You’ll know by now that law can be a competitive industry and from the very beginning, firms will be looking for qualities which will differentiate you from your peers, including both personal and technical skills. However, undertaking valuable continuing professional development training can help you to stand out from the crowd and develop the necessary skills needed to mould a career with longevity. This is where a Management and Leadership course can help.
Develop your managerial style
Regardless of whether you’re managing a small team or if you’re aspiring to manage the firm, you will need to develop your own individual managerial style. According to Forbes, management across organisations can be uneven – you’ll of course experience truly outstanding managers, just okay ones or at the bottom end of the scale, those who are incompetent who can potentially cause damage to their team or firm. External training can help you to mould your managerial style and ensure your quality of operation based on external experience and knowledge. Yet, also, if this training in this area becomes the norm in your organisation, it can create a more unified management approach and improve the quality of management across the board.
Understand your strengths
Before looking to progress in your career, you must first have a level of self-awareness in order to understand your strengths and weaknesses. Not only can this be beneficial to you as an individual as you continue your development, but it can also improve efficiencies for the firm. Research carried out by the Korn Ferry Institute highlighted that companies will have a higher ROI if they have employees with few personal blind spots. However, developing self-awareness is not an easy feat. According to the Atlantic, sixteen rigorous studies of thousands of people at work have shown that co-workers are best placed to recognise how your personality will affect job performance. Undertaking a management and leadership course can give you the perfect opportunity to gain team feedback and utilise it for ongoing progression and to identify future training needs.
Enhance your personal skills
As well as high levels of technical competence, lawyers also need to have highly-evolved people skills which can prove critical during negotiations, when managing difficult situations or even when operating within a team. Individuals with exceptional personal skills such as communication can prove invaluable to an organisation as this aids positive management and can help boost team morale, which can also directly influence team retention rates, helping to maintain talent in the firm.
Increase productivity
Whether you want to develop skills to manage yourself, manage others or manage the firm, it’s important to remember that good management can increase productivity levels by 10%. So, individuals operating within these roles need a variety of first-hand experience and training in order to help the firm to achieve more efficient results. Statistics from the ONS also show that how a manager is received by their team and how they operate, directly correlates with productivity levels. This is a critical consideration, especially as the UK lags behind in productivity levels, with output per British worker lagging behind every G7 country except Japan. Therefore, training and better managerial self-awareness can have a lasting impact on a team or firm, helping to showcase the benefits of your development.
If you wish to progress in your legal career, a Management and Leadership course can prove pivotal to helping you stand out from the crowd and can be a useful tool to help develop your strengths. After all, management is a skill, and something which requires a mixture of first-hand experience and also external training in order to achieve the best results. Good managers can increase productivity, efficiency and also ensure positive retention rates, so bringing these results to any firm will help you to stand out from the crowd. For more information about boosting your management and leadership skills or our upcoming courses, contact us on 02920 451 000 or email us at infoaltior@barbri.com