114 - How Learning and Development Creates Leaders of The Future

Pete has specialised in learning and professional development in the legal sector for over 20 years. He joined LawNet in 2013 and has significant experience of designing and implementing learning strategies that help firms grow and develop their teams and their future managers and leaders. 

Pete is also very active in promoting the importance of mental health and wellbeing. As a Mind media volunteer and LawCare Champion, he regularly writes and speaks about his own experiences of mental illness. Pete is also host of the LawNet podcast.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-riddleston/

Podcast: https://www.lawnet.co.uk/news-blog/the-lawnet-blog/the-lawnet-podcast/

About Dan:
Dan provides law firm owners with the skills and capital investment to increase their profits while reducing their workload. Over the last five years, Dan’s clients have grown their revenues from 20% to 392% in one year while more than halving their workload.

To find out about Dan's availability and programs, click here: https://www.danwarburton.com/

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Transcript

Welcome to the Law Firm Owners Podcast. I am your host, Dan Warburton. If you are a law firm equity member, partner, CEO or MD who wants to increase your profits while reducing your workload, then you are in the right place.

It's the skills that I needed to become a leader. Yeah. I'm so happy that I've met you in my life.

You've spoken about the revenue increase. It went from like 70,000 to nearly half a million. What percentage increase is that? It's over 400% in that range.

You know, our monetary returns have been insane. And what we have made in extra profit, as compared to what we spent on you, is incomparable. You've just trebled the firm's profits in one year.

Yeah. Are you getting what I'm saying? After working with Dan for a few months, my income is up, my happiness is up. This has changed my whole life.

Welcome to the Law Firm Owners Podcast. I'm here with the great Pete Riddleston, who is the Learning and Quality Director at LawNet. So Pete has specialized in learning and professional development in the legal sector for over 20 years.

He joined LawNet in 2013 and has significant experience of designing and implementing learning strategies that help firms grow and develop their teams and their future managers and leaders. Pete is also very active in promoting the importance of mental health and well-being. As a mind media volunteer and law care champion, he regularly writes and speaks about his own experiences of mental illness.

Pete is also the host of the LawNet Podcast. So today, what we're going to be covering is how learning and development helps law firms develop leaders for the future. Pete, it's really great to have you here.

Thank you, Dan. Good to be here. Thanks for inviting me onto the podcast.

And so I get you like to be called Pete, not Peter. That's right. Yeah.

Pretty much everybody calls me Pete, except my mum when I'm in trouble. I was just thinking that. Yes, yes.

So I'm really keen to hear from somebody like you that's got so much experience in developing and helping people grow, you know, to elevate their performance and obviously to get the career progression that they yearn for. Why do you think that such a focus on developing people and their people skills in the legal sector is missing? Well, I think it comes from a number of things, really. And I suppose the starting point is the sort of training that people get at the beginning of their careers, which is very much focused on the law and the technical aspects of the law, which is so important, of course.

But it only teaches you some of the things that will make you successful as a lawyer. And there's a whole load of other stuff in addition to that very important technical knowledge that I feel is very important for firms to focus on and individual lawyers to focus on, really from the start of their careers. Yeah, yeah.

So, yeah, so it's that very heavy academic background. Here's the law. When you get this problem, this is how you implement the law to solve that problem.

And that's it. There's never leadership skills, management skills, people skills, soft skills, which is a word I cannot stand because soft skills are probably some of the most profitable skills a law firm owner could ever gain, as me and you know. Absolutely.

Yeah. I think of those, I'm totally with you on the soft skills description. For me, I describe those as core business skills.

Core business skills. Yeah, I love it. Those are the skills that contribute to your success and your development in the long term.

You know, we've done so much training at LawNet around communication skills because those are so fundamental to the current relationship and the relationships you have with your colleagues and introducers of work and those people. And, you know, you could be the best technical lawyer in the world. But if you struggle to communicate effectively with your clients and other people, it's very hard to get that advice across and build those client relationships, those relationships with your colleagues that will put you on that development pathway.

You know, those skills are so fundamental and they go much wider than communication. So one of the areas that I think I was very keen to deliver learning on is the financial aspects of running a law firm, for instance. Because unless you understand how that business works and how it makes money, it's really hard to understand how you fit into that.

I remember from my time in practice, admittedly, an awful long time ago, not fully understanding what my target meant. And it was really hard to get anyone to explain it to me and say, you know, what reaching that target was about, what my contribution to the firm's finances were about. So, you know, I always feel it's fundamental that people understand that business model from the outset so they can understand exactly how they contribute to their firm's success because that's what it's about in the end.

It's helping people to contribute not only to their own career development, but be part of a firm and contribute to its success and development. Yeah, got it. So what you're saying, learning development, is you say it's not just about the communication skills and leadership and management.

It's opening their minds up to the greater why they're doing what they're doing in the firm, what their role is and how it contributes to the overall success of the firm. Yeah, I think that's one of the fundamental roles of learning and development, really, is to help people remember their why, so why they came into the law in the first place, but also why they're there and what motivates them. What is it that means that they want to grow in their role and develop? And, you know, once you access the why, it's much easier to help people with their development, putting in programs, learning, things that will support them.

Yeah, yeah. I find with the clients that I work with, law firm owners and partners, they're just so busy and just overwhelmed in doing billable work because it's all they've ever known to do. And they end up building a team of people because they know they need it because they're so busy.

But then they still remain so busy trying to do the billable work because it's the work they've always done for their clients, as they have for many years. How do you think somebody that's busy like that can start to understand the value in developing their people rather than just focusing on billable work? Well, that's a really crucial question, isn't it? Because that goes to the heart of, you know, how a firm is successful because you always want to have the right people doing the right work at the right level. And part of that is equipping people to do that.

And I guess that's a big part of the manager-leader role in a law firm is having the ability to delegate work effectively, to motivate people to do a job really effectively and complete that work. Time is part of it. And, you know, I see more and more firms these days who carve out management time for those who are leading teams or in any sort of managerial leadership position so that they have more time to spend on supervision and work with others to develop their teams.

That's becoming more common. There's no doubt about that. But, you know, ultimately, I think at an individual level, you have to kind of commit to that, you know, from your own point of view as a manager or leader.

You have to really commit sort of emotionally and intellectually to taking that on and making developing that team a real priority for you and devoting the time that people need to develop. So it's kind of prioritization, really, time management and prioritization. But I say that from my point of view, I'm no longer in practice, so I'm not facing that issue day to day.

Maybe it's easy for me to say, but it's true. It's much harder to do. Well, I totally agree.

You know, one of the things I always say is if it's not scheduled, it's not happening. So the very first step towards developing people to become high performance people is to actually schedule time each week that you're going to do that and make that non-negotiable. And that might be filled with a weekly one-on-one call with each head of department, for instance, right? And then getting into their world, finding out what they want to succeed at, finding out what training they want to gain, and then actually going out and finding that training for them and connecting them up with it and supporting them with it financially and everything else, right? Yeah, absolutely.

Being really intentional about it is really important, as you say. If it's not scheduled, it isn't going to happen, is it? Yeah. You don't want it to fall into that category of things which are good intentions that you never quite get around to achieving.

So to that extent, you know, having some metrics in place I think can be really helpful. Yeah. You know, I've seen firms within LawNet have metrics in place for sort of employee satisfaction, employee engagement.

So those sorts of things can provide a really useful measure about how people feel about their work, you know, whether that's the training they receive, the day-to-day of what they do for clients, and the support they get around that. And those metrics give you a measure of how people are doing. But there's also, you know, there's more basic metrics as well.

So it's your ability to recruit and your ability to retain people. Because, you know, firms that find it slightly easier to recruit, you know, recruitment markets are difficult. If it's easier to recruit, the chances are you're getting the right messages out there and, you know, people are having a good experience when they're employees of your firm.

And, you know, if you're able to engage people, that shows that you're doing the right things. And, you know, using metrics to back that up is really important, I think. Yeah, nice.

So the idea of having everybody fill out a scorecard on their experience in different areas of different elements of their role and everything to really see what's the gaps in satisfaction that's missing for the team members and what support is it that they might need to be able to get those numbers up to make sure that the culture is really great across the firm, right? Yeah, absolutely. You know, that's an important part of, you know, continuous improvement across a whole load of areas. But for that area of engagement and creating the right culture, it is really helpful because it will help you identify any trends that are there.

So maybe if an appraisal process isn't working, if you're getting low scores on that, you know, there's clearly an opportunity then to dig into that and figure out what's going on. Is there a trend that you need to address? You know, might there be some learning needs for people that are managing teams? You know, there's all indicators that can help you put in place the things that can improve that area. Yeah, yeah.

I know what some of the law firm owners and partners are thinking as they listen to this. It's like, why? What's the point of doing, of giving all this learning and development, you know, to team members? Like, how is that going to improve my business? So for me, one of the big questions here is succession. We know, you know, a lot of studies will tell you that succession is a problem or a worry for a lot of law firms.

And that means that one of the ways of giving yourself some protection, it might not solve the problem completely, but it gives you, you know, a fighting chance, is by developing the leaders of tomorrow and investing in that and creating a proposition for those people that they want to buy into and want to become leaders in your firm. So, you know, if leaders are sceptical, then, you know, I think that's one of the things to consider, that it can help significantly with your succession plan. That you start equipping people with the tools to own and manage a business from the outset.

And as I say, that begins with understanding how a firm succeeds. And also, it's about that recruitment and retention aspect as well. Investing timing, so important.

When you look at the reasons why people leave firms, you might often hear that it's about learning and development and they didn't feel they were being invested in. Yeah. Yeah.

Which equals to them not getting the career progression they yearn for. Absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah. Absolutely. So the two main reasons there as to why invest time to develop your people is one for succession, because you're basically growing and empowering the people that are going to be future leaders and managers.

But secondly, it's for retaining who you've got in the team. So, yeah, if at your law firm, you listen to this and you've got a problem with people that keep leaving, then there's something really here for you to look at. It's like, why are they leaving? And from what Pete's saying here, it could well be that they're not feeling invested in enough, you know, and they're not getting that career progression they yearn for.

So two great insights. And what about the direct effect on the profitability of a firm that developing people has? Yeah, absolutely. You know, you want to upskill people, help them to grow in their roles and equipping them with the ability to work in more efficient, more collaborative ways can certainly add to your bottom line.

Yeah. And this isn't necessarily always about, you know, you've got to make sure that people are technically competent, but there are lots of opportunities to help people learn together to change the way they work together. One of the big things at the moment that we see a lot of talk around is artificial intelligence.

Yeah. And we're seeing more and more firms exploring different ways of using artificial intelligence to streamline processes and enable people to work more effectively. There's a huge learning and development need around that to make sure that people are using artificial intelligence in the right ways, whether that's from an ethical perspective or simply to get the right responses by using really effective prompts in AI.

It's a huge area of learning. Yeah. And it's an area of learning that create real efficiencies for people.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

And I go back to my initial, you know, one of my initial points, which was around the financial side of things and teaching people how a law firm works, providing people with learning around that can be hugely effective in terms of helping them identify areas where they can improve their productivity as well. Yeah. Yeah.

Fantastic. As we were saying, these are not soft skills. These are proper core business skills, as you call them.

Yeah. I'm going to start correcting everyone with that whenever I hear the word soft skills going forward. So looking at, you know, the value in investing in your people and developing them.

But, you know, I know that a lot of law firm owners worry that if they develop their people and upskill them so much that they're just going to leave and jump onto some better opportunity in the future. Yeah, I've heard that as well. And I can really understand that concern.

You know, you would feel nervous that investing in people can cause that outcome. But in the end, that's so, you know, the firm's culture is so fundamental there, isn't it? That if you can create the right culture and a culture of learning is a part of that, then you've got a much better chance of retaining people. You won't retain everyone all the time.

What you need to try and do is find those levers that will help you increase the likelihood of people staying, which is why, you know, I'm such a believer that learning and development can be a big part of that. It's not the only answer. Clearly it's not, but it can be a big part in it.

And, you know, if you don't invest in your people, the chances are they'll leave anyway. Yeah. Yeah.

That's what I'm getting from listening to you. It's like, well, what will happen is you will reduce the number of people leaving at the rate you have before and greatly improve the retention. And you will have some people will leave because they've been upskilled and all of a sudden then they've got many more opportunities, but the number of people leaving per year is going to reduce overall through upskilling your people is what I'm sensing.

If the culture is equally good and inviting for them to stay, right? Yeah, absolutely. You know, and part of that is understanding what people are looking for. Yeah.

And, you know, you'll never be able to provide everything that people want all of the time. And clearly that's not going to happen. But understanding what motivates your people at an individual level, what they want, what they're looking for, how they want to develop, you know, what makes them come to work every day, whether that's remotely or in person.

What is it that drives them to do that? And how can you bring out the best in them? And I think as a leader, that's almost a constant question. How can I create an environment where people will succeed and people will enjoy that success and feel part of something, that they belong to something bigger? So it's tapping into those things that people are often looking for. Yeah.

And that, I think, involves quite a lot of reflection as a leader and quite a lot of time listening as well. Yeah. You just need to understand what people are looking for and how you can meet those expectations.

As I say, it's not possible all of the time. But having a real curiosity around that, I think, is really helpful. Yeah.

It's essential, to be honest. Yeah, I totally agree. One of the first exercises I get my clients to go through is, with each head of department, is to sit down with them and say, hey, you've been here two, three, five years and I realise I'd never asked you, what would you love to succeed at? If anything could become possible through your participation in this firm, what would you love that to be? And they're amazed at the answers they get.

Some actually would love to be able to have a whole month off in summer to go travelling around India or something. Another wanted to take up singing lessons. And others that they were surprised about did want to become partners and want the pay rises and everything else.

And only then, when you know what people want and how they want their culture to be or their role to make whatever future they want possible, can you then work with them to create it and achieve it. Absolutely. Yeah.

And it's giving the time to asking those really open questions and giving people the freedom to answer in whatever way they see fit. Yes. Yeah.

You know, I'm hearing the law firm owners and partners listening to this thinking, oh God, that sounds like I'm letting people run a riot. But actually, if it's control you're after, you'll get more control by giving up control and just listening to people, find out what they want and work with them to get what they want. You do that and you become the person in their lives that has them get what they want.

Then you're going to end up with a loyal team. Right? Absolutely. Yeah.

And you know, that's, it might be a slightly different way of thinking about leadership, I guess. Yeah. It's equally valid if that's what motivates people and gets the best out of people.

Yeah. Brilliant. I know me and you, we're cut from similar cloth, you know, we've been through, you know, mental breakdowns, hard times, and we've conquered all those to get to where we are now.

We had a great conversation about all of that a while ago. And do you find that now there is a lot more awareness and understanding around levels of stress and management of stress across law firms? Yeah, I think so. I mean, one thing that's been brilliant to see in the last few years is a real opening up of discussions around wellbeing and mental health.

And certainly, you know, my recollection from times when I struggled, when I was in practice, it was really hard to have those conversations. Yeah. Yeah.

Really difficult to open up about things for a lot of reasons. And I still don't think it's easy. You know, the job isn't completely done by a long way, but those discussions are much more open these days.

And I think we're much more aware of the things that will trigger burnout, stress, anxiety, those things that we're now starting to talk about an awful lot more, you know, as a society, but also as a profession as well. And for me, that can only ever be positive. Yeah.

Yeah. Fantastic. And of course, purely from a selfish business point of view, not even, you know, putting aside people's wellbeing and mental health and all of that, simply creating an environment where people can actually speak their mind and tell you what their challenges are is vital to know what you need to be focusing on in your business to improve it.

Right. Yeah, absolutely. You know, and I think that's one of the benefits in a way that we now have much more open conversations about mental health is that it's open conversations up around other things as well.

Yeah. It's easier, I think, to communicate on a lot of those more difficult issues. And it's creating the opportunities for people to have those conversations, which is where a lot of the mental health and wellbeing initiatives in firms that I see that is at the heart of it is the ability to help people have difficult conversations with each other and ask and answer in an authentic way how they're doing and get help if they need it.

So I think it has helped to open up those conversations on a lot of different levels. Yeah. Yeah.

Brilliant. Really good. I mean, you know, the legal industry, it's known for its, how could we say, lack of communication skills, you know, people losing their temper with each other, you know, heads of department losing it with associates, partners, owners losing it with heads of department, you know, getting angry, you know, and all of this.

And it's great to hear that people are starting to understand that, look, if you want a successful firm, then you've just got to start treating people nicely and kindly and work with them in a collaborative manner. And if you do that, you're going to go so much further than if you tried to force, cajole, manipulate people, right? Absolutely. And, you know, that works on so many levels, you know, a workforce and people in your firm that are struggling with their mental health, um, you know, they're never going to perform at their best.

You know, and I, one of the things I remember very starkly from my own experience was that when I was really struggling with anxiety and depression, um, my, my attention to detail slipped. Yeah. I remember feeling that.

And I, I, I became very conscious that my attention to detail wasn't where it needed to be. And as a, it was really, really hard to deal with because attention to detail is such a fundamental skill. And you need that to make sure that you're, you know, you're advising your clients in the best way possible.

And, you know, I remember feeling very vulnerable because of that. So, you know, if you can, if you can help people deal with those situations, you're going to be in a much better place from lots of different points of view. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. I certainly can reflect on times when I've experienced intense stress, how you lose your ability, as you say, to focus on those details. And especially as a lawyer working on a case, it's the details is everything because the whole case is millions of details all strung along together, isn't it? Yeah, totally.

Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly it. You know, I can remember negotiating contracts and being worried that I'd miss something really important.

And that's, that's, that's not, that's quite a frightening place to be when you've got a client who's relying on your advice. It's not, it's certainly not where you want to be. Yeah.

So, so yeah, those detail points are, you know, that's so important. And, and it's not to say that stress is always a bad thing. You know, I think, you know, sometimes some stress is really helpful in helping you achieve your, your goals and, and from a motivating point of view and putting yourself in a position where you can perform at your best, but it's when it tips over.

Yeah. When it tips over and becomes really, you know, much more, more difficult to deal with and at times destructive, that, that's when, when the problems come. That's it.

Yeah. And that, and then that's when you start to get associates and team members start to let down your clients, miss deadlines, make mistakes and all sorts. So really the message is here to any law firm owner or partner, make sure that you're speaking kindly and compassionate to everyone.

And in a way that leaves them feeling they really can speak their mind and be open with you with everything they're dealing with so that you can then genuinely support them. Because if, if you haven't created that space and you get angry with them or you snap quickly at them, they're not going to really tell you what they're dealing with. And then you're just, you're in the dark with what's really going on across a law firm.

Right? Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, as, as, as partners, as leaders, you will, you know, most of us will have experienced some sort of stressful times, difficult times in our career, times when we've felt under a lot of pressure. And there's huge power in sharing those examples with people.

Yeah. The, the role of leaders to model the behaviors that they're looking for and model the types of conversations that can happen can, can really help for them to develop the right culture around that. It's difficult to be vulnerable, particularly when people are looking at you to lead and manage effectively, but that vulnerability can, can, you know, really empower other people to share and speak out if they're struggling.

And, you know, there's a number of, you know, quite practical ways you can do that. So having wellbeing and mental health as a, as a, almost an agenda item for every one-to-one conversation that's around personal development or appraisal, having it in those meetings is just something that you talk about, can, can help people. Not everyone will want to talk about it, but it gives people space.

And, you know, similarly, I'm going back to my learning and development background, I think training is a fundamental part of it, really good interactive training where people get to share their experiences and you create that environment. And again, that can be really, really helpful in nurturing those conversations really, and helping to create that culture where people can be really open. Yeah.

Brilliant. Fantastic. I've, I've really enjoyed speaking to you and I know I could keep talking to you forever.

What links am I going to include under here? Oh yes. I'm including a link to your Lawnette podcast there. That's going to be there as well.

And yeah, that's great. Yeah. And I'll also, I'll also put a link to your LinkedIn profile as well.

So people can find you there. Fantastic. Yeah.

Great. Well, Pete, thanks so much. It's been great to speak to you again.

I look forward to staying in touch and meeting again when the time is right. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for listening to the Law Firm Owners podcast with me, your host, Dan Warburton.

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