Page 24 - Law Society of Hong Kong MPMC Manual v8 - With checklists (1 March 2018)

Practice Management Course | Unit 3
Talent Management

• Using facts and logic, being passionate, and not getting personal.
• Fighting the battles that you really care about winning rather than fighting
everything.
• Combatting any perceptions of being negative by providing positive support
for other people’s ideas.
• Asking questions – especially if you are opposing someone’s view –
regarding why they think it will work and how they will combat certain
problems.

Expanding leadership and collaboration

The value and importance of leadership
11. There are many styles of leadership and when leading a team, it is often the case of
one style does not fit all. Why? You will have multiple members and situations in
your team and across the practice that require different styles. You need to know
and work with your team members to find the balance and then adapt your styles
to the audience and situation.

12. There are many qualities, attributes and behaviours that define great leaders and
demonstrate positive leadership such as vision, innovation, communication, energy,
trust, respect, integrity, etc.

13. A vital leadership quality, attribute and behaviour not in that list is collaboration.
While you may not be a team leader at this point in your career, leadership can be
demonstrated in the role that you perform and in any team that you work in.

The value and importance of collaboration
14. Collaboration is a crucial aspect of teamwork. Effective collaboration entails a
variety of joint activities, including:

• Generating solutions to problems together.
• Testing their ideas with each other and justifying choices - which leads to
clarity of thought.
• Locating experience and skills within the team.
• Sharing workload and delegating.
• Managing clients together.
• Sharing and orchestrating information for future use and benefit (i.e.,
knowledge management).

15. Whether your law practice has rigid, formal team structures, or whether teams in
your workplace are fluid and informal, effective and real collaboration is vital for
successful professional practice.

Why real collaboration is difficult and how to improve collaboration
16. We are going to analyse factors particular to law practices, including the nature of
legal work and the nature of people and their roles that make collaboration difficult.

Personality There are certain personality traits and cognitive habits that deter us
from engaging in real collaboration.
(1) Introverted personalities: Contribution from introverted

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