The 360 Review That Changed How We Develop Lawyers for Leadership #214

Law firm leadership development is one of the toughest constraints to overcome for growth. Here's the 360 review system we use at Sterling Lawyers.

Jeff Kerlin coaches our entire leadership team at Sterling, so we'll walk you through the exact coaching framework that built our 27-attorney team.

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📄 CHAPTERS

0:00 - Law Firm Leadership Development: The Growth Constraint 

1:09 - Inquiry-Based Coaching: Questions Over Answers 

3:58 - How We Start Every Coaching Relationship 

4:52 - The 360 Review System That Actually Works 

5:15 - Avoiding Toxic Defensiveness in 360 Reviews 

6:00 - Superior, Peers, Direct Reports: Getting Honest Feedback 

8:25 - Writing Development Plans Attorneys Actually Follow 

11:42 - Key Leadership Competencies for Family Law Attorneys 

18:35 - Stress Management and Resilience in Family Law 

20:10 - What a Good Coach Costs ($1,500-$5,000/Month) 

20:49 - Coach vs. Consultant: The Real Difference 

22:04 - "They'll Leave After Training" - John Maxwell's Answer 

22:50 - Success Story: Turning Weakness Into Superpower 

24:36 - Your Team Needs You to Support Them

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Tell us in the comments if you liked this episode and what other kinds of episodes you would like to see.

Transcript

0:00

we have to let our team fail sometimes. Even if we could see the slow train wreck coming they need to experience that. Hopefully it's not something like certainly major within the firm and you could stop that. But if it's something that is manageable, then allow them that experience because that just makes them stronger to go through that. Well, hello and welcome to the Sterling family Law Show. We have a special guest today. Jeff Kerlin is joining us from Sterling Lawyers, our law firm, and he's going to talk about developing lawyers. You know, that is the number one constraint to growth in a family law firm is developing others, lawyers, leaders around you to to grow. That's the number one constraint more than anything else within the firm. So we're going to talk about doing 360 reviews. How do you do them. What's the mechanics behind them. What questions do you ask. How do you start a coaching relationship. How do you manage the coaching relationship. And we're going to talk about how to go out and find a good coach. Like what to look for. What's that avatar look like, not only for you as the leader of the law firm, but also for your team. And it's a great episode on eliminating, or at least mitigating the number one constraint and growing a family law firm. So welcome, Jeff. Oh, I love it. Well, you guys have been a joy to work with. Thanks for having me here today. My methodology, it could change, maybe based on the individuals, but I'm primarily an inquiry based coach. I ask questions, I try to get the person I'm coaching with just to be more thoughtful about, where they're at. And do they really understand where they're at relative to where they want to go? And do they even understand where they want to go? Do they have real Smart goals related to their career goals? And what have you? And. It's funny, a lot of people don't. They're just heads down working super hard. And these are, you know, it could be a senior, an attorney or a, person that owns their own, company that they're just working hard. They're not they're not really spending much time, getting better, and thus they're not really helping other people get better either. And they just all I know was to keep my head down and just keep us in it. And as a coach, I like to come alongside them and just kind of get them to have a better perspective and, provide them clarity. So that's the main thing. it. Hughes, you were a coach of Kerlin before you hired curling at the law firm. Is that correct? Yeah. So Jeff and I got to meet each other through, our church basically is through the. There was the major connection there. And then we met for coffee later on, he ended up joining a men's Bible group I'm part of, and I got to know him there. And then I asked Jeff to coach me. And so, Jeff, you coached me, what, a year or so ish before you ended up joining our firm? Okay. Yeah. And I can I can go back and share reflectively kind of what happened as a coach, each of you, Jeff, I mean, it was all these questions, you didn't give me you didn't come in there with a slate of answers, ready to to drop them on me. It was what do you think about that? And why would you do that? A lot of why questions. Tell me more. That's one of your favorite lines. Tell me more or what else? That's another one of your most popular lines. And so I've seen you do that with me. And then now you've, you're doing that with our entire leadership team at the firm. And also, you're now coaching Tyler for interest of full disclosure to our audience here. So you have a lot to share with us on, on the practicality of going about doing that. So I, I have a couple questions relative to whenever you start a relationship with one of our attorneys. As you know, that's our biggest constraint to growth is having leadership skills within our attorneys. So we can we can go out and find more leaders that are not attorneys, but a an attorney, a family law attorney who is also possessing leadership skills as a rare individual, indeed. So how do you do your first analysis of where they're at? So you know where to jump in with them. start with questions. I ask them where they're at to start with, and I will have already done homework if they're an attorney. And, you know, I can look up their collections and their net promoter score and, and all sorts of we have, you know, metrics on just about everything. But I will ask them, first and foremost, I want to know, do they know where they're at? Do they have good clarity on that? And start from there. Like, how are you doing today? Where do you want to get better at? Where do you think you have gaps? And people are surprisingly really honest. Most of us, especially if you sit in a comfortable coaching environment. I'm here as your advocate. I'm here to help you. I'm not here to, you know, punish you or get on you about anything. If you're desirous of of a better version of yourself, I'd love to come alongside you and help that along. And usually people respond really well to that. One of the tools I seen you use quite a bit is the 360 review. And you did that with me when we first started, and then you've done that with a lot of our teammates, some you've coached from, you haven't really coached with, and you're doing that now for yourself. Actually, it's coincidentally on for you. So how do you go about doing that without turning that into a toxic, defensive sort of, experience? Yeah. First of all, we need we try to promote the fact that A36 review is a positive thing. It's not a punitive thing. It's not something that if you if you know it's pass fail. If you fail this, you're out of here. You know, it's it's this person is either desirous of, perspective like I'm myself I'm trying to lead by example or, they're in leadership and they've just never really gotten that good feedback. And what comes out of a 360 review is we we presented as a very positive thing. And it ultimately we get the feedback from all the respondents. We call them stakeholders. It would be their superior, their peers, and then the direct reports, and they get that in, in an honest way. And then I work with the individual too. They've read it, I've read it, I have them come up with what are some themes you'll have one off, things that we kind of discard those, but if you see three different people said the same thing, okay, that's a theme. And then ultimately they get to decide, what do you want to work on, you know, what do you think would is best for you to apply and work on? And it's not just things that, you know, I wish they would stop doing this. It's also I love it when Jeff Hughes does this and you hear that three times, like, okay, that's a superpower here. So you need to lean into that. That's one of your strengths. You need to use that. People never want you to stop doing that. In fact can you double down on that. So it's positive really positive things as well. You're the actual questions do you. There's five questions that you ask the folks giving feedback. Right. Do you recall what those are I'm going to wing it. I don't have it in front of me. One is what is what is something like? I'll use you, Jeff, that Jeff is really good at. What is what is an environment that brings out the best in Jeff? What is something that Jeff should start doing? So the implication is you're you're not currently doing it. And what is something Jeff should stop doing? Was that five? I, I think though that the last one is what should I keep doing. Keep doing that. We start. Why do you start doing stop doing and keep doing. Correct. And so the respondents are answering these questions. They're giving them to someone on the team to compile. Maybe you or someone in our team. Right. Okay. And then you'll go through those, kind of organize them and give them to the subject Yeah. In an anonymous way. Well you know if someone says hey I was working with Jeff on this and I really loved it when he did this. Well we'll maybe take words out to we don't want Jeff to know who said that. Whether it's positive or negative we try to keep it really, truly, anonymous. Do you feel like the respondents that are responding to that are do they feel safe, like they're not somehow going to be identified as the one giving the negative feedback? I've had that over the years. How do you work around that? assured them that. And what I will do is when they when they give me a response, I'll do my best to categorically write it down as they spoke. It. I will read it back to them so they'll know exactly what the person is going through. 360 will see, and they have an opportunity to tweak words if they want so that they're comfortable knowing, yeah, that it won't give away. Who gave this response. In creating that safety, and I think curling, you pointed out your job is simply to uncover, right. To help your leaders understand where their opportunities to grow, but also see the forest for the trees amongst. Jeff and I, when I started law school, they had a well, to me it was. No, there was the Socratic method. They didn't really tell you what to think. They just ask you questions. I thought it was the most ridiculous thing on the planet. Now, obviously, years later, and I see you're doing the same thing to me as my professor in crim Law did, which about annoyed me to death. I couldn't believe it, but. At the end of the day, I believe most of us subconsciously have the answers. We just need some time and space and maybe coaching to come up with our own truths that we already know are true about ourselves. And what do we really want? And what are we going to lean into? You don't want to when absolutely necessary. Yeah. Sometimes we have to come alongside it and tell somebody like, this is what you need to be doing. But in most cases they they know. And if they come up with the answer themselves and you just guide them to make changes, if necessary to it, that's all the better, because it's just their idea. That's really having a champion in your corner that can, encourage you along the path of growth right? Yeah. Yep. Family law is unlike other practice areas. Your callers are not shopping for a service. They're looking for someone who makes them feel safe enough to share. The worst thing happening in their life. The firm that hears them first wins every time. And that's what changed everything at Sterling. We eventually built that system into four actionable steps on this free training. Mary Sankey, who leads our sales team, is going to break down the entire four step sales system. She is sterling sales manager. She's the one who runs it every single day. So go ahead and register below for the sales secrets of an $18 million family law firm. I'll see you there. So just to get into the weeds a little bit, for our listeners, what is what is the actual cadence look like? How often you meeting with, you know, the, the people you coach and what's involved there? In case our listeners want to try this out at their firms. Yeah. So within the firm, it it depends on the role. Like our managing partners I meet with once, specifically with each one once every other week. But I meet with them a lot in between. With our CFO, I meet every day with our head of HR. I meet every other day. Or head of sales every other day. So the cadence will tweak a little bit how we go about it. But it's going over metrics like how are the metrics doing? And then we keep notes, we use a shared Google document. So we always have the previous meetings listed below that we can reference and bring things to the top, maybe that we never we never finalize. We want to keep those, visible and front and center. And then I'll start off with just how's it going? And even if someone says things are going great, this week was especially good. Awesome. Tell me why. Like Jeff said, unpack that for me. And just I like to learn more about them, like, okay, what makes a good week for that person? And conversely, what makes a bad week for that person? And inevitably most of our issues come along, come around how we relate to other people. It could be a client like, I'm really struggling with this client just I don't know, they're they're complaining all the time, what have you. They don't feel like I've done anything. Okay, well, what are you doing about it? You know, what are they just and and what they're saying, help them with behaviors that could maybe change that client's point of view. It could be a coworker. It could be, someone outside of this work that has nothing to do with this and just help them deal with the behaviors that, are appropriate for that. And what are they? And again, give them perspective, help them unpack it. And I find themes with people that maybe some things are avoiding, some things that are afraid of and what might happen if we if you weren't afraid of that, what would you do differently? That's always an interesting question. To some degree, we're all maybe held back by fears of trepidations that we have about certain things. Definitely. So if I if I wanted to become a coach, it feels like the actual coaching session is is very much question answer. Get to know where the opportunities are. But it also feels like there's an element of preparation, before and after to, tabulate the notes, understand the themes. Yeah. And and there's certainly accountability. If if Jeff, if I was coaching Jeff in two weeks ago, he said he was going to do something. I'm going to if he hasn't told me yet that he's done it, I'm going to follow up. Hey, how have that conversation ever had it? How did that go about that you were going to have? Did you have it? Hopefully they're going to say, yeah, I had it and I forgot to tell you about it, but it went really good or what have you. So there's a lot of accountability. Related. You also do goal setting with people with some of our attorneys. Maybe they want to get their net promoter score up. Okay, okay. What are you doing about that? In a lot of times they have no clue. And attorneys like a lot of, a high caliber people, they're little hesitant to raise their hand and ask for help. They see maybe others doing really good at something, but they're it just seems awkward to, I don't know, to be vulnerable and say, hey, could you help me with that? So they just need a little encouragement. And sometimes it's like attorney things I don't know the answers to. I can help with a lot of people issues, but like, maybe, we have an attorney somewhere else in the firm. That would be. They would just love to come alongside someone who's trying to get better at client experience. And it would actually be a joy for them. And to facilitate putting that introduction together is sometimes just part of a process. Jeff, how would it. Yeah. Like a lot of our listeners are leading law firms, family law firms. How would they go about finding a coach for themselves? So walk us through what to look for. What? What to avoid. And maybe it's not just for them. Like someone like me. Who? I'm not a good coach. I know I'm not a good coach, but yet I want my team to develop. I need to go outside to find that if I don't have a Jeff Kerlin in house. So help our listeners understand how to look for, identify and select the right coach. And this would be Jeff, like a business owner, like know, like a law firm owner for that, for that owner for herself, himself or whatever, and then for the team because we want to develop our team to. Yeah. Well I would look for someone who's done coaching before and, and has probably, been in leadership positions. I'm a big fan of being in leadership positions, not just somebody who got out of school. They they got certified in coaching and now they're coaching. I think there's benefit to the person, but I think someone who's actually been in leadership, and has can give you real life examples on how they've handled the things that you're inevitably dealing with. So that rules our 22 year old life coaches. Right. Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of funny. But exactly. And there's a lot of them out there. And would they add value? Certainly. But someone with real life experience, real business experience, real leadership experience, it comes down to how we relate to people. Are we are we providing clarity? We're providing motivation, accountability, vision. All those things that we all know we need to be doing. Someone who's already done that and they know that it's not as simple as just telling people something once, you know, we got to tell them over and over and over before they really hear us, that sort of thing. And I would I would articulate my goals to a prospective coach, like, this is what I want to accomplish. Does a coach truly have experience having done that? Can they articulate that? And then I would probably talk to one of the references, at least 1 or 2 of them. The only thing I would add is, that I've had the pleasure of coaching with you both. And what you both do that I really appreciate as a mentee is that it's never prescriptive. It's never like, you must do this. It's always been based on when I encountered that situation. Here's how I handled it. Or here's how the outcome happened. That's been very empowering for me to know that, okay, I, I can make this decision, but I'm going to leverage the experience that you've had to make it more informed. Decision. Yeah. Tyler I think that underscores a real important point that we have to let our team fail sometimes. Even if we could see the slow train wreck coming they need to experience that. Hopefully it's not something like certainly major within the firm and you could stop that. But if it's something that you know is manageable, then allow them that experience because that just makes them stronger to go through that. Jeff, you're not a lawyer yet. You're coaching a lot of really high performing lawyers. You're able to connect and get through to them in a really kind of a special way. How do you do that with non-lawyers and address the concern that so many lawyers have, like, they need another lawyer to coach them? there's still things that are common. You know, lawyers still want to grow professionally, growing their skills. I can still, you know, prompt them and to get out there, you know, grow professionally. Are you going to seal things? Are you going out? Are you networking? Are you doing things that are going to get you referrals? You know, that's all part of your professional growth? Client experience, empathy, things like that. This just comes down to how we treat people. And a lot of that's not intuitive. Unfortunately, it's it's not taught in schools. But how you make people feel is everything you know, they could care less what you say, how they deal with stress management and resilience, especially in family law. It's just it's just constant. And how do they put that in a compartment and go home and feel good about what they've done and come back the next day ready to do it again? You know, it's just something of it's just having someone to talk to about that and someone if it's your boss or your coach or whatever, to go. Yeah, I can see that. That's really tough. Yeah. But you're making a difference. And look at, look at and celebrate those differences that they've made in people's lives. Accountability and performance. Most people want to get better. And they, you know, we look back, those of us who have been blessed with a coach in, in, in athletics or what have you, one that pushes us, one that sees what we're really good at and maybe what we're not good at and helps us focus on the right things and being the best version of ourselves. And you know that, coach, when you come off the field, you want to see and hear them say, great job. You know, like just lights you up. Our our employees are no different. Catch them doing something right, say great job. And you just killed it yesterday. That was awesome. I like to still hear that. So, usually I like to hear from my wife. So. But, yeah, in, in team collaboration, alignment with the firm's mission and values. We, we have, you know, we want to empower family law clients, but we also want to we want to change our family law as done. That's our mission. You know, our attorneys, you know, family law is difficult, but they can resonate with that. Like we want to we want to make a difference in the world for all this is done. That really binds a whole team together. And that's something that you can do in a one on one coaching relationship. Do you have a sense for what a what the cost is range. What are the ranges for a good coach that could support some of these law firms. What they're, they're going to Probably between 1500, on the low end a month. That could even be a little bit less of it. Maybe this is just for an attorney. Coaching, to a full blown business coach could run up to $5,000 a month. A good coach is going to pay for themselves pretty quickly. So, and again, they should have references that have to have folks that could articulate that. I've, I've heard lawyers say they want a consultant and not a coach. Do you? What's the distinction there in your mind? What have you seen? Yeah. I don't know that I've heard that, but I guess I think I understand maybe a consultant and something that, consultant just seems a little more passive to me. They're going to answer questions. They're going to be around, maybe provide some real world examples, but they're not really in it. Or to me, a coach is more intimate. A coach wants to really get to know the whole person. When I coach, I'm not just interested in coaching. Just your professional aspect, you know, I'm just interested. Like Tyler. I want to make sure Tyler's got a great marriage. He's he's he's spending plenty of time with his family. What other goals he may have fitness goals. They're all tied together. We only we have a minute amount of time. So just coaching on just one thing doesn't make sense to me. I think the whole thing should be considered. And Tyler needs to know I care about him from coaching him. He needs. No, I mean, his corner. I'm a safe place. I'm his advocate. I've got his back. To me, that's a little more personal and intimate than a consultant. Yeah I know a lot of our lawyers that are listening are probably thinking to some extent, boy, if I spend 1500 a month to train this individual they're just going to leave. And I remember John Maxwell years ago said something that has stuck with me to this day. I remember this clear as a bell. What's worse than and that you paying a bunch of money to train them and they leave is you don't train them and they stay. So that's the first thing. Second thing is usually when that person leaves is because they've surpassed the leader. So as leaders, it's incumbent upon us to be constantly growing so we can pass that on to our team. And in some sense, educationally growth wise, staying ahead of our team is important, at least in the key areas. Good. well, some service, we kind of end up here. I'd love to hear, you know, other than me, of course, a success story. For your past. Is there one, you know, individual that you can can think about that, that really, you know, was able to leverage, your relationship and catapult their career? Yeah. There's been, there's been times why I do it. Honestly, it's just so much fun. We, we have a managing partner who is white, is just beloved by everyone. She's the avatar for every young attorney that comes in here. But she's struggled with giving people the hard truth. She was sometimes put it in a nice, you know, pretty package and deliver. And it really was never really delivered. And helping her get to a point where she could really tell people, honestly, some things that maybe they didn't want to hear or she thought they didn't want to hear. It's become a superpower of hers. She's someone who, you know, the old adage that you can tell someone to go to hockey sticks and they they look forward to the ride. That's her. Now. She's she's, she's just great at it. And it's just added to her being already a really well-rounded, manager. And she's, she's leaned into it quite a bit and is really good at it, and to the point where that people, people, when she speaks, the room gets quiet because people want to hear what she has to say. And she didn't used to have such a voice. So You know, little encouragement along the Yeah. I didn't wave any magic wand. I don't think I did much at all other than pointed out to her and just advocate for her, and she did all the rest. That's so cool. And that's like the power of everything we've talked about today. You know, if you're listening to this and you think, oh, I'm I'm not a good coach or I can't do that. Your team needs you. Your team needs you to support them. They didn't know that they had that, you have their back, and, it's going to be fun watching them grow. Good stuff. Guys. Really appreciate your time. Excited for the next one. 呜呜呜呜呜呜呜呜