In-House Counsel

The Road Not Taken: When I Think About You, I Manage Myself

If you don’t have a good manager, what can you do to make sure you and your career aren’t damaged by a bad manager?

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The past two weeks in this column, I’ve discussed management skills and their presence (or lack thereof) in a legal workplace. Management skills don’t bill hours and aren’t flashy, but they are necessary for a stable work environment that encourages the professional growth of its personnel.

A good manager is a thing of beauty and can make a big difference in a person’s career. A bad manager can be demoralizing, destructive, lead to unnecessary stress, and can paralyze your career. Lawyers tend to be, at best, benignly inept managers, and, at worst, intentionally destructive. If you don’t have a good manager, what can you do to make sure you and your career aren’t damaged by a bad manager?

You manage yourself. Yes, you play the game and go through the motions of whatever your actual manager asks of you, but you have to take your career off autopilot and play a more active role in your own development and evaluation. Even for those with a good manager, establishing the habits of managing yourself can give you more control over your career.

What does a good manager do for a report? This will vary from person to person, but generally a good manager will provide you with the resources and support necessary for you to perform your daily job duties well, will evaluate your current skills for what you do well and where you can improve, and will then support you in improving your skills. If you have specific career goals that support your organization’s goals, your manager will help you reach those goals (in my opinion, great managers will help you with these things regardless of whether your goals are 100% in line with the organization’s goals).

You may not be able to provide yourself with actual resources, but you can take on the other management activities if your own manager isn’t doing them. Let’s examine these issues individually:

  1. Evaluate Current Skills

Get your job description. You don’t have a job description? Write one for yourself. Next, keep track of what you do for about a month. If you track your time, this should be easy. When you have the data, take a look at what you actually do versus what your job description states. If there is anything that stands out that you do that isn’t included in your job description, put that in your pocket for review time.

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Next, make a list. You can do this however you like, but the easiest way is to put two columns on a sheet of paper and you title one “exceeds expectations” and the other “needs work.” From here, take the activities from your job description and put them in one of the columns. Please note, this exercise is not to evaluate your competency, but whether you feel you can improve in these areas. If you have nothing in “needs work” you are probably very bored at your job. Find something to add to “needs work.”

  1. Create Goals

If you completed the activity above, you’ve got a list of subject areas to start working on your goals. Make your goals specific and measurable. Take a look at S.M.A.R.T. business goals for guidance.  

If you have career desires that consist of working elsewhere or doing something else, add at least one goal that gets you closer to that desire. Look at some job descriptions for what you want to do and create a goal based on that information. If you aren’t happy where you’re at, bloom where you are planted, but start pollinating elsewhere.

Then, work on your goals for a defined timeline (6 months or a year).

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  1. Goal-Evaluation

At the end of the deadline you gave yourself, look at how you did on your goals. Did you meet them? If not, why not? Was it you, or was there an uncontrollable obstacle in your way? Was the goal specific enough? Attainable?

Take this information and figure out where to move next. Then do it again. Keep moving yourself forward. Be your own captain. Manage yourself to create the career and skillset you want.

Celeste Harrison Forst has practiced in small and mid-sized firms and is now in-house at a large manufacturing and technology company where she receives daily hugs from her colleagues. You can reach Celeste directly at C.harrisonforst@gmail.com.

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