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What challenges do General Counsel face as business leaders? Mark Smith, Director of Strategic Markets at UU����ֱ��, explains how adopting a new approach to leadership, ‘the paradox mindset,’ can help today’s in-house leaders address complex challenges they face in the workplace.

Watch this short three-minute video as Mark Smith explores leadership challenges for legal teams and offers one quick win.

In-house leadership: from complexity to paradox

What types of leadership challenges are typically faced by in-house legal teams? The recently coined phrase, BOCA – “Blurred boundaries, Overload, Complexity, Ambiguity” – reflects the characteristics faced by leaders in today’s workplace. As business leaders, General Counsel can identify with these more than ever – particularly the challenge of increasing complexity in the workplace.

As Mark Smith notes, “Traditional problems usually have a right or best solution. But increasingly as in-house leaders we’re facing a paradox, where we have a seemingly insoluble problem that is characterised by two opposing ideas.”

UU����ֱ�� recently commissioned the Center for Creative Leadership to explore this question further: how can in-house leaders think more thoroughly and work through paradox with our stakeholders to create better results for our organisations?

Read: ‘In-house leadership – from complexity to paradox’ to learn more

What is an organisational paradox?

A paradox is used as a general term to describe the tensions leaders face when conflicting demands emerge. Unlike problems, where a solution exists to solve it, paradoxes are dilemmas that are ongoing, unsolvable and contain seemingly opposing ideas.

Here are some examples of organisational paradoxes:

Paradox mindset as leadership practice

The research provides a framework with a series of practical steps that General Counsel and in-house lawyers can take to address these organisational paradoxes. These practical steps help to bring clarity to the challenge legal leaders are facing, how it shows up and how stakeholders involved can work together to find goals in common.

• Step 1: See the paradox
• Step 2: Map the paradox
• Step 3: Accept the affects
• Step 4: Learn from the situation
• Step 5: Learn from tangible actions
  

Leadership is the result of what an in-house leader does, not just what they know. The evidence suggests that bringing a paradoxical mindset to how you practice being an in-house leader can benefit you, those around you, and your organisation.

Read: ‘In-house leadership – from complexity to paradox’ to learn more

One quick win for in-house teams

While no easy solutions exist, Mark Smith offers some suggestions on how General Counsel and legal team leaders can make immediate progress with a quick win.

Can you build time in for you and your team to reflect on your week’s work? Think about key incidents that took place, and reflect as a team:

1. What were the objectives?
2. What assumptions were we making?
3. What happened?
4. What lessons have we learnt?

Use these quick learnings to prepare to be fundamentally better next week. Incremental learning can make a big difference to our performance.

Practical support for in-house leadership

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