The Game Changing Attorney Podcast with Michael Mogill

7. Cy Wakeman — Ditching the Drama & Creating a Culture of Excellence in Your Law Firm

May 12, 2020

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"People complain as if their standards are high and lead as if their standards are low, and you can't have both." - Cy Wakeman

How much time are you wasting on drama and emotional waste in the workplace?
Why are employee engagement surveys a waste of time?
How do you know if a team member is a good candidate for change?
And when should you cut your losses and move on?

How Cy Wakeman Promotes The Ego-Free Office

Cy Wakeman is a workplace drama expert, leadership & team culture consultant, a New York Times best-selling author, and a sought-after speaker with 25 years of expertise. She spends her time training world-class leaders how to craft the ideal, profitable, and ego-free organization by hacking the hiring process, deriving true employee engagement, and putting energy, time, and money in all the right places.

Why Drama Is Eating Up Our Working Hours

According to Cy's extensive research, the average team member spends 2 hours and 26 minutes a day in drama. That's 816 hours a year of lost productivity — per person in your organization!

Cy says drama is really emotional waste (i.e. energy that's being taken away from results or happiness and dumped into drama behaviors). We see this at work in terms of scorekeeping, venting, blaming, resisting changes, holding the organization hostage, and giving terroristic demands. The good news is, these behaviors are demonstrable and measurable — and Cy is all too happy to give us her academic insight on how to wrangle those metrics in your law firm

The High Accountability - Low Accountability Conundrum

A law firm’s C-suite, leaders, and upper managers only have a limited number of hours in the day — even fewer if you're dealing with workplace drama. Most teams consist of a blend of high, mid, and low accountable employees, so it can be tough to devote the appropriate amount of time to all team members in each category.

Cy argues that a fair leader will spend time with all employees on the spectrum — but when it comes to low accountables, the focus should be firmly on performance management, not coaching, cajoling, or bargaining.

Key takeaways:

Game changing leaders should limit the liberties that rockstar team members take. Cy explains why no single employee — however talented they may be — should have the power to hold a business hostage. There are more factors at play than just specialized knowledge and achievements. What is that individual's true costs, aside from their salary and benefits? What's their hassle factor? Their drama quotient? Cy tells us how to measure the real price of talent — and what we should do if it's too high!
Employee engagement is paramount in the competitive contemporary jobs market, but Cy says organizations need a wake-up call when it comes to engaging their workforce. Ping-pong tables, waterslides, and over-the-top employee benefits equate to buying love — and that's not sustainable. Instead, Cy explains how to elevate your employee satisfaction by creating a respectful environment that is high in accountability.
Has your law firm got mediocre results? That's just fine, says Cy, but you need to quit lying about it. If average results are your reality and you're not planning on overhauling your company, then you'll need to make peace with it. She says that leaders complain like their standards are high, but behave as if their standards are low — and that it's impossible to have both. If you want to get out of a rut, you might be in need of a healthy dose of reality-based leadership in your firm.

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