Hope you had a great holiday…..now back to school for the kids and down to a long haul until Thanksgiving for the rest of us.
Have you thought about Kindness? I would encourage you to not only think about it but start integrating it into your “lawyer life”.
Mentoring is a very good way to show kindness to a lawyer who may be having trouble getting started or who is just in trouble. Mentoring is different from Coaching. I always ask my clients to look for a mentor for their careers. These are people who understand the area of law that is practiced and can give direct advise about how to handle clients, answer questions about the law and also give some hints about how to increase business and/or marketing.
Coaches, on the other hand, consistently work directly with the client to strategically plan their career and to coach all areas including business development, marketing, life balance, burn out and any other challenges that the attorney is facing. Mentors are there for their understanding of the area of law practiced and for insight into the legal community where they practice.
Mentors are volunteering their time and energy to help a colleague. What greater kindness can there be than to help a person grow without direct payment or even a lot of glory!
What about gossip? That’s not kindness. Realistic criticism is very different from gossip. Yes, gossip can feel like fun when you are bonding with the other gossipers but it can also produce harm and faction off relationships. Having mindfulness about gossip and mean criticism for a whole week might be a good goal?
There must be hundred of ways to show kindness when we make that a priority. Let’s just find them and start doing them in our lives.