On Sunday the 1st of August 2010, I will be sailing the Scandinavia, the Baltic States and Russia aboard Cunard's Queen Victoria, I am lecturing on the Cunard Enrichment Programme on the following topics:

The Clinton effect: the the three secrets of  developing your personal charisma.This is a talk about personal charisma, personified by former US president Bill Clinton. You will learn three simple techniques you can use to dramatically increase your own personal charisma.

How to think yourself into a good mood.
Are you an optimist or pessimist? All the research shows that optimists are more successful, live longer and are generally happier. This lecture will describe how you can develop a more cheerful and  optimistic attitude to life.

How you can be a younger,  older person.
Age is in the mind as the saying goes. After this lecture you will know how you can  maintain a young and lively attitude as you hit middle age?

I have a friend who is an Associate at a big firm of solicitors who is being trained coached to become a Partner.

We were talking about the qualities that go to make a terrible partner in a legal practice. These are the killer characteristics we came up with.

First of all terrible partners are often very bright and know the law back to front. They are often technically brilliant, which is why they made it to partner. 

However, as well as being clever,  the terrible partner is also great at upsetting other people. Clients tolerate their lack of charm perhaps assuming  this is how lawyers normally behave. The main effect of the terrible partners bad behaviour is on colleagues - usually junior colleagues. 

Another quality of the terrible partner is an almost complete lack of self knowledge. They are usually unaware of their own feelings and how their  feelings affect those they work with.  

Terrible Partners usually demonstrate a degree of inflexibly and rigidity of thinking. 

Finally,  when under stress,  they transform into drama queens going from  rage to panic to despair at the flick of a switch. 

Terrible  partners might have some, or all,  of these characteristics,  in varying degrees 

Have you met partners like this during the course of your career? 

Conversely, good, and outstanding, partners posses the opposite characteristics. 

They get along pretty well with most people. They tend to be people who are generally liked. They have an awareness of their own feelings and how their mood can affect the atmosphere at work. If they are feeling grumpy they will keep out of the way. Good partners are flexible and adaptable Finally they are pretty level headed and they handle stress and pressure well. They protect those beneath them in the hierarchy from stress. 

These qualities: social skills, self awareness, adaptability and stress management are just that; skills. And, like any skill set can be learnt. 

These skills are just as important, maybe more important than technical skills in making a successful partner. After all there are lots of technically competent lawyers to choose from, but far fewer with the personal skills that make good leaders. 

Are theses skills on the curriculum when your firms trains it's associates to be partners?

Believe me; lawyers really do need to know about Emotional Intelligence. 

A person’s level of emotional intelligence is the biggest predictor of success in every aspect of life. It’s a concept from psychology and simply means the persons ability to be aware of their own emotional response, and the emotional responses of others and the skill of using this understanding in a constructive and positive manner.

So, why is Emotional Intelligence important for lawyers? 

Well, family lawyers I’ve worked with have told me that probably 40 percent of the total time spent with clients is taken up with their emotional problems rather than their legal problems. 

Experience and common sense suggests that lawyers’ social and relationship management skills may be at least as, if not more important than technical legal competence in determining client satisfaction. 

Most lawyers would see their client's emotional state as very important in their work together; but most lawyers also say that they sometimes struggle to know how to best manage their clients moods or emotional outbursts.

In responding to tearfulness, anger or other emotional outbursts, lawyers rely on what they know how to do best: that is to respond with rational and practical solutions. 

The three most frequent responses lawyers tend to offer overly emotional clients  is: pointing out the consequences of a bad idea; giving specific, concrete advice; and trying to present specific alternatives. 

While such responses may be valuable parts of a lawyer’s repertoire, they unfortunately put the lawyer into the awkward and ineffective position of offering rational advice to a person who is highly irrational at that moment. 

As any world weary psychologist will say, that will not only miss the point, but can lead to anger and alienation on the part of the client. In other words, not knowing how to respond to emotional upset actually makes the upset worse.

Is it any wonder that the stress experienced by family lawyers seems to be higher than other legal specialties. 

The benefits to lawyers of being skilled in how to handle highly emotional clients are obvious. They include: higher levels of client satisfaction. This results in high levels of client retention, the client recommending the firm to others, and a client who pays promptly. These skills in Emotional Intelligence also dramatically reduce the level of stress experienced by the family lawyer. Emotional Intelligence skills improve the lawyers ability ability to maintain focused, directed relationships with their clients. 

When you add to that the fact that the lawyer’s ability to help his client stay more emotionally intact also benefits the client and the client’s children, it is easy to see how far-reaching the benefits are for the client, lawyer and legal firm.

Anger is a normal human emotion  However, when your anger and irritability start causing problems at home or at work it’s time to do something about it. So how do you know if your anger is getting out of control and what can you do Recognizing and managing anger is relatively easy, here’s how.

Your anger is out of control if…

• you find yourself getting angry at fairly trivial events that inconveniences you, annoys you or otherwise gets in the way of what you want to be doing,
• it leads you to behave aggressively or violently as in yelling, ranting, hitting, shoving or plotting revenge,
• You can’t stop thinking about it even long after the event has passed, if you dwell on the things that make you angry then you’re in trouble because normal anger is only a temporary emotional response.
• things that never angrye you angry in the past are suddenly major issues worthy of a rant, for example when a person is taking too long too finish a task.
• you find yourself doing self destructive things to cope with your angry feelings, such as driving to fast or too aggressively, or drinking too much.

You can manage that anger by…

• recognizing the difference between an annoyance or inconvenience and a legitimate reason to get angry - somebody hurting you, hurting somebody you care for or damaging your property are all good reasons to get angry; somebody being ‘disrespectful’, getting in your way, slowing you down, being luckier than you, or doing something better than you do it are not reasonable causes of anger,
• taking a deep breath, stepping away from the situation and asking yourself “Why am I really angry?”, often people misdirect anger caused by a valid yet bigger issue on to everyday annoyances and inconveniences,
• know your triggers, if there are certain things that you know bother you or that you can’t accept know what they are, take steps to avoid them, and imagine an appropriate reaction in your head when you're feeling calm to train your mind to react that way when the problem arises in real life,
• plan your time wisely, one of the most common anger stressors is poor time management, when you’re in a rush and something slows you down even more you are very likely to react in anger, the simplest way to avoid this is to exercise effective time management,
• exercising regularly, it’s true that exercise is an excellent way to de-stress body and mind, people who exercise regularly are less likely to overreact to annoyances and inconveniences,
• talk it out, reacting in anger often causes the reasoning center of the brain to shut off for a time and the way you can turn it back on is to talk rather than act. It may sound odd but taking a few minutes to gather your thoughts and speaking them out loud can do wonders to diffuse an angry situation.
• Finally, don’t do things like ‘punch a pillow’, and such like. This will only reinforce and maintain your angry feelings.