Confident or “difficult”? Depends who you ask
Last week I ran a session for Capsticks LLP on gendered leadership. 109 people attended, and around 20 of them were men. And at the end, the outgoing Managing Partner, Martin Hamilton, described it as "the best conversation on leadership we've had at Capsticks."
That’s going on the wall!
I would love to share the key messages from the session with you, because leadership in the legal profession is, in many ways, still catching up. When you find an example of it being done well, it’s worth talking about. Not just as proof of what is possible, but as a reminder to anyone working somewhere less enlightened that it does not have to be this way.
Is it you, or is it them?
If a post I shared on LinkedIn this week is anything to go by, I appear to have accidentally touched a nerve. Over 120,000 impressions and counting, on the subject of toxic high billers in law firms and why nothing ever seems to be done about them. If you haven't seen it, I'll include the link at the bottom.
It was, in no small part, inspired by a conversation with my friend and fellow Female Lawyers’ Club member Clare Chappell, whose masterclass on narcissism in the workplace we hosted within the membership last week.
What are you willing to tolerate?
A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of hearing psychologist and author John Amaechi speak at Gunnercooke’s annual Symposium.
He has that rare ability to combine insight with humour - to make you laugh one moment and reflect deeply the next. His calm presence and gift for storytelling left a real impression on the room.
What five senior women partners taught me about leadership
When I finished interviewing Alison Eddy for my book chapter, I burst into tears.
Not because she said anything upsetting - quite the opposite.
Alison is the former senior partner at Irwin Mitchell (now the Partner Ambassador for Inclusion at the same firm), and she spoke with such clarity, empathy, and emotional intelligence about her leadership journey that I suddenly realised what I’d been missing throughout my own legal career.
What makes a great leader in law? Not what you’ve been told
Over the past few months, I’ve been working on something very close to my heart, and it’s now finished and ready for publication.
I’ve written a chapter for the upcoming second edition of Beyond Bias: Unleashing the Potential of Women in Law, a book that brings together leading voices in the legal profession to explore what still holds women back, and how we move forward.