Chapter 7 Does Gender Matter?

• Library: Accelerating Lawyer Success: How to Make Partner, Stay Healthy, and Flourish in a Law Firm (ABA) (2015 Ed.)

Women who make partner . . .

• Like teamwork
• Make work friends
• Have informal mentors
• Are planful
• Set clear boundaries

Additionally, women in general tend to . . .

• Have high levels of focused ownership
• Be optimistic

Matt made partner faster than most of his peers. He spent his time as an associate developing a strong, strategic relationship with a major firm client. He attributes making partner a year early solely to this relationship: the client and partners he worked with to serve that client lobbied the managing partner of his firm on his behalf. While he did not know his client would send a letter concerning his promotion to the managing partner, he knew the client valued him and his work. Matt never became close friends with this client; 99% of his interactions were business. Nevertheless, he poured effort and energy into developing this work relationship.

We heard a similar story from Steven. At the beginning of his career, he began working for a senior lawyer. He quickly realized that he needed this lawyer's support to make partner. He then invested in this relationship by doing his absolute best for this particular partner and making himself available whenever this partner needed him. The investment paid off—the partner whose support he cultivated was essential in his promotion.

Susan also leveraged relationships on her route to partner, but her path looked quite different from Matt's and Steven's. She repeatedly emphasized the importance of personally connecting with people. According to Susan, loving not only her work but also the people she worked with was essential to her success at the firm. She developed authentic, genuine relationships with her coworkers, often helping them out. Some of her coworkers have even become her friends; she's attended colleagues' weddings and met their spouses. Her friendships at work are not all about getting work done, either. Some of Susan's colleagues are confidants as well. Ultimately, when we asked Susan what helped her make partner, both people skills and the ability to work with others were high on her list.

Matt, Steven, and Susan all leveraged relationships in their paths to partnership. However, Susan's relationships unfolded in strikingly different ways from Matt's and Steven's. We found that certain behaviors and traits were especially important for the promotion of women lawyers, including how they build relationships, approach teamwork, and set boundaries. For example, while both men and women partners develop relationships strategically, women are more likely to also focus on teamwork and friendship than men.

Does Teamwork Spell Success?

Women lawyers who made partner were more likely to enjoy teamwork, with 65% of women partners in our study saying they like teamwork compared to about 50% of women non-partners and men lawyers. At first blush, this isn't a surprise: Working in teams seems to be tantamount to life in big firms. Very rarely is a lawyer tackling a deal or a case entirely on his or her own. Especially for important cases or deals, there may be large teams, potentially spanning multiple offices, engaged in finding a solution or winning at trial. Since firms commonly use teams to work on large matters, we would think that lawyers who work well in teams would be more successful. However, it appears that a willingness to engage in teamwork disproportionately affects women's chances of moving up the career ladder. While both men and women lawyers tended to be sold on the concept of teamwork, women partners were the most enthusiastic about being part of a team. For men, being especially supportive of team environments is not a bad thing but is not an indicator of future partnership. For women, it is.

Work Friends? Yes, Please.

Relationships are important building blocks to success; however, as the stories above highlight, our findings suggest that women go about developing these relationships differently. Generally speaking, there is a strategic element to both male and female partners' relationship choices. Both tend to develop relationships with people who may be able to help them achieve their career goals and objectives. However, we found that women are more inclined to get involved in coworkers' lives—and that's not a bad thing. Women who make the effort to connect with colleagues in a deep, authentic way and enjoy making friends at work are the women who also make partner. While almost half of the women partners in our sample told us they make friends at work, less than 20% of women non-partners and men lawyers said the same.

Why is this? For one, it is not surprising that someone with a lot of friends at work is selected to make partner. They are appreciated and valued around the office, and that means something when the existing partners are seeking to expand the ranks. But why, then, is it not nearly as much of an indicator for men? Research on stereotypes suggests that many revolve around perceptions of "competence" and "warmth."³³ Women are typically seen as either homemakers, and therefore high in warmth but low in competence, or as professionals, and therefore high in competence but low in warmth.³⁴ Unfortunately, warmth without competence is typically greeted with paternalism, whereas competence without warmth is typically greeted with envy.³⁵ This puts women in a difficult position: To excel in the workplace, they need to foster both warmth and competence. In other words, high-quality work is not enough for women to get ahead. They also must be likeable. Women need to be warm and caring (and as a result, build strong friendships) and at the same time strong and decisive.

This emphasis on women being warm carries over into a number of situations at work. Susan told us about a time when, as an associate, she sat on the associates' committee to help gather the views of her colleagues for management. The economy was in a downturn at the time, and most associates were concerned about being laid off. One male associate had a different concern, however—while other lawyers were talking about layoffs, he stood up and declared that his bonus was not large enough. Definitely not the move of someone trying to preserve relationships! Susan saw his statement as completely outrageous, and told us that she simply could not imagine one of her female colleagues making that comment, especially not without backlash.

This helps explain why some traditionally female traits, such as...