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But Wait… There’s More - ILTA’s 3rd Annual Sharon Swartworth Leadership Development Seminar - Part 3, Mentoring and Developing New Leaders

By Joanne Kiley posted 11-06-2015 08:37

  

A Successful Day Mentoring and Developing New Leaders at ILTA’s 3rd Annual Sharon Swartworth Leadership Development Seminar - Part 3

Mentoring Tomorrow’s Leaders Today

The panelists in the “Mentoring Tomorrow’s Leaders Today” session agreed their careers and personal lives benefited from formal and informal mentors, coaches, colleagues, family and friends. The panelists included Chris Johnson, Chief Technology Officer at Technical Innovations, Michele Gossmeyer, Information Management Director - US/APAC at Dentons, Jessica Robinson, Director of eData Practice Support at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, LLP, and Peter Qumsiyeh, Support Analysis & Reporting Coordinator at WilmerHale.

Good mentoring alone does not create leaders. Leadership skills develop when one understands and acts upon the nuggets of wisdom bestowed by many mentors throughout one’s career or as Michele Gossmeyer describes it “distributed mentorship.” Jessica Robinson grew into her leadership role in e-discovery in the early days of the field. She needed to find mentors outside the legal industry. Because she could not find mentors in her exact field, she wanted to become a mentor for others.

Panelists described the importance mentors play in their lives but quickly shifted to identifying potential leaders and mentoring them. If an potential leader struggles with asking someone to be a mentor, the panelists recommended reversing the mentorship. Ask a potential leader a question to start a conversation and become his or her mentor. Chris Johnson noted, mentorship with reciprocation allows space for subordinates to contribute but remain protected. Similarly, Jessica Robinson recommends we “start small and start close” on collaborative projects before moving out to the whole organization. Mentors should coach the mentee throughout the process. To create good opportunities, Robinson suggests we also allow non-leader team members to mentor others. Peter Qumsiyeh advises that emerging leaders look both inside and outside of an organization. Besides mentoring from within WilmerHale, he gains great insight and mentoring through the larger ILTA community. Like Qumsiyeh, Gossmeyer encourages multiple mentors from multiple viewpoints. This helps emerging leaders acquire many perspectives for strategic decisions leaders must make.

After this panel, attendees discussed issues our future leaders will face in small groups. Preserving communication skills and reading people’s unspoken language were common themes in the groups. Just as in the earlier panel, and in later panels, panelist and attendees consistently identified communication as a skill to develop and teach future leaders.

Matt Homann ask the audience if we had ever had a mentor. All hands went up. He then asked how many of us are mentors or are willing to be mentors. All hands went up. ILTA is building a mentor program. Watch for a mentoring e-group and webinars about getting involved or complete this leadership and mentoring poll distributed at the seminar.

Fostering Confidence and Flexibility in Leaders

The “Fostering Confidence and Flexibility in Leaders” session, brought to you by the Women Who Lead included panelists Alison Grounds, Partner and Managing Director of eMerge at Troutman Sanders, Meghan Peck, Marketing Director at Sidley Austin LLP and Gina Buser, Principal and CEO at Traveling Coaches. Women Who Lead is an ILTA affinity group focused on helping women in technology achieve opportunities in leadership positions. Earlier this year the Women Who Lead presented their first Monica Bay STEM Leadership Award to Alison Grounds. To stay abreast of educational programming on leadership and learn of networking events, join the Women Who Lead Community.

After brief introductions Matt Homann of Filament asked the panel, “How do we grow new leaders? And what are the challenges and opportunities?” Some challenges presented by the committee included risk-aversion, patience to reach one’s goals and knowing one-size-fits-all does not apply to leadership. We must step out of our comfort zone to achieve new things. To combat risk-aversion, panelist recommend asking “then what?” while strategizing one’s career path. Determine what happens if all goes wrong and ask how bad it is. If it can be tolerated, act on the plans. The three panelists stressed that becoming a leader takes time and some failures.

Alison Grounds’ path to leading eMerge at Troutman Sanders came from realizing she did not fit the typical associate to partner trajectory. She discovered she liked working in an area many hated, e-discovery. Meghan Peck seconded this one-size-does-not-fit-all perspective. As a leader she looks for growth opportunities for her team fitting their strengths and interests. Peck likened it to her work finding the best business development opportunity for each attorney at her firm based on their strengths in speaking, writing, socializing, etc. Gina Buser emphasized the importance of finding one’s passion. This reminded me of ILTACON 2015 keynote speaker Sir Ken Robinson and his conversation with Randi Mayes, ILTA’s Executive Director. Productivity and happiness increase when we use our strengths for a greater percentage of the day. Alison Grounds, Meghan Peck and Gina Buser found their passions and work to help tomorrow’s leader find their passions. They do this through mentoring, providing insightful feedback and pushing their teams to find success.

More ILTA leadership materials from the seminar, previous blog posts, storyboards and more are available on the Downloads page of the leadership seminar. If you attended the Sharon Swartworth Leadership Development Seminar and want to share what you learned, please use the comments section below or contact me at joanne@iltanet.org and I will include your input in the next post. 



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