A technique from America – Boss Whispering – stops abrasive behaviour by persuading and then helping toxic lawyers to change. This provides a win-win for the individual, their colleagues, the firm’s culture and leadership.
Boss whispering is a structured coaching process widely used in S&P500 and astonishingly has an over 80% success rate in turning round toxic behaviour.
By far the largest asset of any law firm is their people. In a human capital industry, you want to maximise this investment in people by encouraging hard work, innovation and creativity. These thrive where there are high levels of psychological safety and trust. However, toxic behaviour raises fear and undermines psychological safety, damaging the value generation process.
Where toxic lawyers are in leadership positions, they are role models demonstrating what is acceptable behaviour in the firm. The tolerance of their behaviour not only undermines the culture of being an inclusive firm, but also makes leadership look weak and hypocritical.
Toxic behaviour by key individuals exposes firms to regulatory risk by the SRA as well as employment law risk from failing to meet duty of care for employees. Both these risks cause reputational damage.
The 83% success rate of boss whispering comes from making the abrasive lawyer want to change. Crucial to this is pressure from their manager, who is coached to:
- sets limits for behaviour: that complaints and negative perceptions about the individual’s conduct need to stop; and
- sets consequences: that if behaviour doesn’t change there will be disciplinary action.
Abrasive lawyers are clueless about the impact of their behaviour and are highly anxious about their performance. They throw their weight around because they think that others’ performance will affect perceptions of their own performance, which they are highly anxious about. Whilst the anxiety helps drive the toxic behaviour, it can also be used as a tool to motivate them to change.
The boss whisperer acts as a researcher on behalf of the toxic lawyer to find out how their colleagues perceive them. This results in a confidential and anonymised report that outlines the themes of their abrasive behaviour. This report marks the nadir of their working life and is a huge shock (because of their lack of self-awareness). They have no idea how badly they are perceived, and they discover that though a high performer in all other ways, there is now an area of their work life where they are a poor performer. The combination of anxiety about performance and pressure from the manager makes most abrasive lawyers highly motivated to change.
With the toxic lawyer persuaded of the need for change, the boss whisperer then coaches them to diagnose what it is about their behaviour that is causing the negative perceptions and then to develop strategies to meet their business goals without upsetting their colleagues.
Boss whispering provides a huge win for all involved:
- For the abrasive lawyer, they get honest feedback about their conduct and help to change rather than continuing with a huge risk to their future career.
- For their colleagues, they find an improvement on their treatment at work, which encourages them to work hard and stay.
- For the firm, the abrasive lawyer’s valuable legal skills and client relationships are retained whilst the legal, reputational and regulatory risks are eliminated.
- For the firm’s culture, psychological safety is restored, trust increases and retention and discretionary effort all rise.
- And for leadership they gain strength, credibility and trust as being serious about wellbeing.
Can you imagine how much healthier your firm would be if toxic behaviour was tackled promptly?
Stephen Tolfree
Stephen Tolfree is a boss whisperer. He also helps lawyers recover their strength and confidence after workplace conflict using forgiveness. He can be contacted on LinkedIn or via his website.
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