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You are listening to The Thriving Lawyer with Kathleen Brenner and Carla Ferraz. I'm Kathleen, a highly experienced lawyer and an International Coaching Federation accredited coach.
And I am Carla. Like Kathleen, I am an ICF certified coach and I have worked with top leaders and professionals, many of them lawyers, at some of the world's biggest organizations.
My focus is on using evidence based approaches to help my clients thrive at work and in the rest of their lives. Together,
we bring you the Thriving Lawyer podcast, a podcast filled with ideas and inspiration, as well as practical tips to help you thrive as a lawyer and in the rest of your
life. Let's get into it.
Welcome to episode 12 of Season two of the Thriving Lawyer Podcast. Thrilled to be back for another episode with my [00:01:00] co-partner in all things the thriving lawyer, Carla Ferraz, and today we're going to have a little bit of a reflective discussion following our really interesting podcast interview that we.
Put out a week ago where we interviewed Professor Christian Van Nuremberg and David Love. Now, they were talking about their new book, all about reflective practice and we really spent this session exploring why reflective practice. Is really the missing piece of the performance and wellbeing puzzle for lawyers.
You know, if you haven't listened to that already, really encourage you to go back to that episode before you listen to us now, because we are really gonna draw on some of the themes that came out of that episode. And. Talk about what Carla and I have been thinking about in particular, and I'm particularly gonna ask Carla some questions around her [00:02:00] reflective practice.
So, Carla, welcome. Thank you. Thank you.
How are you Kathleen?
I'm very good, thank you. I'm preparing to head off to Canberra for some lo legal work things, which is very exciting in the morning and I'm enjoying being able to focus today on all things the Thriving lawyer. What about yourself?
Yeah, I'm doing really well as well.
Yeah, I enjoy my half days on Thriving Lawyer and coaching. And yeah. And spend a little bit of time looking after myself as well. Excellent.
So look, Carla, in that little intro that I just gave, I really highlighted where we're gonna go today with this conversation. And so maybe a really good place to start with this, simply me asking you like, well, since we've had that interview, what, what's been on your mind about reflective [00:03:00] practice?
Yeah, so I have always had a reflective practice. It has evolved along the years. Um, but since speaking to David and Christian, my takeaway was the evaluation aspect. I think that it was missing in my practice, I've been quite good at understanding some of the tendency, how they show up and creating goals.
I'm not as good as like evaluating and reviewing and saying, okay, so what worked, what didn't, you know, sometimes I jump very quickly into creating the next action 'cause I'm so action driven. That, the evaluation aspect of it, I think it was, I've definitely increased that and it's been quite interesting.
Okay. So maybe before we go into the specifics then, w why don't you tell us a little bit more about your journey with structured reflective practice? Like when did you first [00:04:00] start deliberately and very intentionally incorporating it into the work that you do?
Yeah, so. I think I've always had a reflective, at least journaling.
Like I, I went back to my parents last year and um, and I found a journal from when I was 11 years old, like already there saying what are the part of the day that I liked and what I was going to do next day. So like very, very basic. And it has evolved along the years. It used to be very much of a venting.
Spot, you know, where I would say the things that I wasn't happy with. And you know, like, and it was quite good because he used to make me very peaceful, to be able to vent to a, to a piece of paper. And I think since the masters, since starting the masters of Coaching psychology, that's where I started using, reflecting like on me as a coach.
And how my [00:05:00] tendencies and how my, my biases and how my, how do I show up by impact to the person in front of me by the, the assumptions that I might make or the questions that I might ask based on those assumptions, right? So this is where I think I started using deliberately, professionally. Um, yeah. And it's been, it brought a lot of clarity.
Too much of my work. So what about then with clients? Because it's one thing to be engaging in self-reflective practices, your soul, it's a really, so related to coaching, right? Mm-hmm. Intimately connected to this idea of self-coaching, but on the other hand, it's quite a different thing to then be using it as a coach with our clients.
Okay. And. I think it's really relevant because for our listeners here as lawyers, maybe they're interested in getting [00:06:00] some coaching. Maybe they've thought about it, maybe they want tips with themselves, but I think there could be value in understanding, like, yeah, how, how have, how do you guide your clients through that process to help em more like engage in self-reflective practice more and what benefits have you seen from that?
I, I think in the first session I always frame coaching. Um, the, the type of coaching I do, the clients, they come to coaching, right? Like I, they don't necessarily choose me as a coach. Like I've, I've been assigned to them somehow, right? Not all of them, but, but a, a great majority and I think, so I spend a little bit of time explaining what coaching is like really framing.
I always frame it as a self-reflection, like practice, like we are here to think together. You know, like I'm here to support you in gain clarity in the in not helping you ask questions. And I always say at the end, like, my desire for this is when the coaching finishes that [00:07:00] you can carry on. With the self coaching, you don't need me here to be able to ask the question.
Sure. Then you might not be able to see that and, and have some of the challenging questions, but you can ask, you know, you can start practicing that. So I think, and also like I, in that beginning of that session, I always say like, look, coaching, the magic of coaching happens outside the session itself. You know, it's when you take some of the things that you're seeing, the awareness that you're seeing here and not applying them in the moment.
And then always like a lot of the conversation, the questions that I ask people usually, you know, they come and say, oh, I need to reflect more on that, or You on this, you know, are very much welcome and invite action steps around reflection about noticing. Noticing. We know like sometimes, well, when does this happen?
You know, when like when someone became aware of, uh, maybe attendance to words of giving [00:08:00] a advice, and then they decided that that's maybe getting in the way of some of, as they're trying to coach more, some of their team members, like, or, or, or bringing, like helping them grow, helping them develop rather than give them the answers.
So well notice when it's happening and when it, so there is a lot of reflection around that, that that's, I mean, did that answer your question? Like, uh, this is how,
uh, yeah, it does. And I think the, you know, the reason that I'm so interested in this is because at the very heart of this idea of the Thriving lawyer is that it is about noticing, you know, we've created this program which we will launch in July, and what really comes from.
That is a structure to help lawyers be able to engage in that reflection and make real change in a logical, coherent way. But at that's heart, it really [00:09:00] is a self-coaching, self-reflective practice. Yeah. To help them notice what's going on now and figure out where it is that they can make changes that will have the biggest impact.
Right. I. So one of the things that I've been thinking about when I think of my own experience as a lawyer and also the experience of the lawyers that I see through this work is that one of the key problems that they have is this issue of just busyness. Absolutely. Feeling like they have so many demands on them at any one time.
They don't have time for this reflection, right? It's this, I'm too busy for that. But the problem with that is that what I see with some of these lawyers is that they end up in this cycle. It's like this rut race where they're a hamster going round and round and round faster and [00:10:00] faster on the hamster wheel.
They can't get off it because the one thing that would allow them to get off it is to slow down and engage in some of that reflection. Even in really small ways. So with that in mind, I imagine that sometimes you get clients in your coaching, and I've seen this in the coaching that I do too, where maybe they're a little resistant to the change.
They want it, but they don't want it. The hard work that it's gonna require, and maybe there's some skepticism, they're like, Ugh. This thriving stuff, this wellbeing stuff. I don't have time for that. I've just gotta get my next matter done. Right. So thinking about what David and Christian talked to us about and all of this about self-reflective reflection, what would you say to those lawyers in our audience who might be feeling skeptical or just that they don't have time for it?[00:11:00]
I would say just try and see the benefits that it gives, because one of the things that a lot of my clients say, you know, people usually notice is that they become really much better at solving problems. Like, because they start engaging with asking themselves questions, they stop and say, you know, a lot of the times.
We don't know how to do something or we have a problems. 'cause we never actually stopped to say, well, what am I gonna do about this? Oh, the main solution is that, okay, but if that is not possible, what else? How do I go about? So that's what the, the self-reflection gives you, gives you an idea of your.
Control back to situations that you might feel that is outside your control. It gives you the sense of like, what can, what can I experiment with? And once you engage in it, [00:12:00] it really changes your life, right? You do get access to a part of yourself that maybe your own inner resources that it, so it has always been there, but you might not be accessing because you are running so much.
And, and by all means, sometimes running so much and people are happy and they're thriving. That's fine. That's working. So go ahead. There's no need to change, but it's when we are feeling tired, like it's when we started saying, well, I'm not living these other values here, or I also wanna spend time with my family.
How do I create this space look and the solutions? I can't say that, you know, you find this magical way of being. It's none of that. It's some, it's very hard work. You know, the more you reflect, more you get to see deeper you go. Um, and of course creating the change, sometimes it really requires you to be in the moment to make different [00:13:00] choices different than what you're used to do.
You know? And that sometimes. Yeah. You do say no to things that you use to say yes to in order to create space to what matters most. Yeah. Well, in the thriving layer, we, we, I guess what, you know, the course really teaches in a more structured way to begin with what are the elements that can help you create that reflection.
Like it's very much, I mean, we are guiding you through the process where reflect here, this will help you understand what you value. But understand what you
want. Yeah. Look, can I, I just wanna echo what you said about the powerful nature of it, because I think since I've been engaging in this work, in terms of coaching, in terms of self-reflection, I think what it got me off is that cycle of every week being a repeat versus this.
Idea of like, I love this phrase of the infinite game. It's like, you know, learning, I play the piano, right? [00:14:00] Like playing the piano. There's never an end point. You've never got to the end where you can't do more. It just doesn't work like that. It's like no matter what, with piano, with tennis, whatever, whatever the hobby is, there is a never ending list of possibilities.
And I feel like this work is a ticket into that. Once you start getting that even in really small ways, like you might start with the tiniest thing, but then you're constantly shifting and changing and it's kind of exciting to think about what you can create, what might be different, and the sense of possibility grows, I think is a big reflection for me.
Yeah,
so, so beautiful what you said there, Kathleen. Yeah. And just like absolutely he, he gives you this sense of the like. Things can go so many different ways. Yes. Infinite norms of possibilities. Right. And then, and that's what the reflection is. You are choosing one of them.
Yeah. You are remembering your own agency.
Mm. 'cause I [00:15:00] think that's one of the problems. And you know, our audience lawyers, they're really smart people. They have got successful lives in at least the outward looking thing. It's not inner. Now the problem is though, is that because of that cycle of busyness and whatever else, you know, you, it's easy to get trapped into that and kind of just take your surrounding elements as a given and to forget your own agency in that process to make changes.
Now, yes, culture matters. Yes, you might work in an environment that has unrealistic expectations of what. You can achieve. That doesn't mean that you don't have agency in the situation to respond. Yeah. And so I think this is where this self-reflection work can have such power, is beginning to realize that agency, that internal locus of control that we talk about in the thriving lawyer to then think about your [00:16:00] actions.
Yeah. Look. Okay. So moving on from that, you know, we talked about that skeptical lawyer. The other thing that I'm thinking about is the perfectionist lawyer. Now, I can see a real risk here for some of our lawyers, and that is that, you know, they like to do things well. They consider themselves high achieve as often, right?
They take pride in their work, they work hard, and sometimes that can lead to tiredness, burnout, et cetera. And I think perhaps one of the risks might be is that if they do adopt, like if they get over the skepticism and they're like, right, I'm gonna be really serious about starting to make these changes.
I'm gonna do the Thriving Lawyer course, or I'm gonna just create 10 minutes a day to do some structured self-reflection about a particular aspect of work or life or whatever else it is. And they become very [00:17:00] perfectionist in the way that they go about that and hard on themselves about. Setting goals that are so high that they either fail, like they get them or they fail, and that sense of perhaps failure, they, you know, they're constantly aiming for that perfectionism.
'cause you know, lawyers are trained for that, trained to be perfectionists. They're also often trained and rewarded for their pessimism. I'm thinking that perhaps something like self-compassion might be important here. That was something that certainly David and Christian really talked about, like their self reflective practices weren't just about peak performance, they were also about wellbeing.
That self-compassion is really important to that. Yeah. Does that resonate? How do you help your clients? What advice would you give to a lawyer? Answer it the way you wish, but really like, I'm interested in how my. Lawyers go about trying to engage in this with that self-compassion.
Uh, [00:18:00] as you're describing the scenario, the first thing that came to mind is an invitation to reflect on the use of the reflective practice as a performance too.
What with curiosity? What is it? What about that? What is that saying? That's one aspect. The other one about the self-compassion. Absolutely. Especially around perfectionism, right? I can say that this is something that I've struggled a lot of my career, you know, and my, my personal life as well, and the self-compassion really allows you to welcome that part of you.
Especially when we, during this, this reflective exercise, you might start becoming more aware. Of where that is showing up. Right. And then you started being like able to change a little bit. Not like to, to, to adapt. [00:19:00] Where, where like where, where, where is good enough? I don't wanna bring this sense of perfection to everything I do because it's actually not possible.
It's not realistic. So once you started noticing that it, you do need the self-compassion to be able to, yeah, I'm embracing this, this, I did that because that was my, you know. What I knew at the time that was the best I could do with the mindset that I had, the awareness that I had. Now that I have a different awareness, how might I apply that difference?
So you don't, you've gotta embrace that rather than say, I don't want this part to be, I don't want that anymore. It's, it's usually an overuse of a strength a lot of the times, right? Like it's, it's something that serves us really well, but helps us achieve good things that, you know, that we can aim at doing good work.
Sometimes when we realize so much on it, it can, not for everybody, but it can become a problem like, and then you, the reflection comes to as a [00:20:00] tool \ self-compassion tool to go and say, to notice, you know, but when you do notice what you do with that information, you do need to be okay.
Understanding and realistic. What led you there without it, it's difficult. Because you get to see a lot more.
Yeah. So what I'm hearing is, is that the more you do it, there's, there is a risk of being really self-critical because you are noticing things and the things that you wanna change and you wanna improve, you wanna do things differently.
So that self bringing that self-compassion is really critical. Um, I think another linkage here is something else that's important, which is. One of the profound insights I know that both you and I have had from doing the Masters of Coaching in coaching psychology, which we're both partway through, is this idea that reflection on its own is not enough [00:21:00] because it's about the nature of the self-reflection, you know, and David and Christian gave a beautiful structure to help people.
That cycle of effective reflective practice where they talked about setting the positive intentions, the outcomes, the planning, the experimenting, and the reviewing. Right? But if you don't do that and you're kind of very unstructured, you're not bringing that self-compassion. It could really lead to like really harmful rumination where you're kind of going around in circles, and I think this is what people get wrong about a lot of journaling.
They think it's enough to journal. They're not really reflecting about the type of reflection that they're having that ends up them in this kind of hamster wheel again, because all they're doing is being critical about what's wrong with them. Yeah. Or what they conceive to be wrong with them or to the point.
Mm-hmm. So, yeah. What reaction do you have to that and how [00:22:00] do you help the clients that you have from falling into that kind of rumination?
And I think it's distinguish, like be able to distinguish what kind of reflection that we are doing here. So Tony Grant from City Uni, he did a study around reflection and rumination and wellbeing.
And, and one of the things that, the outcome of that study, the like, it's like we need to focus on solution focus. Self-reflection, self-reflection, that generating sight, the insight aspect of it. It's the difference between the rumination, like rumination usually is just a cycle of going on a wheel. Like this is not working, it's not working.
It can be part of a solution focused self-reflection. You can think about, well, what is the problem? What am I trying to deal with it like, but then you started asking questions. Okay, we let go of that struggle phase and we release and we started tamping into. Knowing this problem, knowing [00:23:00] this reality, knowing everything else is part of this.
How might I go about that? Again, bringing back that element of agency I can generate inside. And then you get that insight and you say, okay, so what I'm going to do with it? Alright, I'm gonna go to the gym. Like if I realize that I need to look after myself better or something.
So with that in mind.
There's already some helpful pointers for lawyers who are wanting to implement this, but I'll bring you to my last question 'cause I think we've already covered so much in this episode, but for our lawyer listeners who might be thinking about, well, how can they actually begin to incorporate some more structured reflection that doesn't go into that rumination, that's very kind of practical.
What would be some tips to get started?
I would start with, if you're going to take that experiment, create space for it to exist in [00:24:00] your life. 10 minutes, 20 minutes every day, twice a week. When is that? And for how long? Look, I'm going to experiment for two weeks for a month and just try out and see what it works.
So create a space to exist. Then maybe start with, why am I going to try this self-reflection? What do I wanna get out of it? What would I like to see? Like, start reflecting on the self-reflection as well, just becoming clear. What, what is my goal with that? What would I, if this was to give me anything, what would it be different?
And I love just the, the framework that Christian and David said, like, I set the positive intention. What, what we, each time you sit down, what would I. I wanna get out of this 10 minutes here. What would be, you know, what outcome do I want? What might I go about it? Like, you know, and then, and then taking that experiment and then coming back, Hey, I'm gonna sit, you know, I'm gonna try this for [00:25:00] a week and then come back and reflect again.
Yeah. I think the issue about like the coming back to it is really key, right? Yeah. We'll put in the links, um, the cycle of reflective practice in our blog and a few other resources for you so that you can refer to them if you wanna sit down and kind of make a bit of a structure to that. We'll also link, um, Dave and Christian's book, um, in the show notes because that's a really fantastic resource.
I know that I. Have used that practically some recent assessment I did in my masters, but also generally it's been very useful. So look, thank you Carla for engaging in this conversation with me. It's been a real pleasure. And till next time, thank you.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the thriving lawyer with Kathleen Brenner and Carla Ferraz, if you like it, please share it with your lawyer friends and colleagues, and tag us on Instagram at @thriving lawyer or on LinkedIn via the [00:26:00] links in the show notes. And if you liked what you heard, please drop a review in apple podcasts.
It really helps spread the word.
If you'd like to work with us, check out our free resources and our signature course, the thriving lawyer. Which you will find at www.thrivinglawyer.com.au. You can also download our free guide, the lawyer's guide to thriving: a sustainable roadmap for success.
It's filled with great tips and ideas so that you can begin to make real change. You'll find the link to that in our show notes.
We hope this podcast has given you massive value. And that you can use it to begin to create your own thriving life. A life where you can thrive as a lawyer. And in the rest of your life.
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