Secrets to Make Yourself Indispensable to Your Company

Strategic Advisor and Coach Mike Williams, former Executive Vice President, Chief Legal Officer, and Secretary of Staples, Inc., is joined by Ronald Wasinger, VP & General Counsel at LG Electronics U.S.A. Inc., to identify the attributes and behaviors exhibited by exceptional attorneys and compliance leaders who are esteemed and appreciated by corporate leaders. Recognized as highly accomplished and successful in-house legal executives, and based on their distinctive experience in global Fortune 100 companies, they shed new light on career advancement within organizations.

Below are highlights from the webinar. To learn more, the video recording, slide presentation, and podcast are available on this page.

It can be challenging for lawyers and compliance leaders to determine if they are doing well in their role or even doing the right things to demonstrate their worth to the organization.  Our experts advise legal executives to look away from being considered indispensable, focusing instead on becoming valuable to the company.

Successful legal executives conduct unsparing personal assessments.

The first step in the quest to becoming valuable is to conduct an honest review of personal strengths and weaknesses and to look at opportunities for improvement.  Individuals should take a hard look at themselves, defining their job and their specific legal competencies, while analyzing the role they play in the context of the larger corporate structure.  It is essential to know and understand the in-house counsel role as it extends beyond the requirements of the legal department and serves the greater needs of the business.  A self-analysis can be verified with tools such as a 360 survey or by hiring a member of BarkerGilmore’s professional team of advisors to assist in navigating the rigorous process.

“As in-house counsel, it is your role to help the business succeed in a sustainable way.  During the self-assessment, focus on how your strengths can assist in attaining this purpose.  When you exude this purpose, you become a valuable asset and companies do not let go of valuable assets.”
Ronald Wasinger

 Companies place great value on team players.

In addition to conducting a personal or internal assessment, it is equally important to gain an understanding of the perceptions of one’s colleagues within the external environment.  Legal executives need to find out if they are perceived as projecting their value proposition or if they even have value to the company.  To ensure a positive impression, whether in a small company or a large multinational corporation, it is critical to not only be a team player but also to be seen as one.  Team players are asked to work on company projects because they are respected for their breadth of legal and business expertise.  It’s important for an in-house counsel to not be perceived as someone isolated inside of the legal department, but as someone willing to get their hands dirty and work with colleagues for the benefit of the business.

“When assessing the external factors, ask yourself if your door is open or closed.  Do people come to you and ask you for your opinion, your input?  How approachable are you?  If team members and other colleagues are not talking to you at all, maybe you are being viewed as royalty, and maybe it is time for you to focus on the qualities that others seek and value.”
Mike Williams

These key attributes are the hallmark of valuable legal executives.

There is a specific set of qualities and behaviors observed among legal executives who successfully bring value to a company.  These internal and external attributes are as follows:

Internal Qualities

1. Selflessness

• Concerned more with the needs and wishes of others than with one’s own

2. Courage

• The ability to do something that is frightening, facing uncertainty with resolve

3. Integrity

• Being honest and morally upright; the one quality that cannot be stolen or taken away

4. Leadership

• Management must not be confused with leadership
• Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right thing
• The job title makes a manager, the people being managed make the leader
• Choose leadership

 External Behaviors and Attitudes

1. Fix the problem, not the blame.
2. Do it right rather than right away.
3. When given a task, look at a watch and not a calendar.
4. If dying of thirst, it’s too late to think about digging a well.
5. When the client asks the time, don’t tell them how to build a clock

Mike Williams and our team of professionals are happy to help accelerate the initiatives you’re already pursuing or supplement your current strategic thinking to help you realize your vision. Please reach out if you or your organization may benefit from our recruiting, leadership development and coaching, or legal and compliance department consulting services.  Let us help you build and optimize your legal and compliance departments.