While we may have had a tough time pronouncing things correctly, this week’s guests said all the right things when it comes to being a leader within their organizations. Laura Toledo, Communications and Marketing Manager at Nilan Johnson Lewis PA in Minneapolis, and Kevin Iredell, Chief Marketing Officer at Lowenstein Sandler LLP in New York, discuss their year-long experience in the SmithBucklin Leadership Institute. Both are leaders within the Legal Marketing Association, which sponsored their attendance at the institute. While people in leadership positions may feel that they need to have all the answers, Toledo says that she learned it is okay to be patient and learn more about the situation before just going with her gut reaction. Iredell stressed that the key to being a great leader is making sure that you’ve given those who report to you all the tools and support they need in order to succeed. The Institute brings together leaders from different industries and helped both of our guests understand that the legal industry does not have a monopoly on stressful situations and the need for solid leadership. Take a listen, and learn more from their LMA article, “Leadership That Pays it forward.”
Listen on mobile platforms: 
Apple Podcasts | 
Overcast | 
Spotify
Information Inspirations
Greg points to a recent TED talk article from Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic called “Why do so many incompetent men become leaders? And what can we do about it?” The article and video are about as harsh as the title implies. While Chamorrow-Premuzic takes liberties at the expense of men, pointing out that the traits of bad leaders skew toward men, the traits of a good leader do not have a gender bias. We have a tendency to value confidence over competence, narcissism over humility, and the belief that leaders can do anything rather than know their limitations. This inspiration dovetails nicely with our guests today.
Marlene’s inspiration came from Jean O’Grady’s reporting on the Law Street Media’s relaunch of its legal news platform, beginning with high tech and intellectual property news. For those of us wanting a little more competition with Law360 and other legal new providers, this offering from Fastcase may be exactly what we’ve been looking for.
Greg’s final inspiration is more of a request for certain media outlets. In the past month, there have been articles where the images placed on the article do not fit the content of the article. While the intent of the images may have been innocent or just unaware, the results are misogynistic and racist. Imaging matters, especially in an age where many people do little more than skim the titles and images of an article. Hopefully, this will inspire the publisher to make a more concerted effort to use more appropriate imagery for their articles.
Marlene’s final inspiration covers Cambridge Analytica’s effect on democracy and how it is still going, even after the company shuttered in 2018. Cambridge Analytica whistleblower, Brittany Kaiser sits down and talks with Kai Ryssdal and Molly Wood on Make Me Smart, and discusses how we may be in a worse place than we were in 2016. (Cue the dark place music.)
Listen, Subscribe, Comment
Please take the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcast. Contact us anytime by tweeting us at @gebauerm or @glambert. Or, you can call The Geek in Review hotline at 713-487-7270 and leave us a message. You can email us at geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com. As always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David DeCicca.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Greg Lambert: Both of you just say your name so that we don’t screw it up.
[00:00:03] Laura Toledo: Laura Toledo.
[00:00:04] Greg Lambert: That’s easy.
[00:00:04] Marlene Gebauer: As in Ohio.
[00:00:05] Kevin Iredell: Kevin Iredell.
[00:00:06] Marlene Gebauer: It’s Iredell. I’ve been saying it wrong all this time.
[00:00:10] Kevin Iredell: Yeah.
[00:00:11] Marlene Gebauer: Iredell. Okay. We would like to welcome Laura Toledo and Kevin Iredell to the show.
[00:00:19] Greg Lambert: Laura is Communications and Marketing Manager at Neyland Johnson Lewis, PA in Minneapolis.
[00:00:26] Marlene Gebauer: And Kevin is at Loewenstein Sandler LLP in New York. Welcome to you both.
[00:00:31] Kevin Iredell: Sorry, it’s Loewenstein.
[00:00:33] Laura Toledo: And it’s Neyland. Sorry.
[00:00:48] Marlene Gebauer: Welcome to The Geek in Review, the podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal industry. I’m Marlene Gebauer.
[00:00:56] Greg Lambert: And I’m Greg Lambert. In this episode, we talk with Laura Toledo and Kevin Iredell about leadership skills and the way leaders pay it forward to create the next group of leaders coming up through the ranks. It’s great to have them both on the show.
[00:01:09] Marlene Gebauer: It really is. And before we jump into the show, we wanted to take a moment and promote a couple of things that we’re going to be involved in over the next few weeks and invite you to join us.
[00:01:19] Greg Lambert: First, I’m going to be talking at a panel-style webinar for the American Association of Law Libraries on January 29th at noon Eastern time. During the webinar, we’ll be taking on one of the domains of AALL’s body of knowledge, or the BOK, and breaking down how we apply the information management domain of the BOK to our leadership roles within our law firms. I’ll be joined by June Liebert from O’Melveny & Myers, Andre Davison from Blank Rome, and Elaine Egan from Cleary Gottlieb. And the panel is going to be moderated by Lindsey Carpino of Baker Hostetler. So it’s going to be a lot of fun.
[00:01:57] Marlene Gebauer: Yes, that’ll be a good one. Greg and I will be at this year’s Legal Week conference in New York. We’re part of the Legal CIO panel session, Moving Beyond the AI Hype, where along with Patrick DiDomenico of Jackson Lewis, Martha Lokes of McDermott, Will & Emery, Patricia Johanson of Goodwin Proctor, and Noah Weisberg of Kira Systems, We’ll be discussing the practical aspects of AI in the legal market and attempt to distinguish between the hype and the reality.
[00:02:27] Greg Lambert: Attempt.
[00:02:28] Marlene Gebauer: We’re going to attempt. And that panel will be on February 4th at 1:30 Eastern at the Hilton Americas in New York.
[00:02:36] Greg Lambert: Yeah, and Marlene, I wanted to toss one more conference that I’m attending, if that’s okay.
[00:02:41] Marlene Gebauer: All right.
[00:02:43] Greg Lambert: So on January 30th at Emory Law School in Atlanta, they will be having the 4th annual TIGER Conference. And TIGER stands for Technological Innovation Generating Economic Results. It kind of reminds me of that scene in Avengers when it said SHIELD. And it goes, what that really means is they really wanted it to spell SHIELD. So this year’s theme at the TIGER Conference is How Innovation Can Enhance Access to Justice. If you can get to Atlanta, I highly recommend this conference. For one, it’s only 35 bucks. So that appeals to my cheap side. But the real reason to attend is the lineup of the great speakers, including previous Geek & Review guest Anusha Gillespie, Kat Moon, and Allison Carroll. They’ll all be there as well. So it’s a great lineup.
[00:03:36] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah.
[00:03:38] Greg Lambert: So I’m definitely bringing my little portable recorder and maybe we can get some interviews with us on there.
[00:03:42] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, I think absolutely you should. Without further ado, without the presentations, let’s go to this week’s Information Inspirations.
[00:03:53] Greg Lambert: This week I read an article which was written by Thomas Chamorro- Premczyk called Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders and What Can We Do About It? Oh boy. Oh boy. So it was an extension of his TED Talk on the same issue, which discusses how we mischaracterize a person’s confidence for their competence. And while it’s not 100% of the time, this mischaracterization tends to apply to males more than females. And I’d say it’s a little related to the imposter syndrome, which we talked about with Kevin and Laura later in the show. But it differs in the fact that he says the best way to fool others into thinking you’re better than you actually are is to fool yourself first. So it’s kind of like imposter syndrome turned on its head. Flipped, flipped. So Chamorro-Premczyk implies that we are looking at the issue backwards. Instead of asking why aren’t there more women leaders, we should be asking ourselves why so many incompetent men become leaders. One reason is that we seem to love charismatic individuals, but in reality, the best leaders tend to be boring. So there’s no drama around a really good leader. But there tends to be a whole lot of drama around poor leadership. Our society promotes narcissistic behavior by drilling in the ideas of, you know, if you think you’re great, you are.
[00:05:22] Marlene Gebauer: you think you’re great, you are.
[00:05:25] Greg Lambert: And it drills that into our heads and allows people…
[00:05:28] Marlene Gebauer: Just because it’s your opinion doesn’t mean it’s true.
[00:05:30] Greg Lambert: Exactly. So it reminds me, Marlene, of this meme that I saw this week of Bigfoot sitting on the shore of a river. And the caption was, don’t worry if no one believes in you. Believe in yourself.
[00:05:47] Marlene Gebauer: That’s a good one.
[00:05:48] Greg Lambert: So he goes on to list a number of ways to stop the incompetent men from becoming leaders, and the answer isn’t to simply put incompetent women in their place. Instead of looking for people who are confident, narcissistic, and charismatic, we should identify those who are competent, humble, and have integrity. So it’s a great read and a great TED Talk.
[00:06:11] Marlene Gebauer: Well, definitely some food for thought there. So my inspiration is ripped from the latest legal news headlines.
[00:06:20] Greg Lambert: It’s like a CSI ripped from the headlines.
[00:06:23] Marlene Gebauer: Ripped from the headlines. And as a preface to this, I am borrowing very heavily off of Gino Grady’s Do We Be Strategic post about this. So thank you, Gene.
[00:06:33] Greg Lambert: So thank you, Gene. Yeah, thanks, Gene.
[00:06:36] Marlene Gebauer: So Fast Case, we’ve had Ed Walters on the show a couple of times. is the CEO of Fast Case. They are taking on LexisNexis, Law360, and The American Lawyer, and I guess Bloomberg as well, with the relaunch of Lost Street Media. Basically what Lost Street Media, their focus is on emerging legal news in the industry, and you can track litigation, companies, and firms within industry sectors. The first service will cover high tech and will leverage Fast Case’s wealth of real-time docket litigation and analytics information to create legal news that generates business for its users. It’ll be interesting to see how Lost Street Media fares.
[00:07:25] Greg Lambert: Yeah, especially with its business model of being free to the user and ad-supported. As I was teasing Ed on Twitter today, but not the pop-up ads that you see on some of these others.
[00:07:37] Marlene Gebauer: We’ll see if free wins the day.
[00:07:39] Greg Lambert: All right, Marlene. I have one more inspiration, but it’s really more like a request. And it’s a request to whoever selects the photo insets for American Lawyer Media on their Law.com articles. Granted, I may be picking on them just a little bit, but there have been at least two articles in the past month where the selected image is very problematic in regards to what the article actually says. While I don’t think there was any intent to be racist or misogynistic, it could easily be interpreted that way. Last month, there was an article in Corporate Counsel Magazine called, Know When to Shut Up and Listen. This was written by a man. While the article is actually about conference etiquette, the graphic, which is a cartoon of a woman with a man zipping her mouth shut, tells a different story.
[00:08:35] Marlene Gebauer: Lovely.
[00:08:36] Greg Lambert: Lovely. Add to that, this week in the Connecticut Law Tribune, they published a list of sanctioned lawyers in the state of Connecticut. The photo was of an African American man in a suit looking humiliated. The list of sanctioned attorneys on that list, there were nine, I think eight of them were white males, and there was one African American female sanctioned. The picture is of someone that doesn’t match a single person that’s listed in the article. Again, I don’t think it was intentional, but I’d really like for the editing staff at ALM to be more careful when choosing particular imagery, especially when the articles are discussing a negative topic. discussing a negative topic.
[00:09:23] Marlene Gebauer: I have one other one. Okay. So we’ve talked about Cambridge Analytica in the past on the podcast, and it’s back again.
[00:09:31] Greg Lambert: Yes, it is.
[00:09:33] Marlene Gebauer: On the Make Me Smart episode, I believe it’s this week, January 14th. They have Brittany Kaiser back again to talk about more documents. more impact about the election and big data.
[00:09:47] Greg Lambert: Yeah, and Brittany actually worked for Cambridge Analytica.
[00:09:49] Marlene Gebauer: She did. She did. She’s a whistleblower. I think that’s going to be a very interesting one.
[00:09:55] Greg Lambert: Yeah, listening to her talk, I listened to that interview.
[00:10:00] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, the first one.
[00:10:00] Greg Lambert: Yeah, well, I listened to this.
[00:10:02] Marlene Gebauer: Oh, you’ve listened to the most recent one?
[00:10:03] Greg Lambert: Yeah, the most recent one. And it’s just depressing. So it sounds like we are in worse shape now as far as people believing in fake news than we were in 2016. All right, well, that wraps up this episode’s information inspiration. This week, we are joined by Laura Toledo and Kevin Iredell. Both of them got to attend a Smith Buckland Leadership Conference, which is a year-long commitment.
[00:10:36] Marlene Gebauer: That’s a big commitment.
[00:10:37] Greg Lambert: It is a big commitment.
[00:10:38] Marlene Gebauer: For busy professionals, right?
[00:10:40] Greg Lambert: So let’s take a listen to what they had to say about attending that year -long institute.
[00:10:46] Marlene Gebauer: We would like to welcome Laura Toledo and Kevin Iredell to the show. Laura is a communication and marketing manager at Nyland Johnson Lewis PA in Minneapolis, and Kevin is the chief marketing officer at Loewenstein Sandler LLP in New York. Welcome to you both.
[00:11:05] Laura Toledo: Thank you.
[00:11:06] Kevin Iredell: Thank you.
[00:11:07] Marlene Gebauer: So before we get started, can you each tell us a little bit about yourselves, maybe some fun fact that not everybody knows?
[00:11:10] Laura Toledo: Well, I’m a communications and marketing manager, as you heard, for about a 50-lawyer firm in Minneapolis. I am also the LMA, which is Legal Marketing Association, Midwest Regional President-Elect. There’s a mouthful for you.
[00:11:27] Greg Lambert: I was going to say, well done.
[00:11:28] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah.
[00:11:29] Laura Toledo: I’m also a mom of two girls, three and five, who are my carbon copies, so it’s a disaster. And outside of that, I do a lot of handwriting and calligraphy, which is kind of a new thing. I have an Instagram account dedicated to all of my pens and stationery. Very nice. That’s what I do in my free time.
[00:11:46] Greg Lambert: Very cool.
[00:11:47] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah.
[00:11:47] Greg Lambert: Kevin, what about you?
[00:11:49] Kevin Iredell: Kevin Iredell. I am the Chief Marketing Officer at Lowenstein-Sandler. I have been in the legal market for about 20 years. I’ve worked a few firms before this, and before that, I spent about 10 years at the American Lawyer and ALM Publications. So I’ve been around a while. I would say maybe a little fun fact, I am an avid deep-sea fisherman, so whenever I have free time, I like to spend it out on the ocean fishing for all kinds of stuff.
[00:12:23] Marlene Gebauer: What’s your biggest catch?
[00:12:25] Kevin Iredell: 80-pound tuna one year. Coming to your house for dinner.
[00:12:27] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah.
[00:12:28] Greg Lambert: Were you able to sell it, or did you have to toss it back?
[00:12:35] Kevin Iredell: You know what? I kept that one, and I had tuna for about 18 months. Wow.
[00:12:42] Marlene Gebauer: Yummy.
[00:12:43] Kevin Iredell: There was a lot of tuna in the freezer.
[00:12:44] Greg Lambert: That sounds like it. Well, both of you were featured in a recent Legal Marketing Association article that was entitled Leadership That Pays It Forward. This discussed your year-long experience in being part of the Smith Buckland Leadership Institute. Laura, would you mind giving us just a little background on the Leadership Institute and what motivated you to make this year-long commitment?
[00:13:08] Laura Toledo: Yeah, so since I got into legal marketing, which was right after college, my bosses and people in the community had just encouraged me to go out and volunteer for this. I’m an extrovert, so I volunteer for everything. And I had heard about it throughout the years, but it just never seemed like the right time to make a year-long commitment. I’m part of a small firm. I’m half of a team. I like being in small firms. I’ve done the big law thing, and it’s just not me. I wanted to have an experience where I could really hone those kind of natural leadership skills that I have. And this was a great opportunity to do it. My firm was 100% behind me. It was just a way to get experience I may not have gotten through my own job.
[00:13:51] Greg Lambert: What did the program itself enable you to do? How was it set up?
[00:13:56] Laura Toledo: In our class, there were people from their other associations, and typically, like a nurse association, doctors. There’s an ICU doctor from Rush Hospital in Chicago, a guy that owned a farming company and a real estate company. There were 16 or 18 of us, Kevin, in a room, and it was just Kevin and I from the legal industry. It’s a year-long program. You meet every seven weeks for seven times, I think, and then there’s homework in between. So presentations, papers, books that you had to read, and then we did all of these exercises and discussions within those in-person classes.
[00:14:31] Greg Lambert: Oh, you had me all the way up to the homework part.
[00:14:31] Laura Toledo: You had me all the way up to the homework part. Yeah. You gotta agree to that too.
[00:14:37] Greg Lambert: And Laura, just to follow up on it, you said your firm was behind you on this. What was the payback for the firm? How was it that you sold this to the firm in order for them to support you?
[00:14:51] Laura Toledo: That’s a great question. And my firm is slightly out of the legal sphere in that we treat our employees like we treat our lawyers. When they hired me on, part of the appeal was that I have the legal marketing background. That’s a value add for them that I’m active in the community and I have all these skills. The only thing was that I would have to be out of the office more. So they knew exactly all of the dates, what that meant, what my priorities were, and what I needed to get done in order to go do this thing. So they’re excited. They like to invest in their people.
[00:15:22] Greg Lambert: Good. That’s a really good thing. That is nice to hear. Yeah. Kevin, how about you? What was it about the program that motivated you to take this year- long commitment?
[00:15:34] Kevin Iredell: There were a couple of things. Like Laura mentioned, timing was right. I started this when I was at my previous firm. I had been there for just over a year when this opportunity came up. I felt like I was in a good place where I could spend the time that I needed to outside of the office to dedicate to this. Like I said, timing was right. The two pieces about the program that I really liked were, one, was the diverse group of fellow students. The fact that these weren’t all going to be other legal marketers or legal administrators, that these were going to be other executives and business people from hospitals, from industry, manufacturing, et cetera. They had the same shared experience as being a volunteer with their association. We could kind of bond on that volunteer level. We have the same association management company, Smith Bucklin, which was sponsoring the program. And they’re volunteers, so we kind of bonded on that. At the same time, we could learn from each other in our professional capacity. The way that somebody managed employees in an emergency room is incredibly interesting. not because there’s one-to-one relation with what we do, but the way the practice of managing managing people, leading people, convincing people to do things that they may not want to do. I thought that that was a really interesting piece of this program and something different than what I’ve typically experienced just within legal itself. So that was the first group. The second was actually the comprehensive curriculum. So the fact that this wasn’t just two or four sessions of somebody lecturing and then you go off and think about it and you come back and you listen to them again. The fact that this was some facilitation, a lot of reading, some guest lecturers, exercises in class, and homework, I thought it brought a lot to it and I thought that it would be challenging enough to keep my interest because it was a small class that there would be accountability where you actually have to do the work because you’re going to get called out if you don’t and nobody wants that.
[00:18:06] Greg Lambert: Nobody wants that. Yeah, it’s just like grad school. So, well, let me ask you this, Kevin. Was there a… You know, it’s kind of interesting to me because in the legal field, there seems to be this belief that if it’s not your peer within the legal industry, that it’s not a lawyer or someone that’s exactly like you, they’ve really got nothing to tell us because we’re a unique industry, we’re a service provider that you don’t understand. Is there a particular example you have? I know you mentioned the emergency room, but was there some story or situation that one of the other students shared that really you thought, man, this really applies to what we’re doing?
[00:18:55] Kevin Iredell: There were several. I mean, there were several times that I thought within the classes that I thought, wow, that’s something that I’m going to bring back. I think the biggest one that stuck out to me was thinking about the fact that I didn’t come from ΓÇô my career didn’t start as a marketing coordinator at a law firm. I started outside of legal. I worked in a marketing department at the Hertz Corporation and then I was at Lucent Technologies. Then I was a service provider within legal for several years before I got into working in-house. So, my whole perspective in this job has been kind of from the outside. So, listening to the other folks in the room, there were a lot of perspectives that I thought were valuable that I was going to bring back. I think probably the biggest one or the biggest example was we think about we need to make a presentation to the lawyers. We need to come back and we need to talk to the partners and these partners are incredibly successful people and they’re very ΓÇô And at the end of the class, as we had discussed these things and we had gotten to know each other, the head of the ICU at this big hospital, she’s a surgeon, she went to medical school, she’s very successful. She told me in one of the first classes that I was intimidating to her. And I thought, that has to be awesome. Because if I’m intimidating to her, right? You know what I mean? So it gave me this perspective that you don’t know what’s happening in somebody else’s mind. When you have these skills and you learn these things through this class and you have this confidence in leading, you can make things happen regardless of who the audience is.
[00:20:50] Marlene Gebauer: All right, so what has what you learned changed what you do professionally and how has your experience changed the way you view good leadership?
[00:21:00] Laura Toledo: I kind of want to piggyback on what Kevin was saying, because, there are tactical things that you can go and extract from other industries that apply to the legal industry. But I also think a big component of this class was learning about yourself and learning about yourself when you’re with other people, if that makes sense. We didn’t necessarily mean to interact with other people. How I make them feel or how they make me feel and how, what’s going on your head doesn’t necessarily mean what needs to show on your face. And that was a great bonding moment. And I think being the youngest person in the class and the least educated, I’m already, I felt like I was coming at it from a deficit, but when really, it doesn’t matter how old you are, what position you’re in, how much education you have. It’s really more about can you inspire and enable these things that you want other people to do in other people, right? So professionally, I think that’s helped me. I’m very, I’m a very emotional person that, you know, I’m in touch with my feelings. emotional person that, you know, I’m in touch with my feelings. I know when I get upset about I know when I get upset about something or excited, that generally shows in what I’m, my hands or my face. And I think it’s helped me to sort of take a step back and not speak right away and just sort of, okay, let’s think about how we can go forward or how we can fix this rather than just, the first thing that comes to mind. So that’s definitely helped me tackle things within my firm. So that’s definitely helped me tackle things within my firm. And I think as a person, I’ve always kind of known what a good leader is, if that makes sense. And I think as a person, I’ve always kind of known what a good leader is, if that makes sense. Just now I’m able to articulate it in a way or the absence of it. Just now I’m able to articulate it in a way or the absence of it. So I think, you know, you always have that feeling, but you can never really put it quite into context. And now I feel like I have that ability. And now I feel like I have that ability.
[00:22:40] Marlene Gebauer: So sort of one of the things is to, when you’re listening and being active and you’re listening, is to take pause, ingest what’s being said, and then include other people in the decision-making process and conversation. Right.
[00:22:55] Laura Toledo: And I don’t have to make a decision at that point. Maybe we need more information. And like Kevin said, now I’ve got a couple new tactics on how to tackle that. What information should I include? How should I present that to other people? But I think a lot of it is just before I had a lot of trouble just stopping my initial reaction. it’s always going on my head, but whether or not I show that or I’m just like, let’s talk about this offline and figure out a good solution versus just my initial gut reaction over something.
[00:23:23] Greg Lambert: Right. So it’s okay to pause and think it through.
[00:23:27] Marlene Gebauer: You don’t need a snap judgment.
[00:23:28] Laura Toledo: Right, or just say, I don’t know now. It’s not a big deal. My lawyers here would want me to make a good, solid decision versus just the first thing that pops out.
[00:23:33] Kevin Iredell: a good, solid decision versus just the first thing that pops out.
[00:23:36] Marlene Gebauer: So Kevin, what about you?
[00:23:37] Kevin Iredell: So I guess the good thing was, you know, there was nothing that I learned that I had been doing wrong, which was good.
[00:23:45] Marlene Gebauer: Wipes the sweat off his brow.
[00:23:49] Kevin Iredell: And at the same time, there was nothing that really jumped out as, oh my God, I didn’t know that I should be doing X. It has given me, though, kind of more confidence to think about why certain things work and certain things don’t work when you’re trying to motivate people. So I think about giving everybody enough resources for them to be successful in their jobs. It sounds intuitive, right? Of course you want to do that. Then your day job takes over, you get busy and you’re like, well, I’m not going to call this guy back, or I’m not going to do this. And now I can stop and I can think, does everybody on my team have what they need today to get the job done?
[00:24:30] Marlene Gebauer: Including FaceTime with you.
[00:24:37] Kevin Iredell: That’s right. Or when I ask somebody to complete a task, have I given them all the tools that they need? Did I give them enough information? And some of that, I wouldn’t have considered a leadership trait or something that I needed to do from a leadership perspective before this class. But now I think, you know, that’s actually part of it. So it’s not just giving good direction, but it’s actually giving enough resources and time to make sure that they’re successful and their success is a reflection on my skills.
[00:25:03] Laura Toledo: You know, giving enough resources and time and to make sure that they’re successful and
[00:25:07] Marlene Gebauer: Their success is a reflection on my skills. Exactly right.
[00:25:12] Greg Lambert: Well, Laura, let me, let me piggyback on that. You know, with the experience that you learned, Did it give you anything to help teach your people how to be leaders with the projects that you’re giving them or assignments or just in their, in their day to day life? Is there something that you learned to share with them?
[00:25:29] Laura Toledo: Well, my kids currently aren’t listening to me. So that’s been a no go. That’s universal.
[00:25:37] Marlene Gebauer: Yes. Right.
[00:25:39] Laura Toledo: I don’t necessarily manage people around here. I think that, you know, I can give out assignments and I think I have utilized some tactics there, but I’m not quite sure that there’s a big, over a lot necessarily, but the older I get, the more I’m going to have that.
[00:25:51] Marlene Gebauer: Well, that’s, that’s actually interesting because even if you don’t manage them directly, I mean, using some of the skills, I mean, it’s even more important to, to inspire people when, when there’s no kind of direct report, right? Did you take this class? Oh my God.
[00:26:08] Laura Toledo: I do think it’s going to help me when I become the president of the Midwest region. I mean, that’s always been kind of ultimately my goal, you know, for where I saw myself and I am behind. So Megan McKeon, who is, I think she’s the director of marketing at Clark Hill. She is this year’s current president and her and I are the first two to have taken. the Smith Bucklin Leadership Institute together in a row. So I’m definitely looking to her and seeing how she’s implementing it and sort of deciding what my style is going to be like next
[00:26:40] Greg Lambert: year. So. And I’m sure these skills will come in handy when your kids are teenagers.
[00:26:44] Laura Toledo: We’ll see about that. I’m working on it. I can already tell my oldest one is going to definitely be a leader when she sort of gets over the dictator part of that.
[00:26:54] Greg Lambert: Learn the benevolence part.
[00:26:57] Marlene Gebauer: That’s right. That’s right. Laura, you know, you’ve mentioned in the article that, that you’re a little bit of a rebel and you like to shake things up. And, you know, I think, I think I can relate a little bit to the shaking things up part, but.
[00:27:09] Greg Lambert: I can verify that.
[00:27:13] Marlene Gebauer: But, you know, maybe there’s people out there that, that are too afraid of the ramifications or potential ramifications to do that.
[00:27:19] Greg Lambert: So. Or there are others who think one person’s rebel is another person’s loose cannon.
[00:27:25] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, true, true. How does the Leadership Institute deal with that?
[00:27:30] Laura Toledo: That’s a very good question. I’m not sure they dealt with it specifically, but I think in the course of the class that you sort of learn to be confident in yourself and how to articulate that. To me, it’s a lot about articulation and am I able to, you know, make the case for the reasons why I’m doing this? So I think it’s, I mean, I’m just rebellious by nature. Like I’ll talk to my mom and she’ll be like, well, now I’m not doing that because you told me to. Well, I finally I’ve sort of gotten over that part, but I do need a case to make. If I have a case to make, I’m very confident that even if it’s something that’s going to rock the boat, that here’s the reason why I’m doing it. It’s something that’s going to rock the boat, that here’s the reason why I’m doing it. So I’d like to now say that I set trends versus I’m rebellious. And I think you’ll be seeing that definitely out of the LMA Midwest leader in the next couple of years. It’s how you brand your rebel. Brand your rebel.
[00:28:22] Kevin Iredell: Let me add to that too, because there were two exercises that we did that I think answered that question. And the one was we did a self-assessment on comfort with conflict. And the people like me and Laura that were comfortable with conflict really had the reputation of kind of being a rebel or being, you know, a little bit more out there than some. Being comfortable with conflict and not in an aggressive way or belligerent way, but recognizing that there is conflict and being comfortable with it was the first step. And the second exercise was around critical thinking. And so knowing that a conflict is happening or coming and recognizing that is one, and then being able to take that step back and think, you know, why are we doing this? What’s the outcome that I want from this conflict? And is that the best outcome that I can expect? Really puts all of that rebelness, I think, into perspective. And that’s something that we can all practice.
[00:29:27] Greg Lambert: One of you works at a mid-sized organization. Laura, I think you said you had 50 attorneys? Yeah. And then, Kevin, I mean, your firm has hundreds of attorneys, right?
[00:29:38] Kevin Iredell: 350.
[00:29:38] Greg Lambert: 350. So, you know, you get mid-sized to fairly large. So how do you scale the lessons that you learn at this institute?
[00:29:49] Kevin Iredell: I would say it’s not really about scale. The lessons from the class are really, they’re true whether you’re dealing one-on-one with people or whether you’re dealing with a team. So I have a team of 20 or so, but the leadership happens on an individual basis. So you treat people with respect, you give them the tools that they need. You think about the critical thinking process that I mentioned, what’s the best outcome for the firm? What’s the best outcome for this situation? And what do I need to do to make sure that that occurs? I think whether you have one person on your team or 20 or 50, it’s the tactics and the outcomes are really the same.
[00:30:33] Marlene Gebauer: Laura, in the article, you reference imposter syndrome and dealing with that. And, you know, we all know Kevin’s been an imposter for years. I’m sending you love, Kevin. Seriously, a lot of professionals talk about dealing with this. I mean, you see it all over Twitter, we see it in sort of conference presentations. And so did you both get any good takeaways that you can share with our listeners about that and how to cope with that?
[00:31:04] Laura Toledo: Another excellent question. If you can put yourself in a position where you’re putting yourself out there in a way, in a group that you feel comfortable in, that they will help make you feel better. I don’t necessarily want to put that on other people, but in an organization like LMA, putting your hand up, raising your hand, means people are going to start flocking to you. Like they will help you through this. And I think having Kevin in the class and all of these fantastically smart, well-educated people, even though I was not necessarily at the same level, it didn’t matter. We were all the same in that room. You know, I brought things that they may not have gotten from anybody else. So to put it in that perspective where you’re not only surrounded by these amazingly smart, helpful people, but they’re reflecting that back on you. Like that was extremely helpful to me. And so that now I feel much more confident in my abilities to lead.
[00:31:55] Kevin Iredell: Well, and this was training, right? You know, you think about the military, you think about police or fire, right? Before they go into any kind of stressful situation, they’ve gone through tons and tons and tons of training to train for that situation. And so this is the same. So, you know, we spent a year at this class going through doing homework, doing exercises, listening to lectures, talking about different situations, so that when we get in that situation, we already know what to do because we went through the training. And so, you know, at this point, we’re not impostors anymore because we’ve done it, we’ve trained for it, we’ve talked about it, and we’ve seen positive outcomes. It’s really about knowledge. It’s really about information. It’s about learning and training. The course did, I think, exactly what it promised.
[00:32:40] Marlene Gebauer: Well, it sounds like a wonderful opportunity, and I’m very glad that both of you had the chance to participate and share with us your experiences.
[00:32:51] Greg Lambert: Yeah. Thanks for coming on. Laura Toledo and Kevin Iredell, thank you very much for joining us on the show.
[00:32:58] Marlene Gebauer: Thank you.
[00:32:59] Kevin Iredell: Thank you both. It was a pleasure.
[00:33:00] Marlene Gebauer: Greg, that sounds like a fantastic opportunity. We go to conferences and we read things about leadership and what leadership means, but this is a real commitment and it’s a really deep dive into what makes good leadership skills. And I love that they brought other professions in because I have always found that to be invaluable because you can always, you know, we talk about the echo chamber, right? And this gets you out of the echo chamber. This, you know, you hear from other people and other professions and what they’re dealing with and how they’re approaching it. And you can apply that in your own work.
[00:33:53] Greg Lambert: Yeah. And I found it fascinating in that we always feel like we don’t have necessarily the power to be the leaders, but Kevin’s story about the surgeon who was actually finding him intimidating was interesting because I think there are situations where even in our own law firms that some of the leadership at our firm finds us intimidating and we don’t really recognize that. I’m with you. I think having the Smith Buckland brand where they are managing so many different industries, associations in so many different industries that it gives you that advantage to have that, hey, we’re not all that different.
[00:34:35] Marlene Gebauer: a lot of problems that we have, which may seem on the surface to be completely different, but once you scratch below the surface, they’re really, they’re probably all communication problems. All problems are communication problems. This is the type of knowledge you can take with you and apply in everything in your life, whether that be your kids, whether that be work, whether that be managing in an association leadership role. It’s all good stuff.
[00:35:04] Greg Lambert: Yeah. So it was a pleasure having Laura and Kevin on the show.
[00:35:07] Marlene Gebauer: Exactly.
[00:35:07] Greg Lambert: Thanks guys.
[00:35:08] Marlene Gebauer: Thank you. Before we go, we want to remind listeners to take the time to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Rate and review us as well. If you have comments about today’s show or suggestions for a future show, you can reach us on Twitter at at GabeBauerM or at Glambert, or you can call the Geek and Review hotline at 713-487-7270, or email us at geekandreviewpodcast at gmail.com. And as always, the music you hear is from Jerry David DeSica. And it’s funny, Jerry now comes up in my Spotify list on a regular basis now. So thank you for that, Jerry.
[00:35:50] Greg Lambert: Yeah. Thanks, Jerry. All right. I will talk to you later, Mommy.
[00:35:54] Marlene Gebauer: Okay. Bye-bye, Craig. The devil’s back from the barn. And the devil’s back from the barn.