Description
- Addressing conflict at work: Acknowledging difficulty in working with others despite legal excellence.
- Embracing your nature: Understanding that being in conflict with people is okay; many successful attorneys share similar traits.
- Real-world example: Sharing a story of a famous attorney with anger issues, emphasizing that uniqueness doesn't hinder success.
- Recognizing the issue: Identifying conflict with colleagues as a potential problem, especially in a collaborative work environment.
- Solutions for improvement: Suggesting therapy, workshops, medication, or classes (e.g., Dale Carnegie) to manage and control anger issues.
- Balancing concerns: Advising individuals to work on personal development while not overly stressing about their conflict tendencies.
- Military analogy: Drawing parallels between being a soldier (team player) and a general (leader) in the workplace.
- Career choice: Encouraging self-reflection on whether one is suited to be a soldier or a general in a professional setting.
- Entrepreneurial path: Mentioning the option of starting one's own venture for those naturally inclined towards independence.
- Normalizing differences: Acknowledging that many professionals struggle with similar challenges and emphasizing the importance of personal growth.
Transcript:
I am someone who has periodically had a difficult time working for others. I've received a lot of good feedback for my legal abilities and love the work. I am able to consistently get good results. However, I find myself in conflict with people around me without getting into too much detail. What can I do to improve on this?
So it's not too much of a disruption in my career. Okay, this is a good point. So first of all, there's nothing wrong with you there. You're just the way you are and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with being conflict with people. This is just the way you are. So a lot of times the best attorneys in different practice areas are exactly like you.
I was talking to a candidate once that was in a law firm. There's a very famous attorney, his name I'm not going to bring up. And he kicked a trash can. Like across a library when he was mad about something. This is someone that was on TV and everything. And is apparently just a complete horrible person to work with.
So there's nothing wrong with if you're a mean person or you fight with people. That's just who you are. You might be good at a lot of different practice areas. You might be good at personal injury. You might be good at. Defending your clients. I don't know, but this is just what a lot of people are. So there's nothing wrong with you.
You're in conflict with people around you. That is a problem. If you want to work for others and have a experience doing that, but maybe you can put that to work in certain ways that are useful for you. But how do you fix all this stuff of being in conflict with people around? So how do you fix it?
And this question, so you fix it. By working on yourselves, that would be, it would be therapy and I don't know, therapy, et cetera. And you can do it that way or you can workshops for people with anger problems, whatever. You can do it that way. You can do it. You can do it through medication. It's probably not going to help anger, but you can do medication.
You can take classes like Dale Carnegie, how to get along with people. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But I honestly, I would, if it's necessary for you to stay employed, I would work on it. But at the same time, I don't think that you need to worry too much about this aspect, but I will say one thing about your anger.
There's a soldiers and any profession, most soldiers in general. So soldiers do the work, follow orders, basically do act as required to. And so if you're a soldier. That's basically what you do. And then, and you respect the hell out of authority. You do what they tell you to do.
They want you to jump on a bomb or something and say, but you do whatever they tell you to, generals, give orders and come up with strategy and whatever, strategy, and then, sorry. That's, and then do whatever asked, basically, yeah, whatever. So that's, you have to decide if you want to be a soldier or general.
If you are working in a firm and you're working for other people, working in a company, you need to be a soldier, meaning you need to, at some point, and if you do a really good job, you're going to become a general. If you're a soldier, absolutely, positively cannot fight with generals. So you need to decide what you want to be.
Now, a lot of people are just naturally generals. Like they can never work for other people. And if that's the case, that's perfectly fine too. Then you need to start your own thing. But there's nothing wrong with the way you are. You can certainly change the medication courses and therapies. But maybe you're going to be better off doing something on your own.
By the way, there's a lot of people like you, and there's partners and firms that are just complete issues with anger and stuff, but you need to do whatever you can.
