Karen Gets Coached. Lesson #1 - Acknowledgment.

As the managing partner of The Stritmatter Firm, Karen's role extends beyond a trial lawyer. In this episode of The Velvet Hammer, Karen discusses her recent experiences with two Communication Coaches, one for firm-wide matters and another for personal development. 

Now, you might wonder why she's discussing coaching and counseling so openly with her listeners. Isn't that topic meant to be private? Absolutely! However, the legal profession rarely broaches this topic, which to Karen, in itself, calls for introspection. Tune in to hear more.  🎤 

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Hosted by Karen Koehler and Mo Hamoudi, trial lawyers at Stritmatter Law, a nationally recognized plaintiff personal injury and civil rights law firm based in Washington State.

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Transcript

The Velvet Hammer an Inside Look at Trial Lawyer Life with Karen Kohler. Real-life stories about fighting the good fight. I've started to go to counseling again, except for nowadays, it's called coaching. I actually like the idea of coaching better than counseling, because counseling, to me, brings up memories of the first time I ever had counseling, which was in the late 90s when I was getting well, I was having marital problems, and we ultimately got a divorce, and I was in counseling for several years through that process. So that wasn't fun. And the word counseling brings back those memories. But I'm going to talk to you a little bit about counseling and coaching today. And the first step or the first lesson that, oh, I forgot to tell you the second part because I'm managing partner of the law firm, I also impact the firm culture, and I may have had something to do with some of the issues that we have post COVID in communication. So, yes, the whole firm now has a communications coach. I also have that same communications coach for firm issues, plus a personal coach. Now, first off, you might be thinking, why is she talking to us about coaching or counseling? Isn't that private? Oh, my gosh, of course it's private, and no one ever talks about it. That's a lawyer, and that alone is pause for reflection. 

When I was handling the Ride the Duck case, over half of our clients were from Asia because it was a tour bus hitting a bus full of international students. And the culture in Asia involving mental health or mental health therapy was not very conducive to therapy. It was shameful loss of face. No, we had one client who was forced to admit to having a mental health issue because he was there's mandatory service in South Korea. He had gone into the army. Well, he was in the army, but he was here for vacation with his family, goes to the army and is having major panic attack, claustrophobia, and other issues relating to having just been in. Catastrophic mass tort with multiple deaths crash. He had to let it be known. And what happened to him as a result was that he was pulled out of normal service and made to do basically a completely separate kind of service and marginalized and tagged. Our job as lawyers for that case and all other cases is to talk to our clients about their emotional distress, their mental health. Some people have many people have preexisting issues, and you want to need to sort those out, what was preexisting, and you want to encourage them to get help, if they can get help, especially for PTSD. Did you know that the best way to treat PTSD is immediately, as soon as they can? The statistics are that if you can start doing PTSD therapy, even when you're in the Er, even when you're in the ICU, even when you are very at the very acute stages, the better the outcome, the longer you wait, the worse it is, because you stuff it away. And when you stuff it away, especially for PTSD, it's going to stay there, but manifest in other bad ways, because there's not a good feeling of having therapy when you have a PTSD, because in PTSD, what you have are flashback. You have these constant reoccurring thoughts that trigger you. What, do you actually want to intentionally trigger it and have to deal it with it? No. Your body reflexes are, no, I don't want to do that. So therapy for PTSD is really, really difficult. 

But aren't we hypocrites as lawyers when we are talking about the importance of mental health, emotional well-being, all of those issues that go with being human for our clients and telling them how important this is for them, not just for their case, but for them personally. But we can't fess up if we go to counseling or therapy. It's very hypocritical anyway, since I have very little shame, because I don't think it's shameful, I am going to tell you about my counseling, which now is called coaching, but it's kind of counseling, but they call it coaching. Okay? So it starts off with I'm just going to use the first names of the coach. Darien. And Darien is our communications coach for the law firm. 

COVID wrought evil communication-wise upon our law firm. Our law firm. Was an in the office law firm before COVID 100%. We, however, were paperless and we already had teams and everything else. So the minute that COVID hit, we went to remote. Before there was even a mandate to work from home. We had the foresight to say we're going remote. And we stayed that way solid for about half a year. And then slowly, bit by bit, one day a week staggered, two day a week staggered attendance until we were up. Finally, and this is several years into it, to a hybrid schedule of three days in and two days not in. And that is our norm to this day. It turns out that that experience of going virtual resulted in the biggest challenge our law firm has ever had to its professional mental health well being. Our primary form of communication became email. That was a huge problem. It still is our primary form of communication and we are undoing that. Assumptions started to be made. People didn't know where other people were coming from and made assumptions about that. Criticism was communicated over email. Praise wasn't really communicated at all. People just got into this automaton type of communication style that undermined our well-being. 

So we brought in a communication coach. That communication coach met first at the top because guess who's responsible? That would be the top. It's a top on down messaging. So she had to get me right. And we had brought on Denny, our director of administration. And so he and I, who are at the top of the law firm in terms of management, met with the coach several times and started developing plans. Started trying to figure out what was going on in. And one of the things that was going on was me still is me actually still managing partner. My style. Now on the one hand, there are some exceptional parts of my style. I'm not a typical, typical patriarchal model of a leader. I am not dogmatic. I'm not a dictator. I am not harsh and punitive. I am not that type of a leader. The problem with my leading style, despite being a very decisive, aggressive personality, is that with people I care about, I tend to be it. That's Right. According to Darien, over to the very far, far left of Empathetic. I'm too empathetic. I'm so empathetic that there are some repercussions. One repercussion is that I don't hold people or we don't have a culture of holding people responsible. I mean, everyone does their job. Don't get me wrong. This firm is an elite, high-functioning firm. But that's not enough. We want to rub along perfectly. Even though we're human, we know it can't be perfect. Way better, perfectly than we are now. We want to get out of these COVID habits. We want to just be a lean, mean, well-oiled enterprise that rubs along great. And we were having some friction points. So one is super, super all the way over to the left side of empathetic. That means everyone kind of sets their own rules, which seems fun. And it can be neat until there's conflicts that arise. So we needed some more structure, some more responsibility, and I needed to become a firmer leader without becoming a male dominant dogmatic inflexible dictatorship type of leader. 

So it started off there, just acknowledging. Oh, yeah. That's what I do. This is some problems and starting to get our arms wrapped around this. So the second part of this was that I thought, well, this is pretty profound, and I'm ready for making changes and being better. I think I need help in my private life as well as my personal life. I act the same way with all of my family. I am super. Super. I'm totally non confrontational with my family. And I don't mean in a bad way. I just mean I cannot I cannot say no. I can't deal with any type of. Conflict with person that well, my kids, my intimate family members. And I thought and and I thought, well, if I'm going to deal with this on the office level, I should deal with this on the personal level. So I got a second coach. That's right. I have two coaches, the firm coach and then a personal coach. 

Now, the second coach, who's Sherry, was a counselor for 27 years before she became a coach. And that's pretty good. I think that's a cool balance. She has a counseling background, but we're not going through just counseling. How are you? How is your day? The thing about coaching that's really cool is you have a mission, you have goals. You're going to reach those goals. It's not amorphous. It's more concrete. And it's going to end. Doesn't go on for a long time. And I'll talk about that in a later session. 

But I have these two coaches. Okay? The worlds do collide. So I'm going to tell you our first lesson of the month that the firm is adopting. We went through training, our first training, there will be more. And it was on Communication 101. And one of the principles, the one that we're doing this month, we're taking each of the principles, and we're spending a month on them in the law firm. Just thinking about them or coming up with ways to integrate them is Acknowledgment. 

Acknowledgment is letting someone else see, hear, and understand or feel completely recognized for something that they've done either for you or on behalf of your cause or whatever. It is a critical part of self, I guess, being respect, satisfaction when you feel seen or heard or recognized. Now, I've always, always had the habit of always saying please and thank you ingrained into me from day one. I've always done that. And that's a start. That's a good thing to do, to tell people please and thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you for that. But that's just wrote it's not specific. And so Darien's lesson is the Acknowledgment must be specific. It include adjectives. So not thank you for your work on this. Thank you for taking an extra day to make sure this was right. I really like the language you used, being more specific in the work setting. It also works in the human setting. I haven't gotten to that point yet. 

We're still on the work part, but I want to talk to you about why, for me personally, and maybe it'll hit a chord within you, why for me, this is a real weak point, and I'm going to start off by just telling you how I created this culture in the law firm. So Paul and Keith. Paul Stritmatter. Keith Kessler. Before our law firm was created 20 years ago, they had their own law firm in Hoquium, and anytime they resolved a case or had something great happen, they went and celebrated. Now, the firm was only like five people, two attorneys, three staff, something like that. Sometimes there were three attorneys, very small, right under six or seven people, and they would go out and go to a restaurant or someone's house, and they would take trips together. They would do anything they could to celebrate, anything. They didn't even practically need an excuse, and they went and celebrated it. Paul and Keith are both incredibly gregarious people that are super social, that love a good party and setting them up, their spouses to Mary Elizabeth and Lynn, they are just all about having great parties. And the thing about parties is that they celebrate. And there's a value in celebrating as a team. It's an acknowledgment of, wow, we did it, and adding excitement and pride and letting people feel warm and fuzzy and fabulous for changing someone's life. Celebration is a good thing. 

Enter Karen. Now, we have to go way, way back. This is the counseling part that I've already gone through, but it was resurrected a little bit here again recently. So I was raised by parents who were critical. They're critical people, and not like just negative critical. They're critical thinkers, right? Both of them are scientists, and in addition, she is an attorney. So critical thinkers, very high standards, and it was their standards and their way. So, for example, I graduated from college with a degree. English literature. Now, I chose that degree, admittedly, because I really should have just done what I wanted to do, which was to be a music major, and then I was going to go to law school. I always knew I was going to go to law school, and I thought, well, I probably need to have more of a degree. But I did not like undergraduate. I just wanted to be in law school. So I figured no professor could ruin a good book. I really did have problems with a lot of professors. I'm disrespectful of authority, and if something's mediocre, I will point it out. Just ask Mr. Kozu, who in the 10th grade, my English teacher. I corrected him in front of the class so many times that he talked to the principal and had me sent to the library with a tutor. And that's how I finished out. I guess it was 11th grade, my 11th grade year of English. He didn't want me in his class anymore. So when you have that, I guess for me, whatever the reason is, is I don't accept praise well at all. They didn't give it rarely, and if I heard it from other people, it just didn't feel genuine because I didn't feel like it was real, it was good enough, like their standards are too low. This is very convoluted. This is why I'm in counseling, coaching. Long story short, I've never been one that likes praise. I don't seek it out. When it comes in, I kind of note it and then move on. It doesn't make me feel like it changes me. I'm pretty internal in that way. I have my own kind of monitor of did I do good or not? And if I check it off, then I'm satisfied with that. I don't need someone else to say good job, which comes in handy because when I was a young lawyer, very young lawyer, I worked for lawyers initially at diamond and Sylvester who didn't praise very well either. And it never even fazed me. It never fazed me at all because I knew if it was good or not. And I could tell rather, regardless of the words that they said. 

Fast forward. And here you have a person that doesn't depend on praise, doesn't really like praise. I will praise other people, but probably maybe not enough, and certainly not specifically. And so we get to the point of comparing me to Keith and Paul, right? Mr and Mr celebration in. So I have settled and tried the biggest cases in the law firm's history still have not taken the team on the last big verdict to dinner. The day after the Duck's verdict came in record-breaking, I was in the office working on cases. Now, the good thing is this is win or lose, right? I don't just grovel into a ball. If I lose either, which I think, knock on wood, rarely do, but even if I do, it's back to business. I don't celebrate because I'm only as good as that day. That day was great. That happened. Yay. Next case, next day that's affected the office. It's a lack of acknowledgment. It's a lack of celebration. 

Now, there are some things that I do right. For example, if you are in my core group of paralegals, of which there are five, if you talk to any one of them, they will tell you that they and I know this, they love working for me. They feel safe. They feel appreciated. I do good in a small group, but setting the tone overall, no. 

So lesson number one. Lesson number one for this month is acknowledgment. Now, Denny came up with a great idea, him and Kassie. Kassie has created this beautiful chart of acknowledgment. And Denny has a pile if you go to his office, he has a pile of thank you cards and chocolate bars. We're down to two. We're going to have to go get more chocolate bars so that people, when they want to thank someone specifically for something that they have done and acknowledge them, they go to Demi's office, pull a thank you card, and get Theo's chocolate pretty good chocolate bar and hand them out. We're going to do a better job in our office. 

Again, the purpose of this isn't to say that you have this exact issue, but to talk about how we can do better as people. You when you think about how critical jurors are to our clients who are injured. They want to know, why didn't you go to counseling? Well, even if they did go to counseling, how does that really change someone unless they can be motivated to somehow make some of these rules that might help them more implemented or process the terrible things that happened to them. Even if you process them doesn't mean that you're going to be have any less consequences as a result of having some kind of a therapist or counselor. 

But as I wind up my 62nd year and approach my birthday month, I like the idea of never being satisfied with who you are. Always striving to be better even though it is a pain. A pain, pain, painful pain in the butt. Honestly, not even just painful, but just a pain in the butt. Irritation to self-reflect and to do what we can to make our world a better place. Not just for us, but for those around us and for the causes that we have. 

So as I end this first podcast but wait, you're going to hear a kicker on this one. You know how Marvel always gives like the kicker after the credits? Wait till you hear this kicker. This kicker is so good you're not going to believe it. You're going to fall over. I totally know you are. Acknowledge. I am going to continue to. And I'm going to print out Kassie's chart. I want people to know that I see them, that I hear them and that I recognize them for what they do. I want to do that more regularly and more extensively than just my smaller group of people. I want to do it for a much larger group and for that small group of people that I don't do it enough for. I want to do it better. 

My children, for example. Do I acknowledge them enough? I don't know. Okay, so the credits are rolling and here is the preview of the next episode. So my personal coach gave me a book to read and the book is called Unbound a Woman's Guide to Power by Kasia Urbaniak or something like that. I thought, okay, fine, I'll get it and I'll read it because you told me, too. Okay, I haven't read it. I just started. However Kasia has two interesting features. Like, is she a PhD. She is not. Is she an M. D. Does she have a Master's in Psych? She does not. How is she talking about power? Well, I'll tell you. One of her one of her claims to fame for 17 years, she was a dominatrix. That's correct. This is what the coach the book the coach has given me to start reading. And I have to tell you, so far, it's pretty good. And I'll be talking about some more of it next time. Acknowledge. See here. Recognize. Over and out.