We often hear that the secret to success in marketing is to “be yourself”. But what if you’re a jerk?
Can you build a successful law practice if you’re not likable? Actually, I think you can. We all know lawyers who clearly haven’t read, “How to Win Friends and Influence People” but build successful practices anyway. Their strengths–drive, work ethic, skill set–allow them to overcome their interpersonal shortcomings.
What if the successful jerks of the world weren’t jerks–would their success have come any sooner or been any bigger? One could argue that it’s better to have people like you and want to be around you, that it’s better to be liked than respected. But that’s not true of sports coaches or military leaders. They don’t want friends, they want to win. In fact, in the sports and military realms, befriending your charges can be a liability.
Speaking for myself, yes, I do want to be respected and I also want to be liked. I feel good when people appreciate not only my work but me as a person. I like to be liked and I think you do, too, and while we may not need to be liked to be successful, for most of us, it does make it easier.
The article, “20 Reasons People Unfollow You on Twitter,” provides practical advice for building your social followers, (actually, for not losing your social followers), but also a paradigm for un-likeability in general. If you are an unrelenting self-promoter of your legal services, for example, a common failing of many attorneys in social media and in-person networking, you’re chasing people away. They don’t like you and they don’t have to listen to you–and they don’t.
In social media, likability has another meaning: “follow-worthy”. People may not like you personally but if you provide good content, they may “Like” you and follow you. Social media metrics don’t care if you’re nice or not, either your numbers are going up or they aren’t and if they aren’t, you can do something about it.
I just put, “Likeable Social Media: How to Delight Your Customers, Create an Irresistible Brand, and Be Generally Amazing on Facebook (& Other Social Networks).” on my reading list, after reading this review. I think I’m a likable guy but hey, who wouldn’t want to be “generally amazing on Facebook (& other social networks)”?
Can you imagine a world without lawyers? I’ll bet Amanda Knox can’t.
And yet, where do people turn when they are in trouble? Whom do they go to for advice when they want to protect their rights? Who defends the indefensible?
Amanda Knox was just released from an Italian prison after a four year nightmare. Without lawyers, she would still be languishing in her cell.
Without lawyers fighting the good fight, our rights, our entire way of life, would devolve and anarchy would ensue. We must never forget how important we are, not just to the individuals we serve, but to the society we live in.
In Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Dick the Butcher says, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers”. This is often quoted as a denouncement of lawyers but it is a misreading. Dick was referring to ways a rebellion in the planning might be successful. He recognized that to succeed, they must get rid of those who know and enforce a system of laws. It is, in a roundabout way, an endorsement of lawyers.
Lawyers, be proud of what you do. Defend not just your clients but your profession. Educate your clients and your friends about what you do, but also why it matters.
But don’t stop there. When you see a colleague behaving in a way that belies the dignity of our profession, call him on it. Counsel him. And, if necessary, report him.
Be a champion of the high standards our oath demands and exemplify those standards in your words and deeds. Our profession must police itself. The alternative is a Bar that does it for us, but too often, they go too far.
In a victory for common sense, a Florida court just struck down as vague one of its Bar Association’s limits on lawyer advertising. A bar association should enact rules of professional conduct that define standards of behavior and it should provide redress for the most egregious transgressions of those standards. But when a bar association imposes vague, arbitrary, and unreasonable standards upon its members, as Florida has long been criticized for doing, it says to the world, “We don’t trust our members and neither should you.”
Bar associations can improve the image of lawyers not by policing them more but by trusting them more.