Your Employees are Clients Too

Last week we discussed the triple bottom line concept, and focused on the first of its three tenets: revenue. It was obvious right away that the second tenet – relationships – is closely tied to the first, and that building and maintaining authentic relationships with clients is one of the most important things you can do to increase revenue for your firm. But in order to create good relationships with clients, you must first have good relationships with your employees.

Just as you want your firm to be a place where loyal clients want to buy, you also want a firm that attracts talented people who want to build a career – and then helps them do that. The team atmosphere that your clients feel should be an extension of the atmosphere among your attorneys and staff. You need your employees to feel invested in your firm overall, and in what happens beyond the office walls; so they are not just working to get themselves to the next level in their individual careers. You want to create a culture that fosters the pursuit of autonomy, mastery and meaning. But how do you do this?

By defining core values and practicing what you preach. By using the servant-leader principle to develop leaders and promote personal and career growth – because both are important to your firm’s success. By mentoring employees through regular, ongoing and meaningful performance feedback and coaching. If you do this you’ll have a firm full of people who feel empowered, passionate and fulfilled through their work, and who want to carry that over into the world at large. This will impact both your firm’s revenue and resources (which we’ll talk more about next week).

Is your firm already excelling at building internal and external relationships? Let us know what strategies have worked for you and how they’re impacting your business.