Coaching to Success

Episode Notes

Transcript

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Intro: Managing your law practice can be challenging. Marketing, time management, attracting clients, and all the things besides the cases that you need to do that aren’t billable.

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Intro: Welcome to this edition of the Unbillable Hour. The law practice advisory podcast. This is where you’ll get the information you need from expert guest and host, Christopher Anderson. Here on Legal Talk Network. 

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Christopher Anderson:° Welcome to The Unbillable Hour. I am your host, Christopher Anderson.

In today’s episode is about is about production. So, in the main triangle that we talk about of what it is that a law firm business must do the first peak being the acquisition of new clients or acquiring new clients; the second is production producing the results that you promised to those new clients, and of course, the third leg of the triangle is, achieving the business and professional results for you the owner. We focus a lot of energy as lawyers on in the show, actually as well on acquiring new clients. But quite honestly, often the real challenge for a law firm is, building a team to deliver on the promises that you made to those new clients. So, the title of today’s show is, “Coaching to Success.” And we’re really lucky to have Ben Murphy as our guest today. He’s the Vice President of Sales at Titus Talent Strategies.

But before we get started, it’s time to do a little business ourselves. So, I want to say, thank you to the sponsors that make this show possible.

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Christopher Anderson:°Today’s episode of the Unbillable Hour is “Coaching to Success” and I am pleased to introduce my guest, Ben Murphy. As I mentioned earlier, Ben is the Vice President of Sales at Titus Talent Strategies, and interesting to note for today’s conversation, Ben is a sports enthusiast. He’s an athlete, and a former collegiate football coach. So, he’s been working in the recruiting field for more than 15 years, but he’s known for using sport analogies to bring what he learned on the field to do in developing young talent there, to help educate business leaders on how to think strategically to better identify, attract, hire, engage, and retain top talent. 

Christopher Anderson:°I’m excited to have Ben on the show. He’s a visionary, he’s an innovator, and he consults, and leads training sessions on for recruiting, and team development from Fortune 100 companies all the way down to smaller organizations like, a lot of the law firms that are listening to the show today.

So, I’m excited to have him share some of what he probably, charges a whole lot to train these Fortune 100 companies with you here on the show today, and to let me ask him some questions about it. At the end of course, if you want more information from Ben, I’ll give you the way to do that. 

But so first of all, Ben welcome to the show.

Ben Murphy:°Christopher, hey great to be here. I’m looking forward to it.

Christopher Anderson:°I am really, really, excited to have you on. So, just to get us started you know, because my bio introduction however you want to call it, they’re always short, and always somewhat inadequate. Talk to us a little bit about how you came to work in talent development. I mean, how do you go from football coach to working in talent development in industry?

Ben Murphy:°Yeah, it was a unique journey for me. So, right when I graduated college, I had a dream a mission to be a collegiate football coach, a big passion for it. I had an opportunity that I was about to start that fell apart, so at the last second, I had to get into the business world, and I spent a year, and a half almost, two years initially, in the recruiting industry, and then I had the opportunity to really the door open where I could get into the coaching field, get into the sports field again, and it took an opportunity with my alma mater, which led to an opportunity to get out to South Dakota coach division to college football. And then after that, brought me back to my alma mater to be the defensive coordinator, and help lead that organization and so, spent ten years doing that.

But like anything, there’s seasons of life, and I love driving sports teams, I love coaching players, I love really building a cohesive unit, but I got a family, and I got two little boys, and wanted to have some more opportunity, and really got a random referral about Titus from a former teammate of mine of how much he enjoyed working in the talent space, and working for a culture like Titus, and prompted me to say, “Hey you know what, maybe my next season of life, I can do the same types of things I’m doing.”

Christopher Anderson:°Yeah.

Ben Murphy:°But I’m going to do it in the business world instead of the exact sports world. And so, led me to Titus, and it’s been a great a little over seven-year journey of applying what I learned from the sports space into the business world.

Christopher Anderson:°Okay, cool. Well, that that is quite a journey. One of the things that jumped out at me, I mean, your bio from what you sent me, and from a couple other sources. But one of the things that jumped out at me from that was that like, this identify, attract, hire, engage, and retain top talent. So, that’s like, first of all, it sounds a whole lot like marketing, right? Where you identify leads, attract them, you have a sales call with them, you hopefully get a sale, and then, you hope to keep them as clients. It sounds like, the same sort of thing. But it also sounds like really, “soup to nuts” for talent development, and what led me to believe since, we’ve only got a half hour format here is, to ask you, “Where do you see the small businesses struggling the most in that chain of events from identification to retention?”

Ben Murphy:°Well, it kind of takes me to where my like, “big belief” on this is, people are messy, hiring’s messy, coaching is messy. You need to have a systematic way of aligning what you’re hiring for? What you’re assessing? And then carrying that over to your coaching, and management principles, and use the same concepts for both. And so, what I see, is most small businesses, don’t have a game plan around either. They don’t really know how to assess people, they don’t know really how to define performance in a coaching plan for people, and so, they don’t always hire, right? Because they don’t have that laid out foundationally, and then they can struggle to carry people over to be successful in their business.

It’s a challenge I mean, 56% of executives fail in 12 to 18 months of being hired,

Christopher Anderson:°Wow!

Ben Murphy:°because there’s not a proven process to manage them.

Christopher Anderson:°So, hold on, more than 50% of executives fail between 12 and 18 months?

Ben Murphy:°When there’s not a proven process

Christopher Anderson:°Yeah?

Ben Murphy:°to manage them. And so, most small businesses don’t have the expertise on building that game plan, and so, there’s risk. If there’s risks at the executive level, what’s your risk at the mid-level, and other levels within your business.

Christopher Anderson:°Totally, and I mean you know, with lawyers, law firms’ small offers in particular, one of their key hires is, lawyers who really are you know, their executive level, the big part of their salaries, and personnel costs go there. So, is the failure? I mean, I’m shocked at that number. Is that failure to be you know, for half of them not to survive? Is that in the attraction, the identification, and attraction process? Or is that so in an engagement retention problem, or is it both?

Ben Murphy:°It’s both. 

Christopher Anderson:°Okay.

Ben Murphy:°I mean, you can you can get off the track in any one of them that’s why there’s a high likelihood of failure, but really, slowing down as an organization and defining exactly what you need that person to accomplish for your business, and then, what are the key things that we’re going to look at in the interview process, so we have a complete understanding of the whole person? And their capabilities of executing those performance objectives. 

So, you want to build the foundation for your interview, and the foundation of what that role really looks like in your business, but now, carry that exact thing over to the plan to manage them; here’s what needs to get accomplished, here’s what we know about you, and your development around these key things as a whole person. We call them, looking at the skills values and behaviors of that person.

Christopher Anderson:°Right.

Ben Murphy:°And then, and then having an individual game plan to drive the greatest likelihood of success for that person, and every people different. That’s why, it can be complicated to coach people. If you use a framework of skills, values, and behaviors that will drive performance of a role and then, you look at the individual person, and apply it against those foundational baselines that you’re looking for in that role from a skills value’s behaviors perspective, you can reverse engineer maybe where the gaps are, and how you can do some custom coaching then to drive the greatest likelihood of performance for that specific individual in that role.

Christopher Anderson:°Well, that makes some sense. I mean, it really does. So, another thing that I noticed you know, getting and looking and preparing for the interviews that the company that you’re with, Titus Talent Strategies, it uses a phrase, “Right person, right seat.” And I’ve heard this before, where you know, you need the right people in the right seats on the right bus, but do right person right seat, and I work with, and talk with law firm owners across the country on a regular basis, and a lot of them are getting very frustrated right now. And I mean like this conversation with you, would be so totally different two years ago.

But right now, the frustration is in finding the talent, locating the talent, and they’re getting the point where they’re like, “Warm body, empty seat,” right? It’s just like, they’re making what are best described as, “desperation hires” you know. Somebody that actually has many of the skills that they need, boom! Done, hired, put them in, and they’re from what you’re saying, they’re going to pay for that later.

So, what can you say to help those in small businesses who are today feeling desperate to hire in the current environment?

Ben Murphy:°Yeah, I mean it is really a big challenge. I mean not just law firms, but across the board. And so, what it comes down to is, all right, we define the seat, now we want to go attract somebody to that seat. Well, good talent, A players, what’s going to actually get them interested in an organization? Well, you need to be able to outline job stretch, career growth opportunities, and the impact that they can make for themselves, and for the world around them, while they’re working for your organization.

And so, a lot of companies right now, if you can’t define that, you’re going to struggle to attract A players. Now, the reality is, you can still struggle to attract A players, if the talent scarcity is so bad, and you’re defining some of that. So, then what do you do after that? Well, I like to call it, a “multi-funnel approach” to recruiting. I want to get that exact right person that has all the things as a complete package, can walk into the door, can execute that seat, day one. That’s awesome. And if you can provide; stretch growth and impact, if you can be competitive financially, you might get somebody that comes in that bucket. What I’d like to test is, if I went after 100 people, could I get 10 of them interested in truly interviewing for the position.

Christopher Anderson:°Right?

Ben Murphy:°If I can, I can keep my recruiting strategy right in that silo.

Christopher Anderson:°Okay.

Ben Murphy:°If i can’t get that, then I need to look at, what are some people that I can assess that are maybe just below the experience level that I’m looking for, but if I see the DNA fit, that’s why, we like to interview around the whole person, and I have a coaching game plan that’s going to accelerate that person’s growth around skills values, and behaviors, I can get similar performance out of that person, maybe not immediately, but in the not-too-distant future.

Christopher Anderson:°Right.

Ben Murphy:°In certain scenarios, you have to be ready to do one or the other in your recruiting, and your training plan.

Christopher Anderson:°Yeah, and I mean, one thing that just jumped out at me, when you’re talking about that is, you said, a hundred. And I think, a lot of small business owners, a lot of small law firm owners since this show is mostly listened to by small law firm owners, that’s a daunting number to try to get a hundred candidates so, I can get 10 interviews, so I can get one hire. But that that’s what you consider to actually be a successful looking funnel.

Ben Murphy:°Yeah, the 10% response rate would be awesome, if we could do you know 50, and get five.

Christopher Anderson:°Yeah.

Ben Murphy:°And, yeah three of them are high quality, but I really don’t like to exceed 100, because if you get over 100, you can’t get a 10% positive response rate. You do need to change your employee value proposition some way, or you need to consider the second funnel; the data’s proving to be true for that scenario you know? And that really is a big way of how we you know, you talk about kind of our firm and how we partner, and we’re really a whole full you know, full life cycle partner. Our team helps baseline those roles, and then, we provide recruiting consultants that actually drive the activity of those hundred reach outs for the company, so they don’t have to get busy doing that, but they can see the data, the outcomes, and the funnel play out in front of them.

Christopher Anderson:°Yeah, that’s fascinating. We’re going to take a break here. Hear from the folks that pay for this show. And when we come back, Ben, I’d like to switch the conversation a little bit, to come you know, further down the line of what we were talking about earlier, from identify, and attract, to hire, to now, engage and retain. But first, we’ll hear from our sponsors.

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Christopher Anderson:°We’re continuing the conversation with Ben Murphy, a VP of Sales at Titus Talent Strategies. You know, when we when I asked you about, why the retention rate was so poor, I was truly shocked at that number you said, it is both a failure in defining the role, and in the hiring process, but it’s also a failure on the other side once they’re in the business. So, I wanted to ask you a few questions about that.

Now, first of all, like how do you how do you communicate with your team? How do you make sure that their performance once they’re on, is meeting your expectations? Or how do you coach others to make sure that that’s going on?

Ben Murphy:°You know what, let’s start with defining the role, you know, when we define the role by the performance objectives or outcomes that need to be accomplished by that person, and so, where people fail many times is, you hire somebody, but you really don’t define the role, you define some maybe key tasks and activities, but why are you paying that person to be in your organization. And so, if you can really figure out the two to five things that are the most important, now that person knows exactly what’s expected of them, then you can detail out the activities that are going to drive that performance around a strategic plan with them. but you have to have that all aligned well. So, there’s clarity and direction. That’s the first step of great leadership, setting direction.

Now our key to it is, once that’s established, we want our people to be self-aware of where they’re at, and pure aware of their teammates, of where their strengths, and weaknesses are, in relation to the things that will help them win in that performance. And so, they know what they need to expect, accomplish. Now, are there mastery or gaps in their skillset that need defining and refining? Are there scenarios from a behavioral hard wiring? So, we do behavioral analytics that maybe lend that person to be successful in certain things or potentially, be a limiting factor.

Christopher Anderson:°Right.

Ben Murphy:°And then, we always drive value alignment, right? You want a great culture, or really what you’re defining is, the people in your organization are aligned in the values that matter, and how that plays into coaching, and developing that person to performance, but also alignment to the culture.

Christopher Anderson:°Yes. So, I’m hearing, I mean, I’m definitely hearing a theme here that the key to success on both sides: both on the recruiting side, the attracting, identifying, and attracting, and hiring. And then afterward is, like you keep coming back to this clearly defining the role, and then, I heard something new as well, which is, clearly defining the values behind the role. So, how do those two things kind of fit together? Like, role you know, you said clearly what’s expected, and so, that’s sort of performance-oriented, and then the values; do you communicate those during the entire process?

Ben Murphy:°We do, and so, they’re communicated upfront in the hiring process. Clearly, so they know what’s expected. We actually have them do a core value exercise with employees, so they know the importance of the values of the organization, and then, when we do our coaching, we run it through, we built our own software system that our clients can use, it’s called, “manage for performance” and within that software, it allows you to house the performance expectations for each person you can track, track and trend their performance, and then, it allows you to actually have the coaching plan right in there on the employees dashboard around the skills values and behaviors that you can give them feedback on where they’re at mastery. And a big piece of that is, the value portion of giving them feedback of how you’re observing their interactions with others, and how they’re presenting themselves, and how that aligns with the values.

Ben Murphy:°And we give them feedback quarterly on how they’re demonstrating those things, and having transparent communication with them on performance, and alignment to the organization. We’ll always in working very closely with aligning with their motivations. You talked a little bit about engagement earlier, engagement two of the biggest things you look at is, how well is someone aligned to the role? If they’re aligned to the role, they’re aligned to the culture, they have a greater chance of being engaged in the position. And then the manager relationship; are they self-aware about how their behavioral traits act? Is the manager self-aware about their own behavioral traits? And how is that relationship playing out to make sure it’s creating more of a team environment? You know, we’re trying to win together with our managers, and our employees.

Christopher Anderson:°Yeah. I’m sure you’ve heard the old saying, “that people join companies and leave managers,” does that ring true in the way that you look at the retention?

Ben Murphy:°It definitely does. You’re leaving managers, either you’re managing poorly, so they feel like, they’re not set up for success or there’s a relationship element that’s not winning. And so, we try to in our system is to really have clarity on giving someone everything they need to have success from a coaching plan, but also reinforcing the self and pure awareness amongst the manager, and the employee to drive the greatest relationship opportunity. 

Even though they can be very different if they understand each other, and the manager tries to coach that person to the person’s behavioral needs not just the way the manager would want to be coached, now you have an opportunity to win on both sides of the manager scenario where it normally fails.

Christopher Anderson:°Again, what tools are you using to help the managers understand how the person would like to be coached rather than the way the manager would like to be coached or would like to coach?

Ben Murphy:°Yeah, so we have our own system, our M4P system that we built for it, but we also are experts in behavioral analytics using predictive index.

Christopher Anderson:°Okay.

Ben Murphy:°Yeah, so organizations can work with us to help assess their people, and give them that roadmap on the individual coaching from a behavioral standpoint.

Christopher Anderson:°That makes sense. So, with these quarterly reviews, and the observations that you’re mentioning, and the way they work with others et cetera, how has the expansion of remote working affected companies, small businesses’ ability to do those things; to actually observe their employees, and give them that feedback?

Ben Murphy:°Yeah, first of all. I want to start with, why I think this this concept is so important especially in a remote workforce is, you’re not going to be able to see every little thing they’re doing, and so, you get nervous, and you don’t want people to work remote, and that’s where things are going. And so, what you really need to kind of over highlights the fact that you need to start defining performance, and managing people to outcomes, empowering them to win, while then giving them the coaching plan of what really matters. Now, you do need to set aside time to observe, you do need to be able to give them feedback, you know, in the moment or at least quarterly; where you can be giving them growth opportunities through their skills values and behaviors or other things you define as important, but setting outcome goals and managing the performance, I think is so key to the future for companies that are going to be in a remote workforce.

Ben Murphy:°It’s great to go remote for so many people, and that’s why so many people are leaving companies that won’t provide remote right now.

Christopher Anderson:°Right.

Ben Murphy:°But you don’t want your business’s profitability, and your business production to go down in that environment. If you don’t, then clear visibility on performance, and a clear coaching plan is a necessity.

Christopher Anderson:°That makes total sense. One of the things you mentioned a couple times in discussing that was, culture fit, culture fit. And I know, you’ve used the phrase also, “People first culture.” First of all, I just like, what is culture? I mean. I think people know what culture is like, there’s |French culture, there’s a bacterial culture, there’s lots of different words for culture. But when you’re talking about it in the context of a business, like one thing I always say, is every business has a culture it’s just most businesses their culture is not intentional. But what do you do and how do you encourage small business owners to be proactive, and what do you mean by, “a people first culture”?

Ben Murphy:°Yeah, so there’s a couple of key things: I do think the art of the future business is, those that can balance a performance-based culture with a people-first culture. And so, what does people-first, really mean? For us, we start with values. We want to have an intentional culture, we want to make sure that people understand what the key value elements that are important to our culture, and so, we can give them feedback, and hire against those values to make it very, very, intentional. Because it becomes obvious that when someone’s not a culture-fit, right? Because they’re not a value fit, they’re not a part of the team, right? We call that a lone wolf. They could be a high performer, but a low in alignment to the values.

Christopher Anderson:°Right 

Ben Murphy:°Well, they’re not going to be a part of the organization if they don’t make modifications. So, we wanted to find that make it intentional, hiring, coaching, everything. Now, from a people-first standpoint, there’s a couple things that we prioritize: one, it’s the lens of, which our leadership team looks at it. We say, we make decisions based on people, then partners, then profits. 

Ben Murphy:°And so, as we analyze bigger decisions, how is it getting filtered, is really important from your leadership. And people-first, can be from expectation setting to, is it, this negatively or positively impacting our people, and what’s going to go to their quality-of-life et cetera? Those are all things that are important. But we truly believe that if you take care of your people, and they know that we got their back, they will take care of your partners.

Christopher Anderson:°And what do you mean by partners in that context?

Ben Murphy:°The organizations that we serve.

Christopher Anderson:°Okay, okay. Got it.

Ben Murphy:°The clients.

Christopher Anderson:°Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that makes total sense.

Ben Murphy:°So, we’re preaching that on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, basis that we’re people-first, and that does mean that, people, partners, then profits. And then when you look at what are some other key intangibles of a people-first culture that we try to emphasize in our coaching? We’re looking at, a managers and employees win together, right? We’re going to define performance. You’re in a performance-based culture, but we’re going to give you the clarity, and expectations we believe that’s people-first. 

So, you’re not wishy-washy or don’t understand things. We’re going to give you a coaching plan to help you be successful, that’s our goal. We’re going to make sure that you have the tools, and you’re self-aware, and you’re aware of your teammates to have the greatest engagement with the people around you, we’re going to give you the right amount of attention. The rhythms of attention are really important to people. Some people need more attention, some people need less. We believe that avoiding difficult conversations is not people-first.

Christopher Anderson:°Right.

Ben Murphy:°But you come in with the mindset where, we are a people-first culture. My job is to serve you, if you’re having some issues, I need to have that difficult conversation with you. I’m not going to avoid those things, that’s not serving you. And so, these are all kind of key paradigms that we try to preach from our CEO. down to our managers, through our people, and having that type of organized view of what we should look like. I would add to this though, it’s really important. It is a privilege to be a part of the team ,right? And so, you have to perform to be a part of the team.

Christopher Anderson:°I think that’s great.

Ben Murphy:°And so, that’s always, that’s first and foremost. You know, 98% of CEOs, it is the stat I’d seen, don’t look at engagement data. They want to look at performance and financials. So, we always start with performance, but then, we reverse engineer coaching, and engagement off of that, all in the focus of helping drive the best performance, and the best overall culture.

Christopher Anderson:°That makes perfect sense. I’m talking with Ben Murphy. He’s the Vice President of Sales at Titus Talent Strategies. Ben, when we come back, I want to change the conversation just one more time, because you’ve mentioned kind of interchangeably, but I don’t think it’s interchangeable in your mind, coaching and managing. And so, we come back, I want to ask you a little bit about that. But first, we’ll hear a word from our sponsors.

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Christopher Anderson:°Speaking with Ben Murphy, VP of Sales at Titus Talent Strategies, and you’ve talked about you know, good management skills, and managing people to performance et cetera, but you’ve also talked about coaching, and I know that’s your background. Like, how do you in the management relationship, how do you distinguish between coaching, and managing, and how should people be thinking about coaching rather than managing as they try to retain their top talent?

Ben Murphy:°You know, that’s a good question, Chris. For me, it’s a little bit interchangeable, but the way I view it is, I have a job as a leader to set direction, and then work with you to help you be successful, because this this direction, and these performance goals should cascade up and down that all makes sense for your business. And so, I’m managing that person to be successful, but I’m really, I’m coaching them, I’m working with them to be successful.

And so, one of the things that I always went back to my college coaching days is, each one of our position groups as a defensive coordinator. So, our linebackers, our safeties, our corners, our defensive ends, our defensive tackles, they all had different things they needed to accomplish for the team. And they all had what I tried to do is. top five everyday drills that they would focus on, that would give them the greatest likelihood for core fundamentals, that would lead to performance. And so, my coaching with the business world is, we’re defining and managing towards its performance, where we actually work with our clients, we define those everyday drills; those coaching things that they want to focus on and skills and behaviors, and really make them the keys around coaching to try to simplify that for the manager, and for the employee.

Ben Murphy:°And one of the things, you know, I manage a team; one of the things that when I first came to the business world, I was kind of like, “What’s the everyday drills? What are the keys that you really focus on with these people?”

Christopher Anderson:°Right.

Ben Murphy:°It wasn’t laid out. And so, we’ve been on a mission to simplify that, and lay out those fundamentals for people using our expertise, so the manager can look at this position, look at the person in this position, and have some clarity around the fundamentals they should be emphasizing with that person. And most managers have a hard time creating that on their own. They need some guidance to get it built out. Once they get it built out, you know, they’re in these roles, and they know these things, but it gives them a plan to coach, while driving performance

Christopher Anderson:°Yeah, and I mean like, I hate to and I don’t want to, and a) I don’t want to abuse the metaphor. Two, I also don’t want to extend beyond my knowledge of it, but as a defensive coordinator, as a coach on the football team being a defensive coordinator, you had position coaches working with you as well, right?

Ben Murphy:°Yup, yup.

Christopher Anderson:°Yeah, I mean is there an equivalent like, because so you didn’t rely on just your own knowledge of each position exclusively, you had position coaches that knew that a cornerback needed different drills than a tackle. How can one replicate the same structure in a business to have the equivalent of position coaches?

Ben Murphy:°It really is, as the deep coordinator, right? It goes the exact same way to the business. I’m defining what performance should look like for each positioned player. 

Christopher Anderson:°Right 

Ben Murphy:°And I’m working with the positioned coach, but they can edit, but defining those key fundamentals that will drive the performance we set for that role. And so, we’re working collaboratively, but we have a system. Our system is, we define the expectation, we define the fundamentals, and we go practice, and try to win on the scoreboard together using that system. 

Ben Murphy:°And we’re most businesses, they don’t even have that system. They don’t have performance outline, they don’t have the fundamentals of their coaching plan outlined, or it’s in a SharePoint document all over the place, and no one follows it. And so, getting that simple system in place, and then using, you know, editing it a little bit to match the manager, right? Or that positioned coach still using the system that’s key.

Then the second step of that process is, all right, not every NFL cornerback, defensive back has this exact same strength skillset that is in the hall of fame. They’ve gotten there for different reasons using their strengths. And so, now you apply those fundamentals against the individual in that role, and you start reverse engineering the strengths, and weaknesses, and what’s going to ultimately let them be the greatest performer using their tools.

Christopher Anderson:°Okay. So, yeah. You have to adopt the coaching to the player or to in this case, in the business, to the employee to maximize their strengths. that makes a ton of sense.

Ben Murphy:°And you adopt it though. You adopt it a little bit here, a little bit there.

Christopher Anderson:°Yeah.

Ben Murphy:°And still off the same structure of what should be, because they’re not going to get to exact performance, the exact same way.

Christopher Anderson:°Right. And it’s all seems, I mean, every time we talk about this, like, it seems to keep coming back, keep coming back, keep coming back, to defining the role, and defining what the outcomes are that define success for that role. If you have that, you can go a long way with this. If you don’t have, all this other stuff doesn’t really make any sense.

Ben Murphy:°It doesn’t, and I watch like, coaching plans, and leadership development plans that kind of go in circles, and never create outcomes, because they’re not they’re not defined back to judging it off of what they’re producing against those outcomes, you know? And so, it’s a lot of wasted time, and energy if you don’t start with that as the fundamental piece.

Christopher Anderson:°That makes sense. So, let me ask you, before we let you go, one of the other things I hear from a lot of law firm owners, and small business owners is, managing the younger generation of employees that are coming into their workplaces is super challenging for them. There seems to be a consensus that there’s a gender, there’s values that are changed in the newer generation coming into the workplace. How are you seeing that effect, and how is that affecting the way that you’re approaching coaching, and retaining talent?

Ben Murphy:°No, it’s a big deal. I mean, if you really look at one of the things, I talk about is, you have baby boomers who their number one is a subset valued with security, job security. Well, if you start going down to the younger generations, you go from significance to freedom to purpose. And so, if you’re not even looking at the lens the same way as the person, you’re managing on what they value, you’re going to get in trouble. And so, you need to understand that everyone is wired differently, what motivates them, and what they value could be different than what you want. So, you need to have those conversations.

Ben Murphy:°We have those quarterly conversations with people, and there’s a whole section on motivation, because we need to engage them there. But you have to keep in mind that 53% of people right now would say, they would leave their current company for a better career path opportunity. And so, engaging people around where they can take their career, knowing what your accountability chart looks like as an organization, and how the people on your current team can develop and play into, that growing accountability chart and letting them see that is really key to it, understanding that, as an organization, people, the youngest of generations want purpose, right? So, how are you displaying, and understanding their purpose, and how are you defining your business around creating meaning, and purpose for those individuals? And that can be in their work, that can be allowing them to listen, and participate in future strategy, fast forwarding their growth, challenging them, knowing that, “Hey if you’re performing your current role, you can fast forward into future roles.”

But also, what are some of the impacts, and purpose that you can do outside of your organization that your business participates in. Our CEO is amazing. You know, we have a catalyst fund of 30 million by 2030. And so, how are we impacting our people in the community around us, and the things that are important to their people. And so, some of our people their purpose isn’t always in the workplace that engages with us, it’s how we’re helping them drive their purpose outside of the workplace that really locks them in with our future as well.

Christopher Anderson:°That that makes a whole lot of sense. You have like mission and purpose-driven, whether. it’s internal or external or preferably both, that’s really sensical. Ben, we are out of time with this. I’d love to keep going, because there’s so much more to this that I want to really hit on. But that’s the end of this edition of the Unbillable Hour.

So, I thank our listeners for listening. Our guest today has been Ben Murphy. He’s the Vice President of Sales at Titus Talent Strategies. Ben, since I want to know more, I bet a lot of our listeners do too. If they want to know more from you, how can they contact you?

Ben Murphy:°Yeah, shoot me an email at [email protected]. I love to have strategy session calls, if it’s on the hiring or on the coaching, and performance management piece. I’m passionate about it. Hit me up on LinkedIn as well. But yeah, I look forward to any conversations people want to have, and Christopher, thanks for having me on. 

Christopher Anderson:°It’s absolutely a pleasure, great talking to you. This is Christopher Anderson, and I look forward to seeing you, my listeners next month with another great guest as we learn more about topics that help us build the law firm business that works for you. Remember you can subscribe to all the editions of this podcast at Legal Talk Network or on iTunes. Thanks for joining us, and we will speak again soon.

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Outro: The views expressed by the participants of this program are their own and do not represent the views of nor are they endorsed by Legal Talk Network, its officers, directors, employees, agents, representatives, shareholders and subsidiaries. None of the content should be considered legal advice. As always consult a lawyer. Thanks for listening to The Unbillable Hour, the law practice advisory podcast. Join us again for the next edition, right here at Legal Talk Network.

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Podcast transcription by Tech-Synergy.com

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