Tesla recently recalled all employees back to the office, with the expectation of 40 hours a week o presential work. The reason is increased productivity, teamwork, growth, and alignment. Now you may agree or disagree with Elon Musk’s take on what it takes to build great things. However, if one thing has been proven over the past two years, it is that you can have extraordinarily productive and engaged teams even if they are working remotely. And yes, this applies to Law Firms also.
In this week’s podcast, Grace and Liel discuss the power that team building and retreats can have in elevating your law firm’s team performance at all levels and boosting productivity and profitability.
The conversation based on Grace and Liel’s recent experience creating team-building events for their teams covers how to set up a date to what to include on the agenda and when it is best just to leave the business agenda at the law firm to focus on nurturing relationships.
Resources mentioned in our episode:
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Transcript
Liel: [00:00:00] If you want to build trust, mitigate conflict, encourage communication and increase collaboration. Try building and do it in a way that it doesn’t feel like a day at the office. I’m Liel Levy, co-founder of Nanato Media and author of Beyond Se Habla Español How Lawyers Win the Hispanic Market. And this is in Camera podcast where we believe in the power of human connection. Welcome to In Camera Podcast, Private Legal Marketing Conversations. Grace will come back. How are you today?
Grace: [00:00:56] Good. How are you, Liel?
Liel: [00:00:57] I’m doing great. Thank you so much for asking Grace. And it’s really hard to believe that June is coming to an end before we know it. It’s going to be 4th of July. And then, you know, we are kind of like in the second half of the summer heading towards the fall and that’s it, another year gone by. So I think, you know, it’s remarkable and there’s a lot of exciting things happening on the second half of the year. Of course, there is the conference, as we were just talking about. Right. So there’s going to be at the end of June, which probably is going to be happening on the week that we are publishing this episode. There is going to be also, well, the linear academy that just happened at the end of June. And then there is the event of trial lawyers.
Grace: [00:01:43] University.
Liel: [00:01:44] Yeah, Trial Lawyers University, Mass torts made perfect. Then there’s going to be the crisp event.
Grace: [00:01:53] Before all of that began.
Liel: [00:01:55] On July.
Grace: [00:01:55] I mean, Seattle.
Liel: [00:01:57] It’s it’s a pretty packed kind of like second half of 2022. So I think that’s going to be exciting. And then right into national trial lawyers, which again, as always is in Miami, but back at the Loews Hotels. So that’s also going to be something to be looking forward to. So that’s just what’s happening in the conference cycle side of things. And of course, there are some others that we may not be mentioning here, but they’re relevant for other lawyers, whether they’re local, for their for their states or for some of the boards or associations that are part of it. So, of course, a lot of happening. Grace But we wanted to talk here about retreats, team retreats, right? And I think this comes at a great time. Right after we had a great conversation with Reza from Turk Lau, who is the big, big advocate about team building and having the right culture at your law firm. And he one of the things he mentioned was that having opportunities to bond together as a team now that most of their team are remote, has been essential to keep this culture alive and thriving. And of course, in his case, he’s also talking about now at the initiative of their own team members, other activities and other get togethers are happening.
Liel: [00:03:25] But as a business owner, you definitely need to take the initiative and put together events to bring together your team to re-energize, reengage them. And I think most importantly, align the vision and revisit some of your other core values to make sure that they’re still relevant and they’re still being put in place. In the in the in the operations and in the daily events of the of the business. So great. After this very lengthy conversation. I think you have a lot to contribute on this because just this year you’ve planned two retreats for your organization, which is the lake law firm. And I believe I can also put up a few cents of thoughts into this because we just had ours with our team in Mexico City. And I think it’s really important, right, to talk about what are kind of like the elements and the ingredients that need to be put together to have a successful retreat, one that you can at the end of the event, say it was worth it, but most importantly for your team to actually think that it was a great use of their time and a great experience in the overall. So Grace, take us away.
Grace: [00:05:01] So yeah, I mean, when it comes to corporate retreats and just events in general, right? They all have elements that go into an event. It starts with having a purpose and why the why behind the driver? Why are my why should I have a retreat? Why should everybody come together? And that will help drive the format for the retreat or the event that you’re going to be running for the company. But, yes, I mean, from the very beginning, just to the point what he’s saying about having a company retreat and meeting with each other, you know, it’s so, so important, particularly after everything that happened with COVID, I mean, with so many people gone remote and so many companies that have individuals in different parts across the United States or even across the world. Right. I mean, we’ve gotten to the point where you’ve got development teams for law firms working in I mean, just about anywhere. It could be Colombia, it could be Mexico, it could be wherever you choose. And the same with the call centers, so.
Liel: [00:06:06] Bryan Leibovich right. He has a team of he said about 14 programmers and developers in India that work on their own software solutions. So yeah, absolutely. Nowadays is very common to have international teams.
Grace: [00:06:22] Yes. And so we actually also have an international team when it comes to certain parts of our call centers. They are in house outsource. So it’s an interesting blended model that really shows us this is something that you have to do. You need to meet with your teams one way or another, and there needs to be a cohesive way of doing that. So part of the corporate retreat came out of Fireproof, as a matter of fact, and many of you may or may not recall, we have a podcast with Michael Morris about his book and his program, Fireproof. We actually are working with them as well, and they’re going to be one of the days of the corporate retreat where we’re going to go over the fireproof and the flames that we came up with from the last retreat that we have.
Liel: [00:07:08] Oh, they’re going to they’re going to do a session for your retreat and your retreat. Amazing.
Grace: [00:07:12] Yes, that’s.
Liel: [00:07:13] Great. Yeah, that’s great.
Grace: [00:07:15] So we’ve actually.
Liel: [00:07:15] Here.
Grace: [00:07:16] Goes yeah, we’re framed around that and we’re going to have our entire management team there being held accountable for the flames they were given for a year ago at the last retreat, almost exactly one year ago today. Right. So, you know, when it comes to creating a retreat or a company outing or a company something you want to go in with the idea of reinforcing the company vision, the company message and the culture is so important. I cannot even tell you how important the culture of of a firm of a company is. And this is because you people, I think, fail to remember that they work with the people more than the people that they’re at home with. And what do I mean by that? You spend more time at work, right? Think about it. Monday through Friday, you spend more time at work than you do with people that you live with. I mean. Right. I mean, your significant others, even your children, a lot of times because you’re spending 8 hours a day, sometimes ten, 12. I mean, those of us that that I mean, this is our jobs, right? And we love what we do in most cases, particularly if you have a good culture at your firm. Everybody loves what they do and they’ll put in their all and then some. So reward that good behavior and consistently remind people that this is what we’re trying to achieve as a firm, as a company, and that’s what the retreat is for. So when we started going and looking again, okay, we’re going to have another retreat. What what was kind of like the first elements that we looked at? That’s location, location, location. So while there are people, right. That are not necessarily can’t come physically to here, those are people will get Zoom links and things like that.
Liel: [00:09:06] But yeah, totally. Before you go on, Grace, I think that’s a really, really important thing that you’re bringing up. And you’re you’re talking here about planning, choosing locations and stuff. And before we even get into that, I think it’s very important that you set up realistic expectations about. Who can attend in person? Who is it essential for them to be in person and who is important for them to participate, even though if it’s not in person for part of the sessions and obviously which sessions. And I don’t think you need to necessarily limit yourself to have an all or nothing. Of course, in an ideal world, you would want to have everyone sitting there in the same room the entire duration of the event. Now, the reality is that, as you saying, whether it’s because some team are international, some of them may be limited by their ability to travel to the destination of where the retreat is going to be taking place. And sometimes you have other operational constraints that cannot free everyone to be available for the event at the same time. So you just need to take those things into consideration and set up priorities. Okay, so we’re going to make it a priority to have every single full time employee that is us based present in the event. And so you start from there and then you start layering off as to what other events are going to be important for those that are partners to the organization, maybe not actual full time employees, but they are working as part time contractors or whatever that is. Right. And so you start creating decisions and events that are going to be important for them to be there and figure out a way that you can integrate them through a virtual component to to the event.
Liel: [00:10:51] And I think it’s very important we cannot lose that flexibility of remaining hybrid. We should not look at virtual elements of of our retreat as as a downsize the whole opposite. Right. It’s much better to do it that way than not to do it at all. And then here is the other thing that I also think it’s important to keep in mind. When you are in the stages of planning, think about what what of those sessions are is worth documenting in a way that maybe because of the time difference or whatever, some members of your team even won’t be able to join virtually. So is it worth making sure that you have a way of recording the session to do some video production so that it can be then shared with other team members at a later stage? And not just that, right? Also with new hires that are not even yet part of the team. But these are very, very rich sessions that certainly can be used for training purposes down the road. So you really need to kind of like think about not just the event itself and the here and now and who is going to be there in person. You need to try to expand the view and really try to get the most out of it. Because as you’re going to hear now from Grace, I mean, there is a lot of work that goes into planning these events. So you want to squeeze as much resources and engagement from this as you can. So sorry for that interruption.
Grace: [00:12:18] No, no, that was super important. You’re 100% right. And then some actually, those were all elements that we ended up learning a little bit while we were doing our very first retreat, which was only a year ago. So, you know, when it comes to technology, we are we also have persiste. So at least we’re very comfortable with using technology and setting it up and knowing what we have to have at the event to set that up. But yeah, to your point, I mean, I ended up setting up one zoom link that stayed open from 9 a.m. to 5:00 pm during the meeting times so that anybody that needed to could join. And we had a moderator. Right, that would allow people in or mute them and just take care of that whole component when it comes to the technological part of it. Right. Because you want people to be able to join. You want people to be able to see you want to record it and you don’t want to have all these million links that everyone has to click on and decide and figure out if you can have one. Right. It may not be that easy, but yes, part of the planning is what technology do you need to be able to get the most out of this retreat? Are you going to have presenters? Are you going to have outsource people? Are people that are going to be there, be presenting to the people that are joined on the call? Yes, yes and yes, in most cases. Right. So you do have to make sure that you test all of those components, that all those components work and that you’re very clear on what the agenda is going to look like down to who’s going to be letting people into the meeting virtually.
Liel: [00:13:51] Yeah, sure.
Grace: [00:13:53] That’s the stuff that I end up working on. We have a person that generally helps us with setting up events when it comes to internal events, and that is Taylor. He’s one of our staff members here at the law firm, and he organizes all of the stuff that comes to the retreat events. So when it comes to creating a retreat, there’s a lot of people involved. Right. And as I was saying, Taylor is one of the individuals that assists us with creating the events that go around it, not just the meetings. For the most part, I take care of the meetings and the presentations are taken care of by our social media. Digital Marketing and Director of Marketing Lindsay. She will generally reach out to the presenters and assist them with what the content needs to look like. And where I come in is specifically to the entire organized agenda, including when management is going to meet, when is staff going to meet, what are we kind of going to be talking about as it’s framed with the vision, mission and culture in mind? So what Taylor does is also give the the huge I like to call it to the event and that is the outings, because you can’t just have a meeting or a corporate retreat, which is meetings after meetings after meetings, as nice as it is to see presentations and learn about what other people do and your your company and your team, it’s a retreat. So you do need to have some elements of fun, right? Whatever that fun means to you as your firm include that because that is probably one of the most important parts or components of a retreat is the team building exercises that you’re going to do.
Grace: [00:15:33] And those can they can be anything, right? It could be something as random as axe throwing. It’s something I did for a birthday not long ago. So that’s why it’s at the top of my mind. And I’ve seen some corporate retreats go do these acts, building skill, building acts, building skills and just fun things like that. So for us, what we’re doing is actually we’re going to since we’re going to be going to NOLA as part of our retreat, we’re going to have museum tours, we’re going to have cemetery tours and all of those things that are specific to the location of where we’re going to be. So when you’re thinking about the retreat, it is it is a lot, right? There are a lot of elements that go into it and it needs to be location, who needs to be there, what are the subjects? And everything needs to be framed around the why, right? It’s because we want people to feel a part of a team. We want them to learn from each other. We need them to. Understand and be all part of the same path. And I think that that path is probably one of the most important things to share with your team, and that includes your org chart. It sounds so subtle, right? I mean, totally. Can you say something a little bit about the org chart? Because I know that you you are very good about defining those types of things. And you know, I’d like to hear your input on the org chart.
Liel: [00:17:00] Yeah, well, I think it’s just going back even further into other things that you’ve mentioned just now. I think it’s super important what you’re saying here about having the balance in between just bonding with a team. Right. And doing recreational stuff that help nurture interpersonal relationships within the team. And that’s great. I think that’s an essential part and probably one of the biggest benefits of doing this type of retreats and then balancing that out also with well thought out activities in workshops and meetings that are about reinforcing strategy, reinforcing the vision. And and obviously, you know, holistically the entire retreat as an event should have the reinforcement of culture as a goal. I think one thing that is very important, Grace, is particularly in a growing organizations like yours, remind the team who are the different team members. Right. And what do they do? And especially in these times of remote working where teams are not necessarily sharing the same space and they in the, you know, before in office spaces, you would have a vague idea where they are and kind of like what they do, who they communicate with. Now in a virtual space, it is very common to have almost completely siloed teams that are not talking with other parts of the organization. And so what happens there is that it can become there can be a gap can emerge, and the unintentional gap can emerge in understanding how the overall of the operations of the organizations work right, and the importance and value of the work that they are not seeing and that it’s not necessarily having a direct line impact to them, but definitely defines the success levels of the organization of to a certain extent.
Liel: [00:19:03] So I think building activities around generating that awareness about creating opportunities for these unlikely to work together colleagues to actually have an opportunity to to share thoughts, ideas, opinions and to get to know about what are the different tasks, how their days look like, what are the challenges they have. And I think that’s going to be important in not only just generating that awareness, but unifying the team. And it’s really mind blowing when you throw in problems that one department or one sector of the organization is having into the center and other other team members that have nothing to do with it on a daily basis start coming up with ideas to troubleshoot. And, you know, sometimes they don’t work, right? They don’t necessarily have the entire context or the experience to come up with the right solution. But oftentimes they do come. They come with fresh ideas, fresh vision, and with just potentially different approach that has not yet been tried. And so this cannot not be a great exercise to have. And obviously there is 100 different ways that you can do it, but certainly should definitely be one of the centers of the of the event.
Liel: [00:20:22] The other thing is, you know, it can never be said enough talk about talking about what’s what’s next. You’re halfway through the year. Where do you see yourself being by the end of the year doing kind of like a reality check, are we where we kind of like what you’re saying about the the flames, right? Are we actually dealing with the problems that we identified? How will are we into this year in solving the challenges that we’ve identified? Have we’ve done enough? Is there something that we could do better, what we need to change? So it’s a good point of doing that. And that requires a lot of honesty and a safe environment for people to feel in a place where they can talk about things openly without feeling that there is going to be an immediate blowback to them if if things were not to be where they supposed to be and not to lose the focus, of course that is the whole purpose of having that conversation. And such is like how as a team, you know, we can come together to find solutions, to push us together through and to find the right support systems for the individuals who who. Are either going to a challenge or seeing great levels of success that they can share insights with other team members so that they can also leverage that data, that success that they are having.
Liel: [00:21:45] So, you know, I think it’s great. And final point here is if you have open positions, if the organization is growing, is expanding, it’s another great opportunity to to discuss about that upcoming opportunities, new expansion projects and such. Why? Because I think it’s very important to keep in mind that you may have colleagues inside your organization that are very comfortable with the job they are doing and not necessarily seeking other opportunities. You may have others that are actually looking into what’s the next move that they can make, hopefully inside the organization. So I never underestimate those interest levels and opening up your doors to to your existing talent for potential new opportunities that are in the organization. And maybe they already are the right fit for it. And if they’re not the right fit, then start grooming them so they can become the right fit eventually. Maybe it’s not right for the get go, but eventually they could be. But that’s very important to really keep your team engaged and committed and wanting to stay with you on the long term. So definitely there is no shortage of opportunity in these type of events to to talk about team organization growth. So yeah, those would be my, my ideas things that I would throw into the agenda, wanting to try to cover all of those. So pretty sure that that’s what you have in yours and maybe more definitely.
Grace: [00:23:12] You know, it’s funny that you all the things you mentioned actually it’s just starting with two I mean, one being the growth room within and the grooming. I don’t like to. Hi. I don’t like to fired people. And particularly not for. For certain reasons that don’t make sense, right? So our company culture is such that if you are good at your job, your detail oriented and you know what you’re doing, but you might make a mistake here or there, maybe it’s the pace of what you’re doing. I mean, there’s a couple of variables or factors, right? For every department we have and we’ve got about four real departments that I could call departments where people would have different functions in each. We have weekly meetings where everybody is gets to speak their mind as to what’s going on within their department, whatever might be happening. And then we have spotlights for every department. So what comes out of that, generally speaking, is someone tells us that they are either uncomfortable or unhappy or potentially there’s an issue with the process. We take that and we use that as an opportunity rather than a problem where we can pinpoint. I can pinpoint using data because I use Zoho CRM and I do data stewarding at night where I’ll just review kind of how many people are logged in, how long they were logged in, how many times they logged in, and what patterns I’m seeing in that log in and the work that they’re doing. And I’m able to identify that people are spending too much time on any particular, either case type or status or problem or department.
Grace: [00:24:55] With that being said, it allows me to then give the opportunity to everybody on the team to feel like this is not Big Brother, Big Sister watching. You know, this is the company is watching what’s happening to allow us to make agile decisions, not just based on what you are telling me, but what what we’re seeing trending and it’s happening. So too many cases are ending up in medical records department. That’s not their fault. That means too many cases. They’re ending up in medical record department. Why? Why the why? It can be told by data, maybe there’s a flood of cases that are coming from this other department, whatever it might be. So when it comes to those things, we don’t we don’t like to fire because we are able to shift somebodies role and responsibilities to what they’re best at. And that happens a lot at the beginning. So I can tell you I could tell you probably five people that were shifted from one department to another weren’t doing, quote unquote too well in the department. They started in for one reason or another, whatever it might be. We retrain them, put them in another department after seeing what their skill set was best at. Once they moved to that new department, guess what? They are flourishing. So, you know, when it comes to what you were saying, little craft that around the retreat, get that information out from the people.
Grace: [00:26:22] And a lot of times it’s hard to get that remote right or virtually so these retreats use them as that type of development for your team, development for the firm. And that’s what we do. I tend to I actually plan on speaking to two or three people that are internal to our team that are going to be at the retreat. Because I want to know what they want next. And the best way to do that is in person, because I’ve been noticing some of these people are doing phenomenal, but maybe they don’t know that they can do even better. Maybe they don’t know that they have the capacity to do better. Maybe they just haven’t spoken to anybody that’s told them that, Wow, you’re doing great. How about I move you into this role with more responsibility, more and more and more and more for you? Is that something you want? So, like you said, those are the types of conversations that are best had in person. If you can, obviously you should have them with all of your team members and your staff regardless and regularly as part of your policies and procedures. But when it comes to the specifics of a retreat and the goals behind it, the goal should always be help the team out, help the team help us and make sure everyone is aligned with all of your ideas, visions and goals. And that includes staffing and putting them in the right department.
Liel: [00:27:41] Yes, absolutely. Grace, I think, you know, those are all very good points. And as you said. Right, I mean, I think sometimes you need to make hard calls when the team member is no longer the fit or outgrowing the position and looking for growth beyond what you can provide, you know, in your best interest, you need to let them pursue the next move in their career. And that’s, you know, that’s the right thing to do. But obviously you want to try to to keep your A player engaged and wanting to continue growing in your organization. And I think that’s one of the bigger elements of creating these type of outings or retreats, is to make sure that the team is re-energized and motivated to what’s coming next. And I just you know, before we move into takeaways, I think now that we we are at least doing hybrid models, if not fully remote operations, it’s more essential than ever to to invest in in these opportunities. And, you know, sometimes you can do it like you’re just doing now or you’re taking a whole block of days and dedicating them to this. And that’s really a luxury and it’s a great way of being to conduct it. If you can. Sometimes you’ll just have to be a little bit more dynamic and a little bit more versatile with this. And maybe it’s going to be a one day outing from morning to evening. Maybe it’s going to be a two day mini retreat.
Liel: [00:29:14] Maybe sometimes you’re going to have to break it down by teams and just take some head of departments. Or if your organization is big enough, you’re going to want to do an executive retreat. There is obviously going to be different ways that you can do that. It always has to be kind of like every single team member needs to be part of it. There’s different purposes and different reasons why you want to do this sometimes in smaller groups. But the bottom line is that, you know what? If what you can do is a happy hour a month and and use that as an opportunity to to take care of the social aspect of things, then that’s great because that’s still going to help a lot. That’s still going to add to the to the social to the sense of belonging to the community, part of things. So so that’s important. And, you know, there is other there are other smaller could be integrated more into the routine of the operations that also have a lot of value. Just looking into this, you know, keeping up the balance between the work and the interpersonal relations that the team has nowadays, you can also leverage technology for these types of things. And for instance, we use an app inside our slack that is called Donut. And what it does is it sends those reminders when somebody’s birthday is coming up so we can make sure that we’re doing something nice to celebrate them.
Liel: [00:30:34] And every couple of weeks or every month, you can set it up to select two team members and set them up into a one on one conversation. That can be it’s a half an hour conversation and it needs to be about everything outside of work. You’re not allowed to talk about work. And so it’s a great way of making sure that these conversations that allow you to get to know your team members at a personal level and keep up with their lives at a personal level, it’s not getting lost in the walls of remote working. So yeah, there’s a lot of options. It’s not just a one way route, but of course if you are in the position where you can do these types of retreats like you guys are doing, it’s 100% an investment. I think you cannot look back at this, you know, being on the last day of your retreat or the first day back at work after having gone to a retreat and think it was not worth it. And if that’s your feeling, then you probably will. Probably you didn’t organize it well enough. But you know what, Grace? I think even if you go there and you have a lot of fun and you don’t touch a lot of the agenda of work, that’s still already a win. But if you can do both, it’s even better.
Grace: [00:31:43] Yeah, every time we. Well, the last the one time we did it so far, if you take a look at our ECG on the lake law firm, you can actually see the highlight reel done by Lindsey. It’s very cool. I was like, Oh, that’s great. I remember that. So yeah, it definitely is. Everybody comes back re-energized if it’s done.
Liel: [00:32:04] Yeah, I agree. I agree, Grace. All right. So really great insights. Great. And before you go into your last hours of planning, before you head out of your on your upcoming retreat, which, of course, we hope you get to share with us some afterthoughts after the event. What are some takeaways that we can use to close up this conversation?
Grace: [00:32:25] Plan, plan, plan, plan. I cannot emphasize that enough. And when I say plan, I mean incorporate everything we talked about, most importantly, culture, value, mission and team building. So those if you can incorporate those at the very basic, most minimum. And plan all of that. You will have a successful retreat, truthfully, and it can be virtual, it can be in person, it can be whatever it might be. But do it, get it done, and have a regular meeting with your people and your staff. You need that regular touchpoint, whether it’s in-person or virtual. At this point, with the way the world is working, it doesn’t matter. Not really. And it’s always best in person if you can, of course. But I think all of us are comfortable and used to this point. So. And then there’s additional elements that you can always add to that virtual component, right? Like both of you get Uber eats cards and you eat lunch together, or you both have a cocktail together off work hours. You know, there’s a bunch of ways of doing this, but plan, plan, plan and make sure that you understand what your what your why is at the end of that event or meeting.
Liel: [00:33:41] Yeah, that’s a really good point Grace, plan for it, right. Don’t expect for it to just, you know, materialize from the nothing your company retreat. A lot of works, a lot of work needs to be put into this. I think a great place to start looking at the calendar block dates and then stick to that. And you know, obviously the more anticipation you use into planning this, the the better odds are that you’re not going to have or see yourself in a position to be yourself in a situation where you’re going to have to make a lot of adjustments because you can also let know your team with enough anticipation for it not to create conflict or face conflict from other other things that may be happening if you’re trying to do it with with short notice. So I would say rule number one is commit to the idea by first looking at dates, then announcing them to the team and getting them also to commit to it. That’s going to be very important because at the end of the day, if you’re going to put all of this work into planning it and all of this work and investment, right, that it means to put together this event, then to find out that a few team members will not going to be joining because they’ve already had something going on that week that holds them off from going. It’s not going to be great for the retreat as a whole. So plan great one. Grace, what’s your number one? Number two.
Grace: [00:35:08] Number two is have your company vision, mission and organization chart defined as clearly as you possibly can and even print it out. That’s what we’re doing. So we’re actually printing out our org chart, our mission, our vision and everything that goes into who we are as a law firm so that it’s in your face, you’re able to see. And there’s no question as to what we are trying to achieve as a company and together. I know that could be technically part of planning, but the reality is there are certain things that I think need to be in print. Well, maybe not print. It can be up on a screen, virtually on a giant TV. It doesn’t matter. But it needs to be present, is what I mean. And so why do I feel like that? That is important enough to mention as a takeaway. That’s because people need to know who’s responsible for what and be held accountable. And you can’t hold somebody accountable if they don’t know what their role is and what their responsibilities are. And things shift a lot in law, right? I mean, sometimes someone might not be here anymore or someone. We got a new case type. So now my my role is shifted slightly to this or shifted slightly to that. If you don’t have clearly defined roles and nobody knows exactly who they’re supposed to report to, including new hires in particular, that there’s not a clearly defined structure. It causes chaos, just plain chaos. There’s no question about that. And you may think in your head as a CEO or founder or or business owner that, oh, but everybody knows what they’re supposed to do, that you’re in accounting, you’re in this or you’re in that. Not so. Until you draw lines on a board and tell somebody, you report to this person and this is your responsibility and you are accountable for this. You cannot assume.
Liel: [00:37:07] Yeah, 100%, 100, 100%. Especially when you’re at the top, when you are either owner, CEO, you name it, you can very easily fall into the idea of believing that everyone in your organization know as much as you know, and that obviously never is going to be right. And what you’re saying there, Grace, about having such clear understanding and this is going back to what you were talking about in pertinence about organizational charts, is knowing very well who are they’re responding to, what they are accountable for. And obviously with that comes setting up smart goals for your team members. And and again, not too sure whether a retreat is a place to set up smart goals at a personal level, but certainly a good opportunity to discuss what could be the goals of the organization as a whole that then gets trickled down into different team members during performance reviews or whatever other type of organized meeting you have with your colleagues to to set these ones up on a one on one basis. But it’s so important, right, to to continue reinforcing how is that organizational is structured from the standpoint as to who are you reporting to who they are reporting to and how is it that everything that they’re doing under their job responsibility is having an overall impact in the organization.
Liel: [00:38:38] So they can also take pride on on the success and the accomplishments that have been done and if not also feel the pressure of what needs to be achieved that hasn’t yet been achieved or it’s not on track to be achieved. So yeah, 100% Grace. I think that it’s one of the biggest things that you’d need to leverage the opportunity of on the event. And for the last take away Grace, I think I’m going to go for it. And it’s one of the things that you brought up in the conversation that is, don’t forget about the fun, right? It’s not all work. It’s not all about strategy. It’s not all about being business oriented. It’s about just enjoying your team’s company. It’s about being able to connect a different way that you do on a daily basis and most importantly, elevate the quality of relationships that you have with your colleagues at work.
Grace: [00:39:42] Elevate the relationships. You know, it’s I count myself lucky. Liel I work with my sister as the CEO. Our head of medical records works with her brother. So we actually have quite a few family members working here together in our firm. So when it comes to team building and liking and spending time outside of work, we do that already naturally because we’re family and we like each other. And so it’s so important that you have that bond with your teammates and your team members. You know, it doesn’t have to be obviously family, you know, I mean, that’s you that’s your family or you’re not you know, you were born together or not. But this is your team, work, family, you know, and it’s great to like them, you know? And I think on our last podcast, Reza was talking about that, right? He’s like, you know, they spend time together by themselves. Don’t expect that that’s going to happen unless you create that culture. And so, you know, build that culture, make sure that’s the culture that you have because people that work with each other, that like each other are going to be more productive. It’s just the way it works. So do it.
Liel: [00:40:55] That’s right. Grace. Grace, thank you so much for a great conversation. Have lots of fun on your retreat and we’ll be back. We’ll we’ll interrupt your retreat so we can record another conversation. That’s how committed we are to this. But of course not. Well, we’ll do it at a time that you are not busy with it, but we will have a conversation. Thanks so much. Have a great time and looking forward to our next one.
Grace: [00:41:21] Thank you, Liel. You too.
Liel: [00:41:24] And if you like our show, make sure you subscribe. Tell your coworkers. Leave us a review and send us your questions at: ask@incamerapodcast.com. We’ll see you next week.
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