Playing to your natural strengths, working in the right positions, and enjoying what you do, are the three key elements of successful lawyers.
After interviewing thousands of lawyers we have discovered the secret, and it is in identifying what your ‘natural strengths’ are, and then applying them in your work life accordingly.
Every good lawyer has their own unique combination of instinctive and intuitive attributes or ‘natural strengths’ that provide them with an edge over their competition.
You may have heard someone say to you ‘you are really good at relationship building’ or ‘you are great at mentoring’. It’s these types of attributes that are natural strengths, and each person has a different combination, it’s what makes every lawyer unique, and is also what determines whether a lawyer is more likely to achieve success in a certain position.
It’s important to treat every day of your working life as an opportunity of self-assessment, and self-discovery, of your own unique combination of these natural strengths.
There is also nothing wrong with being aware of what you see as a weakness, but certainly don’t obsess over it, spending your entire career trying to improve your weaknesses can simply be a waste of time, when your greatest opportunity for success lies in building on your own set of natural strengths.
Once you identify and understand what your own natural strengths are, you must then ask yourself, am I currently in a position which maximizes my unique combination of natural strengths, and if not, then should I consider my options?
It’s like a football player positioned in the mid field when they should be playing as a full forward, the player might perform well in the mid field due to their tenacity, but they will never hit their peak unless they are playing in the full forward position.
Lawyers should be constantly doing a self assessment of what parts of their current role they enjoy and what parts they don’t enjoy, and maintain a list, and then utilise this list to pursue positions which have responsibilities that they will enjoy doing and that play to their natural strengths, and that this will assist in achieving professional success and personal happiness.
Sometimes people get lucky and fall into positions that play to their natural strengths, and that they enjoy, which in turn results in that person becoming regarded as the best in their law firm, company or the country at what they do, however not all are that fortunate, and that is when you need to take control of your own career and pursue positions which capitalise on your own unique set of natural strengths.