing teams. There's a lot of science-backed research that is about performance in teams and everything comes down to team coherency. And that's the term we use, like the science kind of term of coherency for a team is based upon the individual coherency of a team member. So you know, each team member contributes to what the whole of the team is doing. So if one team member is off, it is affecting everybody, right? So we teach awareness about that. When we train teams, we're like every single one of you have the responsibility to show up as the best you, and when you're in a state that's not, you're affecting the coherency of everything else. And I use the example of like when you see really high performing teams, like you know a really great football team, you know Super Bowl, you know when they are in the flow, you experience that as a spectator. It's like all that, everybody's in scene, moving. Another great example is thinking about a symphony. Seeing a symphony, you know an orchestra work, everything flows. You can teach your teen to be like that. And it starts with teaching them this emotional intelligence, the awareness of where they are and how to shift that. So we start with some practices that people would term as like mindfulness practices, which, it's true, right, it's.

Speaker 3:

Mindfulness is all about having what's awareness of what's happening right now. Even doing a practice, a simple practice of just bringing in your five senses right now, in this moment, like, what am I seeing? What are the colors, what is the feeling of the temperature of the room on my skin? What am I hearing? Doing that practice is one that can help to shift you out of fight or flight, because to be in anxiety, we have to be thinking about something. There's a story that we have. I might be anxious, maybe I'm anxious about talking with you today and telling a good story that your listeners can hear and follow. Well, if I'm in that, I can get out of it. If I get out of that story, and then one of the techniques is just doing a mindfulness practice, well, if almost, then I'm thinking about what I'm seeing and feeling and hearing, that's a different story and it's a way just to interrupt that pattern.

Speaker 3:

So, teaching some mindfulness practices, but then just teaching, like, what are the things that teaching leaders that? What are the things that keep people really engaged? And, as a leader, are you asking yourself questions like where are my people? Are they really stressed, are they overwhelmed, what are they feeling? And having discussions about that is really important, but then having the tools and techniques to help with that. So back to your morning practice. Morning practices are very important. I think the very first thing in the morning that has this one practice has changed my life on many levels and there's all kind of science behind it is just starting the morning with a gratitude practice and so as soon as you become aware.

Speaker 3:

I do it as soon as I'm like laying in my bed and I start to wake up and I just start to think about, instead of oh, what's on my plate today and having anxiety about it, I start to wake up and I just start to think about, instead of oh, what's on my plate today and having anxiety about it, I start to think about just three things I'm grateful for, and just doing that. The first thing in the morning setting your brain up for that. So there is a confirmation bias that the brain has. So if you start that practice every morning and that's the first thing that you set the intention for and you're in gratitude, you cannot be in anxiety about the day and being gratitude at the same time. So if you are in gratitude, then the brain has a confirmation bias that it says oh OK, this is where we are, this is, and you can create a pattern of that. So we are, we're story beings, right, we are. As men's, we operate in stories and gratitude is a story.

Speaker 3:

But the brain is a pattern storage system and a pattern recognizer, so in looking for something it's familiar with. So when you start to build practices this is when I say, lawyers, you have to do empowering practices to empower your life and your law practice. But empowering practices means you have to practice them and as you do you start to create new neural pathways. That then creates a pattern that the brain is familiar with. So I've done this for years and years and years.

Speaker 3:

So my brain knows what the pattern of gratitude is, gratitude is, and when you do that, when you go into gratitude, science tells us that if I was doing biofeedback on my system, that when you do gratitude your system becomes very coherent, including what they call heart rhythm variability, which is a predictor of all kinds of things, including resilience and health, etc. When you have very coherent heart rate variability, then you're higher performing and literally, gratitude is one of the keys. If you just do a little bit of mindful breathing with a gratitude practice, you can almost instantly set yourself up into a higher performing state. And if you practice it every day, then it's easier for your system to go into it because the brain recognizes it Just like any other habit that you repeat. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2:

Absolutely yeah. I've just thinking. One of the I've recently started got back into journaling on a regular basis and that's one of the prompts is gratitude. So it just you know, and my team we do wins journals for personal as well as business. You know we all like to share that and we start our team meetings with wins and gratitude. Yeah.

Speaker 3:

And there's science behind this. So what we know about gratitude is they've done studies that say if you do a regular gratitude practice just for two weeks that you significantly will increase happiness levels. So a regular written gratitude practice, like when you're doing your journaling, has a lot of science behind it that says this really boosts people's happiness levels. If you're doing that, then you are higher performing because that has an effect on your physiology, the brain included. That means that you're in a better state to be able to handle anything that you go in to perform right and you're having a higher engagement because you have a higher happiness motivation level in your life. So then you're more engaged, you're more productive. All of this feeds back into performance. So there is a science behind starting with wins with your groups. I say every time I start with a team, we, every time I meet with a team, we always start with wins.

Speaker 3:

And the reason why is that is setting the energy of the meeting starting with the win, the energy of the meeting starting with the when sets a synergy of a group flow, that it's positive right and we'll have this to be in a state that, as we tap into in that meeting, of what challenges that we're looking at, because we've already set ourselves up to be more coherent to be able to handle it. So there's science behind doing that with your team. So it's a very, very important practice and you know it's a check-in, right, but it's a positive check-in. It's looking at the story, how to win. I'm not asking you about and even if you have a challenge is what I say to my team or the teams that I work with. If, if it's a challenge, I want you to find in the challenge what the win is, let's change the story of that. So I might. Maybe we failed at something, maybe we tried something and we didn't. It didn't work the way we thought, but we always can learn something to do it differently and that makes it a more empowering story as opposed to well, you didn't do this right and this didn't. You know. You know all the things that went wrong. You're looking at how do you turn that into a more empowering state, which means it has to be a more empowering story. If I look at failure as an opportunity to do it. Different Mistakes real important.

Speaker 3:

On teams, google did a study with like 200 teams and the question was is what makes high-performing teams high-performing teams, what makes them so great? And they looked at things like was it about intelligence level, education level? Was it people coming from the same cultures? Was it same interests? What are the things that make these teams perform well together? Idea of two things. One, that people had the ability to emotionally intuit meaning. As team members, they had the ability to understand and reflect what was happening with them and other team members, even if it wasn't spoken right. So this ability to have emotional intelligence of what was really the undergoing thing.

Speaker 3:

The second thing is that everybody has an equal opportunity to offer something right. So an equal voice, especially for millennials. They really need to feel like they are involved in the work that's very meaningful, so they have to know high performance is like. We want to know what we do, how that contributes to the whole right. So an opportunity to offer that. But here's the key True, high performing teams build a culture that team members feel that it's safe to be vulnerable, to offer ideas, to make mistakes and not be ridiculed or embarrassed or harassed by leadership or team members and if you get that, you've got.

Speaker 3:

And that's the secret and unfortunately a lot of us aren't building that. It's like the pressure of just naturally in work, people feel unsafe to make mistakes because they feel like they're going to get in trouble. They're going to get in trouble, they're going to get fired. You know all these consequences are going to happen and really that's about leadership. You've got to turn that around, because people are going to make mistakes. We're human, we think of them as a learning opportunity and how do we do it differently?

Speaker 2:

And that's about changing the story and that can be very, very powerful about changing the story and that can be very, very powerful, and I think it's. It's interesting whenever you know like in law school you learn how to be a lawyer, don't necessarily learn how to be a manager or then a leader and it's being able to take those steps and I have found having a coach was the thing that made a difference for me, though you know, just just to leave that open, you know, if you don't have a coach and you're thinking that you can do better, be better, have more, do more, maybe having a coach is the way to do that at least, I mean, someone help you.

Speaker 3:

Yes, we all are learning right. I have coach after coach right, and I am a coach, but I'm always looking for the next thing, the next level, what's the next thing that I can learn that I can turn around and help to teach other people? And we need that to. You know, oftentimes we're in our patterns that we don't even see, so a coach helps you to see that, and a coach with a team is able to see.

Speaker 3:

The patterns with the team that you might not be understanding of the leader are very, very disempowering and are really acting performance and, at the end of the day, when it comes down to it, if your team is not performing the way that you want it to, it has something to do with you as a leader, meaning that you may have the awareness that you need to understand what's going on. You have to ask yourself what you're modeling for your team. If I want a high-performing team, I have to be a high-performing individual, which means I have to be really aware of how I show up and managing my state and my story, because, again, team coherence is dependent upon individual coherence, not just the leader, but everybody. The leader is key. If I am an incoherent person, there will be incoherency in my team, there will be chaos, there will be inefficient management of energy, and that's really what coherency is about and high performance about is management of energy, I agree.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I agree, and it's like when you, my coach, actually has this thing he says that I think is incredible. It says you can't see the full picture when you're in the frame. That's right. So it's having someone to help you see where you're missing and how to get back in line and to grow to become that productivity that you want and have a high performance team. So this has been excellent. I do. I love diving into the emotional intelligence and how to get the energy in line with the teams. If any of our listeners wanted to reach out to you and you know, start with you or have a conversation, where can they reach you?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so our website is mindoverlawcom. We have a very big presence on Facebook under Likely Over 10 and on Instagram, and if any of your listeners come in and put you know leadership and law just in any of my comments on Instagram or Facebook, I'm going to know that it's coming from your audience and I will reach out and give them access to a set of energy practices that I have put together that I think are the most powerful for helping you to have this emotional intelligence and the tools to be able to shift your state almost instantly. But when you start to do these, then you're building resilience. So if anybody's listening, just put in leadership and law in the comments on Facebook or Instagram and we'd be happy to reach out and give that to them.

Speaker 2:

That's exciting. That's very exciting. I have all your links so we'll make sure that those are in the show notes and people can reach out to you. We'll put it in the show notes too.

Speaker 3:

That'd be great, thank you.

Speaker 2:

This has been very exciting and listening to you and learning more about the energy and how you work with teams, because we want to have a good business and grow together and once you have those A players in place, you want to keep them.

Speaker 3:

That's right. That's right. Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, thanks for joining me today for this episode. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode, and if you find value here, I'd love it if you would rate it and review it. That really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, you can connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. And if you're ready to take the next step with a digital strategist to help you grow your law firm, I'd be honored to help you. Just go to lawmarketingzonecom to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, thanks for listening to Leadership in Law podcast and be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss the next episode.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Leadership in Law podcast. Remember you're not alone on this journey. There's a whole community of law firm owners out there facing similar challenges and striving for the same success. Head over to our website at lawmarketingzonecom. From there, connect with other listeners, access valuable resources and stay up to date on the latest episodes. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Until next time, keep leading with vision and keep growing your firm.

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Marilyn Jenkins

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