News: Performance Management
'Strong leadership' skills weather economic storm for lawyers
10 September 2008
Few legal professionals could fail to benefit from both presentation skills training and development of their leadership skills, a leading industry publication claims.
Improvement of both sets of skills would help nurture client relations and enable individuals to make more contacts, according to The Lawyer.
"The firms that do better during an economic crunch are those with strong leadership," it observes.
It continues: "This tends to galvanise legal teams into being productive and client-positive, rather than being 'busy fools'."
Motivation is identified as a frequent casualty of financial downturns, with regular learning and development opportunities cited as drivers for positive, "business-building" initiatives.
When the economic turnaround arrives, the publication concludes, investment in training and development, client relationship management and networking - including via telephone skills - will have cemented a team's reputation as "trusted experts".
The magazine's advice follows a survey from accountancy specialist Hays Senior Finance, which underlined that training in leadership skills rates highest on managers' lists of personal development plans for their employees.
