The Future of Work: Human Connections

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To find out what both the present and future of work look like from a marketing leader's perspective, I had the pleasure of speaking with Roy Sexton, Director of Marketing at Clark Hill Law and the International President of the Legal Marketing Association.

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I'm the director of marketing at Clark Hill. I've been here five years, and I've been in the legal marketing space for over a decade. Before that I was in healthcare, and even before that, I was a consultant at Deloitte, which is how I started my career. I'm also privileged to be the International President of the Legal Marketing Association, which is an organization of about 4000 marketers worldwide who support legal professionals and help them get their footing in the marketplace. In addition to that, I have a theater background, and I believe that helps me to adapt pretty quickly.?

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Clark Hill started as a Michigan-based law firm a long time ago, but it's grown through acquisition of a lot of smaller regional firms to become an Am Law 200, 700-attorney, 27-location behemoth.

I want to give our company credit because we had the foresight to think about building an infrastructure that would allow us in a moment like this to do the work we did, but some of it was serendipitous as well.

In doing that, they've been smart enough to say that our executive team doesn't all have to live in Detroit, and as a result, we have leaders around the world. For example, my boss, our Chief Marketing Officer, is in Dublin, Ireland. Until I started with Clark Hill I'd only worked in hyper-local organizations, so it took me a little while to get used to people I've never met reporting to me.

We were already operating really aggressively on Zoom, creating a marketing and business development team and reinventing what we did within our microcosm of Clark Hill. This was also happening across all the other functions of the firm as well, whether it was finance or IT. On the legal side, part of the value proposition is that Clark Hill is now is located everywhere someone is doing business, so if the attorney who works in your geographic area can't answer your question, he or she can lean into this larger collective.

Then bam... the pandemic hit. For us, it wasn't difficult, because we were in a unique position. We'd already done the work. We'd already been building the team. We were accustomed to working virtually. And suddenly, the lawyers had to lean in not just to what they would accept from us, but what they needed from us. They wanted to get out articles. They wanted to host webinars. They wanted to do all the digital marketing that I'm a particular fan of because that's all they had.

But we were about ready to launch a new brand, a new website, and we were going to do it the summer of 2020. The pandemic afforded us an opportunity to pause, think about what we were doing, get it right, and use that new brand as a way to bring all these constituencies together.

So we spent another year. We interviewed. We talked to our attorneys. We talked to our clients. We said, what is it you value in us? Who are we? All the while we were doing the digital marketing and everything that people needed to do in that era to pivot, and I think it put us in a much stronger position.

We put out a beautiful new brand with a new logo and a sleek website, but we were able to supplement that with our humanity because we had spent that time figuring out who we were. I don't want to ever live through that again, but I think it was a unique gift that allowed us to come together as a firm.

Lawyers are interesting. They want to become part of something else. They want their name out there. They want to become part of a larger organization, but they also never want to let go of the past. It's like a lucky rabbit's foot. They don't want to let it go. Well, the pandemic wiped all that clean, and we were able to launch the brand in a way that really galvanized everybody and made them part of a whole and a culture.

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Law firm marketing is an unusual set of circumstances. Everyone else I've worked with, they trust that you know what you're doing and they let you do it. Lawyers are in your business all the time.

I inherited a set of coordinators who were somehow expected to know everything about every aspect of marketing for four or five offices -- each of them -- but they didn't know all those things. The pandemic allowed us to restructure the team, and I was able to take that time because I didn't have lawyers in charge of each office asking me to plan their golf outings and other activities that I know aren't very effective marketing, but the lawyers love them. I didn't have to do that anymore, so I filled my people's time with other things and we showed the value of those other things.

When we did finally pivot out of this, people saw different value, and I said to each of those individuals working for me, We're going to go from you supporting four or five offices and trying to be all things to all of them to saying, What is the thing you do really well for 27 offices?

So we moved to one events person for 27 offices... one social media/DEI person for 27 offices. One media relations person. That doesn't sound particularly groundbreaking, but for a law firm, it is.

Lawyers will always be stuck on, I'm hiring you to be my marketing person, now do all the things on my punch list. But in my view, those things are usually terrible ideas, so don't tie my hands doing those things. Instead, let me do the things I know you need.

When I go into any organization, I assess what their needs are, what their culture is, and what makes them different. I hate to break it to you attorneys, but I'm not selling your social skills. I know you want to have a party. I don't know if you didn't have enough birthday parties as children, but clients don't want to hang out with you, especially now. They want to be with their families.

What I want is extra value, extra insight -- getting attorneys to realize that the product I'm selling is what's in their brains. And for me, that falls into three major categories: thought leadership, whether it's articles or webinars, educational events, and social media.

We did a couple of surveys during the pandemic because the attorneys kept saying to me, My clients want that party back. They want to spend social time with me. So we did a survey of our clients, and what they said was, I can do some social stuff with your attorneys, but what I really want is educational content. I'll show up in your office or at that restaurant if I'm getting educational content, but if it's purely social, no thank you. So we've got that thought leadership where we're authoring content or doing media relations, and we've got events that are educationally focused.

Now, I'm a big fan of social media. Attorneys don't like to invest in the marketing infrastructure that every other organization has. They don't want to buy a CRM. They don't want to put email marketing systems in place. They'll buy golf clubs and cars and houses that are far too expensive, but when it comes to the investment in their own infrastructure, they're not going to do it.

I sometimes think it's like marketing the emergency room like I did in healthcare. Nobody wants the emergency room until they need it, but I want potential clients to think of my emergency room first when they have issues. We're not like the attorneys who are actively marketing on mass channel communications. Instead, I have to reach general counsel, the C-suite people who are saying, I need to hire outside counsel to deal with an issue.

When that happens, I want us to be top of mind. I ask our attorneys, How do you currently search for a service provider? You put a question in the Internet and see what comes up. If there are questions you regularly address with your clients, let's write an article. Let's make sure your articles are seen and visible. Social media is great for making sure a person is somebody that you want to work with who will make you feel comfortable.

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I always push into LinkedIn first. It's not the most provocative thing to offer, but it's a safe space. It's clearly a business community.

The thing I struggle with with attorneys is they think, Oh, that's just for job seekers. Besides, I posted something once, so why didn't people call me? And I tell them, You need to post with some regularity and you need to share content that's not just about yourself. You work for a firm of 700 attorneys in 27 offices, so also share other stuff. And the attorney will say to me, Well, my network only cares about this. My response is, How do you know that? You don't know what business clients are in and you don't know who they're connected with.

The other thing I say to them is that it's social media. Whenever I do orientation with the attorneys, I tell them that it's not just about what you project into the world, it's about how you reciprocate. We live in an Orwellian age, an Andy Warhol age, where everybody's like, I ate a piece of pie just now... doesn't it look pretty? They want validation.

Using social media is like shooting fish in a barrel because people are putting everything about themselves online. Even if you don't ever publish anything, all you have to do is comment on other people's stuff. They're going to love you. I learned this in networking as an introvert -- I hate networking -- but this is so much easier. You don't need to take the risk of signing up to go to an in-person event. And I know attorneys... when they go to a social event, they all clump together around a table and they don't talk to anybody. They convince me to pay their way to go to something, then I watch them just hang out with their own colleagues. That's not really a great business development strategy.

But if you're an introvert, if you're sort of passively interested, social media is the easiest thing in the world. And If you're in person, when you go up to somebody, ask them questions. They're going to think you're a great conversationalist because you didn't say anything about yourself. If you ask somebody a bunch of questions about them, they're going to be like, Gosh, I love talking to Roy. Social media is the same thing.

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We needed the extra time the pandemic afforded, and I didn't have the courage to say no to the various people on up the ladder who were like, We're going to launch this brand in July, and we're going to launch this website.

I would have said, No, we're not. It's going to suck. We got damn lucky there was a global pandemic, which is a weird sentence to say. Yeah, we got damn lucky there was a global pandemic because it gave us another year to get it right. And by get it right, I mean, we took the time to talk to all of our internal constituents.

We'd done it at a macro level and come up with a concept, taglines, look, and feel, but we hadn't taken the time to educate all the attorneys on what a proper bio looks like. The pandemic gave us a chance to get the photography correct and to talk about what business development opportunities were related to the brand launch.

You need to build the time in. Don't just create an arbitrary timeline because some internal constituent thinks the brand update hasn't occurred fast enough. When I started at Clark Hill, there'd been a predecessor who'd really whiffed it on a couple of things. They were hungry for a new brand, so the minute I hit the door, I was up against this sort of weird clock.

We needed the time the pandemic gave us, and if I were to do anything over again, I would have had the courage of my convictions without a pandemic to say, Are you kidding me? We need another whole year. Fire me if you want, but you're starting the clock again. You need to get this right. You need to engage people. So by luck and serendipity, we did what needed to happen. But I don't know that we would have done it otherwise if that hadn't occurred.

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I would say that for both team and company: a sense of humor. You don't have to be the one to make everybody feel better. Just be yourself. Be quiet when you need to be. But the corollary of that is that you should also view things with some perspective and go, Well, that's pretty funny. When you really think about it, that's funny. And the other skill I'd say is to remain intellectually curious. Be inquisitive. Then communicate, and be transparent about that communication.

And I'll add one more: live in abundance, not scarcity. Stop competing with your own colleagues over nothing. Don't do that to people. Just be open and transparent and assume there's enough to go around. Even in a recession, even when people are losing their jobs, still be open and honest and direct with people and you'll find that you'll be served well your whole life.

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I ask what the needs of the organization are and who the team members are to support that. When I'm working with a team, I get to know the person. I want people to be able to do the role, but I'm also looking for whether or not they're going to fit well in the team. Are they going to get along? Are they going to bring something new? So what are the growth opportunities in Clark Hill when you work with me? They're whatever you want them to be.

I might hire someone as an event specialist, but if I find they're great in another area and I don't take advantage of that, I'm doing a disservice to them and to the team. So I say, Well, what else do you want to work on? What else can we do? And I'll ask them, What do you think we're not doing? For me, that's how you should function as a leader. You set the stage by saying, I need this, but if you get it done and you still have bandwidth, and you want to do more and be more creative, then go to town.

But as the leader, you still have to shape it. If it starts to get out of control, you have to say, Hey, come back. What are you doing? People can get too comfortable in that zone, and you have to shape what they're doing, much like a director does in theater. You have to look at the training the person had and see how that informs the way they're approaching their work now.

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The bottom line is crucial. Focus on that, and then focus on letting people be in their best place to bring whatever talent they have to that equation.

What I have seen in 25, 30 years of working is that people don't know how to manage for outcomes, so they manage for style. What time did you show up? Did you do enough FaceTime? How long did you stay? When did you leave?

You're running a business and you've brought together smart people. You've invested in your own people because you liked something in them during the interview process. If you're in a professional services environment or an environment where you're leaning into people's creativity, don't stifle it with a lot of arbitrary rules that make you feel safe and unthreatened.

I think that sometimes happens in managing teams and organizations: you want everyone to be in lockstep. Dress codes are the bane of any company's existence, and, to me, strict work schedules are the bane of anybody. For example, I thought I'd want to work from home for the rest of my life, but I actually like going in a few days a week.

But I won't like it if it starts getting dictated to me. You want me to be in the office to engage with people, then I'm going to get up and walk around, and you're going to get a different work product from me when I'm in the office than when I'm at home. When people are working from home, you can measure it by their outcomes. I get far more done here in my basement, in my sweatpants, than when I drive an hour to Detroit, spend seven hours in the office, and drive an hour back.

But what you get out of me when I'm there is that I say hello to people. I talk to them. I find out what's going on in their lives. I create human connections in the office so when I'm in my basement, we can get things done because we've already made those connections.

But I think this necessitates people letting go of their old control-freak qualities and trusting the people they've hired. And if people aren't delivering, get rid of them and put in somebody who will.

You hired smart people, so let them be smart. Let them do what they do best. Don't tie their hands. I work the way I work; you work the way you work. And if I'm not delivering, then the door is open for you to tell me what kind of shoes to wear. But other than that, get out of my way.

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Roy Sexton is the Director of Marketing at Clark Hill Law and the International President of the Legal Marketing Association. He has a passion for solving problems, improving culture, facilitating business growth, and collaborating on long-term strategy, and he's been a marketing, communications, and strategic planning professional for nearly 20 years in consulting, healthcare, the legal industry, and college advancement. As a thought leader, board member, arts advocate, and community leader, his social media mantra is: Celebrate. Advocate. Reciprocate. Enlighten.

Gina Longo is a Leadership Development Trainer and the owner of Gina Longo Consulting. A former airline Captain and flight instructor, she now takes her experience as a leader in the aviation industry into the corporate world, where she specialises in helping businesses solve talent development and employee retention problems.

? If you're looking to troubleshoot your talent development and/or employee retention problems, please visit www.ginacall.com to schedule a complimentary Cause-Analysis Consultation.

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This is the third in a series of articles on the Future of Work.