How Coaching Can Transform Your Legal Career

By: Francesco R. Barbera, Esq.

One of the big challenges lawyers face in building fulfilling careers is the tendency to over-analyze decisions. It’s actually ironic: the traits that make us skilled advocates – the ability to anticipate risks, imagine worst-case scenarios, and scrutinize problems to the minutest detail – are often exactly what holds us back when it comes time to take decisive actions to advance our careers. Though the need for change may be clear (even to ourselves), we rationalize ourselves out of action, citing the risks, potential downsides, and the need for more research and planning.

Consider whether you are experiencing the following in your career:

• You regularly feel drained or depleted at the end of your work day.
• You rarely derive basic enjoyment or pleasure from your work.
• You do not have a clear vision of your professional future or the vision you do have does not excite or inspire you.
• You lack a sense of mission or purpose in your career.
• You are not taking proactive steps to reach clear professional goals.
• You rationalize your situation with expressions such as, There’s a reason they call it work.
• You long for more excitement, diversity or creativity in your career.
• You envy others who are fulfilled or energized by their work.
• You long to make a more meaningful contribution.

As a dedicated, hard-working professional, there is no reason to accept these kinds of circumstances in your career. I am not saying perfection is possible or that careers do not involve compromises and trade-offs. What I am saying, however, is that we all owe it to ourselves to take our best shot at creating a career that is fundamentally fulfilling, on purpose and in integrity with our values and apirations.

In my practice, I sometimes encounter lawyers who are lackluster or ambivalent about their work. When I ask why they don’t take steps to change, they often cite a set of limiting beliefs about what is possible or practical – as if it is not possible to pursue genuine career satisfaction in a careful, thoughtful and responsible manner.

Our Career Renewal Coaching Program helps attorneys escape this bind and start taking concrete, sensible actions to enhance their careers. Maybe that means improving your professional relationships, or expanding your professional network, or exploring new opportunities, or broadening your involvement in non-legal projects. Every career and situation is unique. Almost always, thought, my experience is that taking action can get lawyers re-committed and re-energized by their careers.

Coaching is a simple and effective tool for implementing these kinds of career changes for a few simple but important reasons.

• Insight. Just as we need a mirror to see our physical appearance, a good coach will help you to clarify your own strengths, values and aspirations more than you ever could by yourself. This kind of insight and self-awareness is crucial to building a meaningful career.
• Support. Making changes can be hard as we bump up against other peoples’ expectations, practical constraints, and our own fears. An experienced coach will help you navigate this choppy terrain with unwavering guidance.
• Structure. Career changes typically require a consistent investment of time and energy. Yet in a demanding legal practice, it’s easy to let months and even years go by without thinking about, let alone investing time in, our longer-term future. Coach provides essential structure to a process that demands consistent action and attention.
• Accountability. It’s a simple fact of human nature: when we are accountable to another person, we tend to perform. A coaching relationship will support you in meeting your own goals on your own timetable.

Our Career Renewal Coaching Program can help you create the career you want. Contact us today to learn more.