Trust in yourself and trust in people – the rest will fall into place...

As we hit the end of March 2019, Year 3 is done. I have not had chance to reflect how on earth we have already completed three years since I set up Tenet but here we are and about to grow again at the start of April with the addition of two new team members to take us to 8 including little old me.

In my time at larger law firms, I never managed a team of 7 people. That thought has made me reflect. How has this happened that in three short years, to become a decent sized team from a standing start?

There is no one answer or reason. There is genuinely in my view a key factor - a guy called Simon Sinek, a British-American author, motivational speaker and organisational consultant who has written 5 books of which two I have followed quite carefully and applied to how I have developed and run Tenet. Those books are Start With Why and Leaders Eat Last. If you have not read them, or heard of Simon Sinek, take the chance to at least watch some of his talks starting with the Ted Talk that made him famous.

I wanted to do a short round up of our third year in this blog having done one for my first and second years of Tenet which I have given links to at the end of this blog if you have time (or would like) to read them.

If you ever have the urge to go out on your own, launch your own business with friends or colleagues, I am pretty certain adopting some of the advice Sinek gives will have you thinking this is a leap of faith but you will find good things happen.

I set up Tenet on my own asking a former colleague to join me for 10 hours a week to give me administrative support (Jemma - who now manages our practice with a lot more than 10 hours a week!).

I won't go into why I did it. That is explained in my previous blogs. What intrigues me looking back is that I set out to start with focusing on Sinek's quote of "people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it”.  The how we do it (our difference to others in our space) and the what we do comes later. Sinek got me thinking about focusing on the Why. He said “working hard for something we don’t care about is called stress. Working hard for something we love is called passion.”

That got me to the first stage. I stopped looking to think about how we could be different and all of that. I started by thinking why am I doing this - why is Tenet here. It wasn't easy to articulate as I have realised our Why is evolving. It started as wanting to create a place of work for people that gave them freedom, no targets, no need to be present at the office for the sake of it (I phrased it about a place to be a better version of ourselves) so our people would be able to focus on the work for our clients. In addition, it was about our firm being the space between large firms and general firms for the area of work we specialise in and making our expertise more accessible.

It was not even about the area of work we specialise on (which I am intentionally not speaking about in this blog) as I do not want this to be a sales like blog.

That Why has stuck around. It is the first thing you read when you land on our firm's homepage. It felt strange at first to meet with people or talk about our Why before what we do talk about what we do. But it has galvanised everyone who has worked with and at Tenet. We have become a team that work great together, focused on clients and output because the team are happy as we all live to our Why. We are all only giving attention to clients and their work - not our having to achieve any targets or be at a set location to do that.

I know it sounds 'fluffy' to some but when put into practice the Why actually does make a huge difference.

Another point Sinek focused on was trust. That is huge when you do not set KPIs for your colleagues. You are completely trusting that they will get the work done and do it well. However, the great thing in taking away measurable targets and asking them to do what they have trained for is that they enjoy being able to do just that. Sinek has said “customers will never love a company until the employees love it first”.  He also has said “a team is not a group of people that work together. A team is a group of people that trust each other.”

By following his ideas, the team trust each other and we have grown almost exclusively from recommendation and referral. We are doing something right.

I mentioned earlier that I have not managed a team of this size before. I am not afraid to be open about that as I am looking forward to embrace the challenge. What I can say is so far, I have taken on board many things Sinek has set out in his book, Leaders Eat Last and they have all helped me look after the team and allow them to flourish. Sinek has explained how the joy of leadership comes from seeing someone on your team achieve more than they thought they were capable. By giving autonomy to the team and trusting their ability, we are getting these moments in the team.

That is the best summary of our third year - increased moments of punching above our weight. We have had increased referrals of more complex cases as well as the smaller ones, more conference speaking opportunities, increased media and publication enquiries - all in our third year. We are playing the longer game on doing things the right way in our mind for our colleagues and as a result our clients. I just hope it continues but I believe if we stick to our approach to date, it will.

A really useful point, Sinek has stresses is that “leadership is not about being in charge. Leadership is about taking care of those in your charge.” That has stuck with me. There is no doubt putting this concept into practice is really tiring at times as you find you want to be available all the time to help on any issue no matter the issue. However, the risk that comes is you become a bottleneck to the team waiting on your comment or direction. I can only say it is an issue of balance but the concept of taking care of those in your charge and placing them ahead of yourself is right and if applied correctly, the outcomes are really positive.

By leading in a manner to focus on trust and accessibility for your team, you find the the sentiment that a person who feels appreciated will always do more that what is expected comes true - in other words going the extra mile when not asked appears to come true.

In 2019 Sinek releases a further book to The Infinite Game. I read a quote which I think comes from his forthcoming book, broadly saying that we achieve more when we keep focused on our Why rather than look at what the competition are doing.  That is certainly true for me. 

There are other firms that do what we do. However, we seem to be getting increased attention and opportunities. I have to admit, I have to 'un-learn' what I have learned about developing work opportunities. By taking on board some key principles Sinek talks about, we have seen our firm develop positively.

By trusting in ourselves and trusting in others there is an element of blind faith and a need for a bit of luck but it has worked out well. As Sinek says, “I find, when you’re an optimist, life has a funny way of looking after you.”

I guess he is right....

I mentioned my previous blogs after year 1 and year 2 of Tenet. These are referenced below:

Year 1 was “My 2016 – Everything is a risk. Not doing anything is a risk. It’s up to you.”  https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/my-2016-everything-risk-doing-anything-its-up-you-arun/

Year 2 was "My leap of faith – two years on." https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/my-leap-faith-two-years-arun-chauhan-fica-prof-pgdip-fcc-/