This is what keeps partners at law firms awake at night
E103: Making tough decisions without losing your humanity
Elizabeth, a partner at one of the top law firms, slouched in her office chair, looking listlessly out of the floor-to-ceiling glass windows as a tear rolled down her cheek.
The names on the list marked "CONFIDENTIAL" blurred into one.
Staring. Not seeing. Just feeling.
Which partners and associates did she want to fire?
Her heart was telling her she shouldn't. The revenues for the year to date were telling her she had to.
"Pull yourself together," she thought, trying to smother her human instinct with an organisation's demands of satisfying the bean counters so that the numbers add up.
But the more she tried, the more she felt her gut tightening.
The weight of deciding who stays and who goes is never an easy choice, especially when the list has no obvious candidates.
Legal challenges — managing complex, cross-border transactions, drafting endless agreements, or enduring day-long meetings that tip into the wee hours — are tough, but they pale in comparison to the complexity of people challenges.
It’s these relationships that truly test a leader’s resolve, empathy, and compassion.
When you care about your team's culture and building trust, making necessary but impossible decisions can make you feel like the devil.
These people challenges — the thorny, messy, emotional decisions — are the ones that churn inside you, the ones that keep you awake at night.
But they don’t have to.
Even you can make tough decisions that feel a little more human, a little more compassionate.
Decisions that preserve trust, and let you walk into work without that dread in the pit of your stomach.
It's one of the reasons I help entrepreneurs and professionals, like high-flying lawyers, navigate people challenges.
To make decisions that don’t leave them in agony or waking up at 3 a.m., questioning themselves over and over again.
ps If you're an entrepreneur, lawyer, or high-performing professional seeking to pause, recalibrate, and navigate tough people challenges without losing your mind, get in touch and let’s have a conversation.
👉 Over to you
What’s the thorniest decision you’ve had to make about people in your team, and how did you approach it?
That’s it for this week!
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To your health, joy, and success—one step at a time!
Eric
