TLA program helps lawyers ‘lean into their inner wisdom’

By Tony Poland, LegalMatters Staff • A new Toronto Lawyers Association (TLA) program offered in September aims to introduce concepts to help lawyers “lean into their inner wisdom” to improve workplace performance, relationships and wellness.

“We are excited to offer An Introduction to Mindset Mastery, presented by practice management coach Sandra Bekhor, who has 18 years of experience helping lawyers and other professionals realize their potential by pursuing the right possibilities for them,” says executive director/library director Joan Rataic-Lang. “The TLA believes in providing our membership with the tools and resources that will allow them to be their best selves and this is another example.”

Bekhor, of Bekhor Management, Professional Practice Development, says “Everyone has inner wisdom.”

‘Everybody knows how to handle things better’

“Everybody knows how to handle things better, but most of us get sabotaged,” she tells LegalMattersCanada.ca. “We may feel stressed, tired or distracted by all the different things we need to do. We may feel pushed and pulled in different directions. We are not at our best selves. This program helps participants lean into their inner wisdom so that they know how to handle situations better.

“An Introduction to Mindset Mastery is based on understanding how the mind works” Bekhor adds. “There are nine typical personality traits that are very easily identifiable. We introduce participants to these concepts. How to lean into their underlying strengths and how to interrupt typical self-sabotaging tendencies.”

For instance, she says some lawyers are people pleasers.

“Just as a very practical example, a lawyer who is a people pleaser onboards a new client and just wants the client to like them,” Bekhor explains. “Because of that, they may do a poor job of managing expectations. The client then becomes very stressful to manage because they have many demands.

“The client starts calling all hours of the night. They don’t like it if the lawyer’s clerk deals with them,” she adds. “They always want to deal with the lawyer and if the scope of the work is extended, they don’t want to pay more money. Do you see how the people-pleaser aspect sets that up?”

Controlling the people-pleaser instinct

Bekhor says An Introduction to Mindset Mastery introduces participants to ways to control that people-pleaser instinct so that when a lawyer onboards a client, they are more assertive and clearer about how their relationship should work.

“And it doesn’t have to be in a hostile or confrontational way. In fact, the client may not like that lawyer one drop less,” she says. “It is a matter of learning how to manage that inner people pleaser. There is nothing wrong with being a people pleaser. They are fantastic connectors. It is a strength. They are empathetic, good listeners and skilled at building relationships.

“It is only when they are stressed that they tip into this area where they start to create problems for themselves that are based on those relationships,” Bekhor adds. “The whole idea is to bring them back into that state where they are leveraging their strengths.”

She says her program is “more of a holistic way for lawyers and law firms to take care of not just themselves, but their firms, their careers and their aspirations.”

Not about choosing one path

“Typically, lawyers have the option of addressing their mental health. They can also do practice building or enhance their technical knowledge,” Bekhor says. “An Introduction to Mindset Mastery is not about choosing one path. It is about how to take care of yourself in a way that encompasses all of your goals so you don’t have to choose, you don’t have to compromise.”

Lawyers who say they already have too much on their plate to consider a self-help program might want to think again, she says.

“There isn’t a lawyer out there that I couldn’t critically look at their schedule and say, ‘Here’s all the time you lost. This is the time you are losing every day because of self-sabotage or because circumstances are not being managed properly or because the people around you aren’t being managed properly,’” Bekhor says. “If you learn how to do that better, the time that you spend working on these types of improvements will come back to you in spades.”
She says any professionals who work together over a sustained period are going to run into conflict.
“They are going find things that irritate or alienate them,” Bekhor says. “It could be that they never got on the same page because they started working remotely and never worked in the same room.

“There are all these challenges to working in a way that is cooperative and productive while feeling supported,” she adds. “Learning these concepts isn’t just about understanding yourself better. It’s also about understanding others better and removing barriers in doing so.”

Habits can be difficult to break

Bekhor says people can get into bad habits and may not know they even exist, making those habits more difficult to break.

“You may have a habit of talking to your team a certain way or delegating a certain way that may not be effective,” she says. “One of the biggest complaints against lawyers these days is that they don’t respond, they don’t communicate. That’s a habit.

“It is very helpful for lawyers to articulate their goals. For every one of them, the goals will be different.,” Bekhor adds. “The goals can be focused on your performance at work, it can be on building relationships in the workplace or it can be about your wellness. Those are the three basic buckets we pull from in this session and someone’s goal could be something that crosses over all three.”

An Introduction to Mindset Mastery is a one-hour introductory session on Sept. 25 from noon to 1 p.m. For registration details, click here.

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