Professional Services Accounting ARTICLE -
Why Emotional Intelligence is Just as Important as Legal Skills and Experience
Target Audience: Accounting Consulting Firm News and Updates Interest, Law Firm Professionals, Lawyers, Law Firm Associates, Human Resources, Hiring Managers, Professional Growth Interest, Job Satisfaction Interest, Emotional Intelligence Seekers
Law firms generally look at lawyers’ academic performance, experience and technical skills when assessing whether they’re viable candidates for the firm. But emotional intelligence — a person’s social and emotional functioning or “soft skills” — is another gauge you can use to measure the potential future success of lawyers you’re thinking about hiring. You can also use it to help identify future firm leaders.
Fortunately, people don’t have to be born with emotional intelligence; with proper training they can develop it. By keeping the tenets of emotional intelligence forefront, you can enhance your lawyers’ job satisfaction and run your office more smoothly.
What Is It?
Leading researchers on the subject Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer define emotional intelligence as “the subset of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.” They identify these four factors of emotional intelligence, also known as emotional competencies:
Self-awareness,
Self-management,
Social awareness, and
Social skills.
These competencies are believed to account for two-thirds of the distinctive characteristics of top performers, according to researcher and author Daniel Goleman. Technical skills and cognitive abilities are responsible for the remaining one-third of high performance.
How is It Useful for Lawyers?
The public perception is that the legal profession has no use for feelings and emotions. But the practice of law often can be adversarial, requiring lawyers to act as emotional buffers to clients in emotionally charged situations such as divorce or child custody cases. Lawyers also must be calm during high-level negotiations or when managing complex financial matters for a client.
Emotional intelligence can enhance intraoffice and client relationships in a number of ways. Lawyers with self-awareness are better able to detect their stress cues and effectively manage them. Those with social awareness are able to recognize when others are emotionally uneasy — such as a nervous client, an emotionally charged colleague or a difficult judge — and are better equipped to respond.
Overall, when lawyers are able to manage their emotions and assess and respond to the emotions of those around them, they’re less susceptible to becoming drained and are better able to perform. This helps increase their confidence and feelings of achievement as well as productivity — which, ultimately, affects your firm’s bottom line.
In addition, emotionally intelligent lawyers are better managers. Increased empathy and social skills enable partners to understand and handle varying viewpoints, and motivate others. The ability to create and sustain a positive environment increases employee performance, improves retention and reduces group conflict.
How Do You Teach It?
If you’d like to enhance these skills in your lawyers, consider the various assessments available. Goleman’s “Emotional Competence Inventory” measures a number of variables, such as initiative and organizational awareness, using composite ratings by a specific group in a particular environment. An abilities-based assessment, the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT), uses a variety of tasks to measure a person’s capacity for reasoning with emotional information.
If you’re looking for a simpler method, discuss this subject during informal meetings or at your annual retreat. Ask your lawyers to assess their awareness of their own emotions and those of others as well as their ability to articulate and address emotions successfully. Also, have them discuss their competencies, such as behavior patterns used to respond to people, events and circumstances. Their environment, including pressures and satisfactions at home and work, is also an important factor.
A Tool You Can Use
Emotional intelligence isn’t a magic bullet that can replace the importance of legal experience and skills. But it is a tool you can use to develop lawyers and other staff members, and groom future leaders for success.
Sidebar: Tough Day?
If you’re having a particularly draining or unproductive day, take a moment to do an emotional intelligence self-check. It will help tune you into how you’re feeling so you can recognize when you’re emotionally stressed and address the situation. Here are some questions to ask yourself:
- How do you feel right now?
- How do you feel when things aren’t done the way you want?
- When a partner, associate or staff member asks you a question or makes a suggestion, how do you react — for example, are you planning a rebuttal instead of listening?
- Are you taking out your stress on others — such as lashing out at your assistant because the copier machine is out of paper or snapping at your spouse because a client meeting didn’t go as planned?
Find out how our expertise in professional services accounting can add value to your business. Email us or call us at 1 (888) 875-9770.
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