In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Mark Murphy discuss:
- The challenges and nuances of hiring the right talent for law firms
- The critical distinction between attitude and skills in recruitment
- How leadership traits can hinder effective hiring decisions
- Practical strategies for improving the legal hiring and interview process
Key Takeaways:
- Eighty-nine percent of new hires fail due to attitude issues like entitlement or resistance to feedback, not because of technical skill gaps, showing why firms must prioritize attitude in hiring.
- Top-performing teams rely on five key roles—director, trailblazer, harmonizer, achiever, and stabilizer—each providing distinct behavioral strengths that drive success.
- Interviewers can quickly spot problem solvers by asking about a past mistake and seeing if the candidate naturally explains how they resolved it without prompting.
- High performers use first-person and past-tense language when describing real experiences, while weaker candidates rely on vague, hypothetical answers using second-person phrasing.
“I always tell leaders this: ironically, the better the leader you are, often the worse hirer you are, because you have to dial down your natural optimism and desire to see everybody be great.” — Mark Murphy
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Episode References:
Think Again by Adam Grant: https://www.amazon.com/Think-Again-Power-Knowing-What/dp/1984878107
About Mark Murphy: Mark Murphy is a New York Times bestselling author whose groundbreaking book Hiring for Attitude has transformed the way companies hire and build high-performing teams. His pioneering research revealed that nearly half of new hires fail within 18 months — and a staggering 89% of those failures result from attitude, not a lack of skills. His insights have reshaped hiring strategies for Fortune 500 companies, fast-growing startups, and government agencies worldwide.
Connect with Mark Murphy:
Website: https://www.leadershipiq.com/
Book: Hiring for Attitude: https://www.amazon.com/Hiring-Attitude-Revolutionary-Recruiting-Tremendous/dp/1259860906
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markamurphy/ & https://www.linkedin.com/company/leadership-iq/
Connect with Steve Fretzin:
LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin
Twitter: @stevefretzin
Instagram: @fretzinsteve
Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.
Website: Fretzin.com
Email: [email protected]
Book: Legal Business Development Isn’t Rocket Science and more!
YouTube: Steve Fretzin
Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911
Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You’re the expert. Your podcast will prove it.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Steve Fretzin [00:00]
Hey everybody. Steve Fretzin here, and this isn’t the time to wait and see what’s going to happen in the world. It is time to take action. If you’re ready to build a book of business of your dreams that you can be proud of, you’re going to want to start off by buying my new book. Be that lawyer, 101 top Rainmaker, secrets to growing a successful law practice. That’s the next move you need to make. It’s real advice, proven results, 101 experts all in one place. It’s now available on Amazon. Grab a copy, and you can be that lawyer.
Narrator [00:33]
You’re listening to be that lawyer. Life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Each episode, your host, author and lawyer coach, Steve Fretzin, will take a deeper dive, helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now here’s your host, Steve Fretzin.
Steve Fretzin [00:55]
Hey everybody, welcome back. It is Steve Fretzin, and you are listening to the be that lawyer podcast. This show is all about helping you be that lawyer, confident, organized and a skilled Rainmaker. And this doesn’t happen as an isolated thing. This happens as a community. This happens as a village. And it happens by taking advice from people that know more about stuff than you do. And there’s things that you know more about than I know. And so I’m listening to lawyers talk about the law all the time, and now you have to listen to us talk about how to grow and scale your law practice so, you know, suck it. You know, that’s just the way it is, but we’re going to do a great job for you today. I got Mark waiting in the wings. How’s it going my friend?
Mark Murphy [01:31]
Excellent. Thanks so much for having me, Steve.
Steve Fretzin [01:33]
Hey man, awesome. And I loved your quote. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen this quote before, and right away, when I saw it, I started smiling. And here’s why. The quote is, you can’t teach employees to smile. They have to smile before you hire them. And that’s Artie Nathan CHRO of Steve wins gaming company. So, you know, I don’t really think about that, but the power of smiling and the power of that attitude and that feeling you get from someone when they smile at you, I don’t, yeah, that can’t be taught. I don’t think.
Mark Murphy [02:00]
It’s, you know, the thing is, skills are easy to teach. You know, if you want to teach somebody legal skills, where do you send them? You send them to law school.
Steve Fretzin [02:10]
No, you send them to me. No. Business Development skill.
Mark Murphy [02:13]
All right, yeah, business development, growing the legal practice. You said this. You want to learn the basics of, you know, tort law, whatever you go to law school. And the interesting thing, though, is that attitude is so much harder to teach than the skills are. And yeah, is it theoretically possible with enough time and intervention, perhaps, but it is that is one where the juice is not worth the squeeze. It is so much easier to hire the if you need people who can smile, so much easier to hire the people who can who are already smiling. Yeah, and then you know, you can fill in skills if you need to.
Steve Fretzin [02:54]
Yeah, that’s awesome. I absolutely love that. I people don’t know this, but I ran a recruiting firm for like, five years, and we were really trying to teach people not just to hire on the resume and then the skills, but really looking at, you know, their behaviors and their attitudes and their and what does your gut tell you, and all these different feet factors that are outside of what you would find in a traditional resume or an interview. So I love that, and we’re going to get deep, deep into it today. Mark Murphy, you are the founder of leadership IQ, and how do you get into, you know, writing books and running a business on leadership and helping people recruit and hire the right way.
Mark Murphy [03:30]
So for me, it all started doing research. And I, you know, I was younger, I was in my 20s, and I was working on in consulting and organizations going through turnarounds, and I just started doing research. And I figured, you know, if I uncover something in the research, it’s not dependent on me being younger, up and coming. It’s not dependent on my personal gravitas. And you know, how much gravitas do we have when we’re 23 or whatever.
Steve Fretzin [03:58]
Or, as they call it, Riz, yeah, a Riz, exactly, my teenager. Just my teenager is not listening, but he just made a face at me if he was listening to his dad saying the word Riz.
Mark Murphy [04:09]
My son turns 18 tomorrow, so mine is as well. And so, you know, with things like hiring for attitude, all my work began with just doing a study and just asking, you know, how many new hires actually work out? How many new hires fail? Okay, well, let’s just go look at that. And then I don’t know. Let’s for all the new hires that fail, and it’s about 46% of them. Why do they fail? And then, you know, we went and discovered that and got to the, you know, it’s 89% of the time it’s attitudinal stuff. But once we had the data, it became hard to contest, because that’s when people started to say, oh, yeah, no, actually, this does sync up with what I’m seeing in real life. But for me, all of my projects have always begun with some kind of a study, because I hate the. Idea of being wrong, and I figure, if I have enough data, you know, it may change by a percent or two, but we’re going to be a lot closer to the truth than if I were just pulling stuff out of thin air and taking a wild guess.
Steve Fretzin [05:13]
Yeah, and it’s so interesting, the most of the law firms that hire don’t have any professional or management training to do it in a way that’s going to drive results. They a lot of them make mistakes, even years, years, years in. And we know like the rules sort of slow to hire, quick to fire, but many of them, like, they feel good about something, like, I’m one of these people that made mistakes hiring, because I just love everybody, right? And I just believe that everybody can be what I think or want them to be, and that’s just absolutely not the case. Is what I found out, unfortunately, the hard way.
Mark Murphy [05:49]
You know, it’s funny, one of the qualities that makes somebody a great leader, what you just talked about having that belief that this person can succeed and I can help them succeed, and my gosh, no way are you going to fail on my watch. That is an amazing leadership characteristic. It is also, ironically one of the absolute worst.
Steve Fretzin [06:11]
I knew you were going to go there, damn it.
Mark Murphy [06:14]
When you’re hiring it’s, you know, I always tell leaders this, ironically, the better the leader you are, often the worst hirer you are because you have to dial down your natural optimism and desire to see everybody be great. You have to take that, tuck it away and willing to watch them fail in an interview and just it’s like watching a car wreck that you know you could prevent but you can’t prevent it. Yeah, you have to stop yourself for these 30 minutes. Let it happen.
Steve Fretzin [06:47]
You know, I also think it might be the difference between what makes a great or what makes a leader different than a manager. I mean, I think they’re different skill sets, like I’m I think I’m a great leader. I also believe that I’m a pretty terrible manager, also a great coach, but not but I don’t think they’re all three of those are like different skill sets and mindsets.
Mark Murphy [07:08]
You know, it’s funny when we look at the composition of a team. For example, the best performing teams are really made up of five distinct roles. There’s somebody on that team who’s a director. This is somebody who is able to make tough decisions and over, you know, even if nobody likes them, that’s okay, I make the tough decisions. There’s a trailblazer, somebody who’s coming up with those big, out of the box ideas. There’s a harmonizer, somebody who is concerned with growth and making sure that the team is feeling good, and there’s a psychological safety. Then there’s an achiever, somebody who’s like, Listen, I don’t need to be in charge. Just let me roll up my sleeves and get my work done. And then there’s the stabilizer, and this is like the dot, the i’s cross, the T’s, I’ll get the trains to run on time. But when we think about the leader versus a manager, for example, leaders will often be in more of that director role, sometimes the harmonizer role, whereas a manager is often going to be more in that stabilizer role. But the interesting thing is, if you’re talking about like a team, for example, you actually do need all of those. Because if you have a leader and there’s nobody making the trains run on time, I’m going to get anything done the same time if the trains are running on time, but nobody can make a decision or craft a vision for where we’re going. Well, and it feels terrible. Well, great, then it’s getting, yeah, you got the trains to run on time, but it’s more of a death march than it is anything else. And so it really is those it’s that balance, but that’s part of hiring too, is to recognize, what are you what do you need, what do you have, and then what is the person that you’re interviewing supposed to come in and fill for you?
Steve Fretzin [08:53]
Yeah. So then what are the biggest mistakes that you see hiring managers make that could be in the recruiting process, the interview process, or the onboarding process, or, by the way, lack of onboarding process.
Mark Murphy [09:03]
So we see pretty major mistakes, everything, every it really is there are. So let’s take a couple of specific things. So in the interviewing process, I’ll give you one insanely tactical, simple mistake that’s easy to correct. Okay, imagine that we’re interviewing somebody, and we want to know how resilient this person is. So we might ask them a question, like, you know, could you tell me about a time you made a mistake at work? All right, so we want to know we in a way, in a high pressure Law Firm, we want to know everybody’s going to make a mistake, everybody’s going to screw up at some point. But how well does this person bounce back? How quickly do they bounce back? Now, one major mistake that people make is they take a question like that, and what they do is, could you tell me about a time you made a mistake at work, and how you overcame that? Now here’s the thing, if you imagine that there’s two kinds of people in the world, problem bringers and problem. Solvers. If you ask a problem Bringer about the problem, they will tell you about a problem and nothing else. That’s it. That’s all they will tell you. Here’s what went wrong. If you ask a problem solver about a problem, they’ll tell you about the problem, but then automatically, with no further prompting required, they will automatically tell you how you solved it. So for example, my rule is never ask somebody in an interview how would they solve the problem. Ask them about a problem. Could you tell me about a time you made a mistake at work and then yeah, zip it exactly. And because that candidate will reveal to you instantly the kind of personality they have. Oh, yeah, I made mistakes, but it’s because my boss dunk and the senior partner didn’t tell me a darn thing. What was I supposed to do? Yeah? Whereas somebody who’s a problem solver is going to say, Yeah, I made a mistake. Let me tell you about one specific time, and then here’s what I did to overcome it. And I tell you I’ve never made that mistake again. It’s amazing. The difference is that, you know, so there are simple things like that that are insanely powerful that just instantly clue you in. Another thing still in the interview is that if you listen to how candidates speak, interviewers often get fooled by really nice sounding but somewhat hypothetical answers. Could you tell me about a time you made a mistake at work? Sure you know, what I find is when you make a mistake, really, what you have to do is do a bit of self reflection. You really have to take a deep look at yourself and figure out where can you do a little bit better. And so I always pride myself on if a mistake gets made, I’m always going to be the hardest critic of my own self. Now, sounds lovely. Ish didn’t answer my question in the least. It’s a purely hypothetical. So we’ve actually analyzed over 20,000 candidate answers. And without boring your listeners with all of the nitty gritty, what I can tell you is that if you listen for words like first person pronouns versus second person pronouns or past tense verbs versus future present tense verbs, high performer candidates use a lot more first person pronouns and past tense verbs, so they say things like I did. I had a time last month where I faced the following problem, whereas a low performer is a lot more likely to use second person pronouns present future tense verbs. So they’ll say things like, what you should do when you have a problem like that is, or I will look into the records, and then what I like to do is, or what you should do, or what you could do in a case like that. So I always think of I did versus you should. And it’s not that every I did answer is still going to be good, but at least you know that they are telling you an accurate portrayal of what actually happened, whereas a lot of interviewers get fooled by answers that sound nice but don’t actually tell you a darn thing.
Steve Fretzin [13:08]
Well, and it’s also in the subtleties of what you’re listening for in the language that you’re hearing that gives you a lot of the answers about who takes ownership and responsibility and who may have the right attitude, or the solution mentality versus the problem mentality, which you mentioned. So I love all of that. Let me, let me ask you this. I mean, there’s your research showed that 89% of hiring failures are due to attitude rather than technical skills. And obviously, in the law there, you need technical skills, right? You don’t want to hire someone that have to teach them everything if you’re going to pay them the top dollar. So why do firms then focus on experience and qualifications versus other attributes like attitude?
Mark Murphy [13:47]
The short answer is because it’s easy.
Steve Fretzin [13:51]
Okay, laziness. Thank you. Yeah, really it lawyers, you’re lazy.
Mark Murphy [13:54]
It’s so easy to test for skills and so, you know, I mean, it’s, we do have things like, I don’t know, bar exams, for example, that give us some kind of a baseline assessment of how well does this person actually know the law. What that does not tell us is whether they are going to be any good at bringing in or retaining clients, whether they are going to be a nightmare to work with, if they’re working with paralegals or a senior partner or whatever. And the interesting thing is that companies, still to this day, focus so much on the hiring of skills is just it’s just easy to do, and so it really is part of it, it’s lazy. Part of it is they often don’t have the training to hire for the attitudinal piece, and what they often don’t do as well. And this is a thing that I encourage everybody to do, is take a look at every failed hire that you’ve had in your company in the past three months, six months, 12 months, pick a time frame. Da. A matter and do an honest to goodness, look at a real, you know, heart and soul, you know, deep look and go. Why did this person fail? What was it? Did they lack the skills? Were they stupid, or was there something attitudinal? Was it they were a colossal pain in the rear to deal with. They were narcissistic every day. Was drama with them. You know, I always tell leaders, if you’ve ever uttered the phrase, they’re a high performer with a bad attitude. That’s like your classic red flag. And if you do an honest to goodness, look at why people tend to fail in your own organization, in your firm. Yeah, most of the time, what you couldn’t find is they were driving you bananas. It’s not that they, you know, couldn’t figure out how to turn the computer on, or they couldn’t write a brief or whatever it is, but it’s that they were just so difficult, or they couldn’t bond with the clients, or they couldn’t bond with the colleagues, or whatever it is.
Steve Fretzin [15:58]
With proven SEO and digital marketing strategies that drive actual clients to your firm. Rankings.io. Prides itself on proof, not promises. Mentality. The best firms hire rankings.io. When they want rankings, traffic and cases, other law firm marketing agencies can’t deliver. Get More rankings, get cases and schedule a free [email protected] today. Hey everybody. It’s Steve Fretzin as the you know, I’m the host of the be that lawyer podcast, and if you’re serious about growing your law practice, let’s talk. I’ve coached hundreds of attorneys to build bigger books of business without selling chasing or wasting time. This isn’t a sales pitch. It’s a real 30 minute strategy session to explore what’s possible for you in your practice. Just head over to fretzin.com and grab a time that works for you and you, and let’s make this your breakout year. So then, what are the good questions to ask, or the ways to identify someone that has whether it’s like a go for it attitude or a teamwork attitude or an attitude that’s gonna breed success in a firm?
Mark Murphy [16:58]
So a couple of things. Number one is that the attitudes that you want in your firm are going to vary. They’re going to be different from every organization, and so let’s imagine, for example, that a big priority at your firm is you want your attorneys to really build deep, emotional connections with the clients like one of your selling points is you connect with your clients like they trust you. Okay, so maybe one of the things you’re trying to assess in that case is, how well do you build an emotional bond with your clients? So I might ask something like, you know, could you tell me about a time one of your clients felt overwhelmed by their legal challenges? And what I’m looking for here is, how well did you handle that? If you said something like, Well, you know, most of my clients tend to feel overwhelmed. This is part of the job. I just, you know, tell them, Listen, sit back, relax. Let me do my job. You just sit there and like, Okay, well, that’s telling me very clearly you are not a fit for my firm that is predicated on building deep emotional bonds with with our clients, or if, for example, I need somebody who is more of a go getter and somebody that is they’re going to be good and in more of a hunter mode. I might ask them something like, you know, listen, could you tell me about a time you struggled to meet your billing requirements? And now, if they start telling me, Well, you know, yeah, it just seemed like all the business at the firm was slow, and so I, you know, didn’t phase me too much. I just chalked it up to being kind of a seasonal thing. Well, that’s a lot different than the person who says, Yeah, you know what, I had a month where I was struggling a bit. So what I did is, I have a couple areas of expertise. So I went to all the senior partners in the firm, and said, hey, what can I do to start helping you on some of your cases? Where can I lend some of my help, some expertise I have some time in my schedule. And you know, one of those is much more of a go getter answer than the other one. And so again, depending on the the attitudes I’m really looking for, if I want that somebody can emotionally connect. If I want somebody who’s more of a go getter, if I want somebody who’s, you know, can bounce back, I might ask about, could you tell me about a time you made a mistake? Or could you tell me about a time client didn’t take your advice? Or could you tell me about a time your idea or opinion was rejected, you know, okay, but those would be, you know, if I were just making a stock list of starting places, those would be some of the places I would start.
Steve Fretzin [19:47]
Those are some fantastic questions and suggestions that you’re making to help people interview more effectively. The I think the thing that that lawyers may not be doing enough. Of is thinking about what the attitude of that role, of that job is. I’m looking for a rainmaker that’s going to have a I can’t quit attitude, versus someone that’s going to have a deep trust attitude, and realizing there are different types of attitudes, versus just a positive attitude, which is kind of what we associate attitude. You have a positive attitude or negative attitude, you’re suggesting there’s multiple varieties of good attitudes that you might want to identify for particular roles, which I think is brilliant. It’s like you wrote, it’s like you wrote a book or something about this. Exactly, right? All right, I’ve got, I’ve got something for you. All right, Mark, I’m gonna throw something I’ve been doing for 20 plus years, and I just want to get your take on it. Because one of the challenges I have in dealing with the word sales and lawyers, dealing with the word business, development, marketing, whatever that heck we want to call it. It’s not what they signed up for, but they recognize now that I have they have to do it. We have to do it. It’s a part of the job. If you want to have independence, freedom, your own, you know, decision to run your life the way you want it, versus having everyone else be your boss. And so I’ve brought it down to three main attributes that dictate results or success. Attitude is one of them, positive attitude. Number two is belief, belief in oneself. And number three is, behaviors, having positive behaviors, and do you have a feeling about which of those would drive results more than others? I want to share my two cents about it, but I want to get your take on what you think about it.
Mark Murphy [21:33]
So there’s a couple of things. One is that we know when we look at some of the attitudes that drive sales success, and so some of those attitudes will turn into behaviors, okay? That you know, for example, discipline is in a lot of sales environments. Now, it’s not true for all, but in a lot of sales environments, discipline being able to maintain the right number of outreaches, you know, little bit on your sales model, but the right number of outreaches making the right number of calls may have the right number of touches at some point, it just becomes math, right that you can’t, you’re not going to get the, you know, a sufficient revenue in without a sufficient amount of activity. And there is an attitude that helps drive that. And because some people are more disciplined in that way than others, you have people that are going to be more of the, you know, creative types, brainstorming types, and it’s going to be a lot is more free form, a lot less linear. But oftentimes salespeople, the successful ones it is, they are able to just stick and grind it out and pound it through. So, you know, that’s one characteristic, another characteristic that we see, and this tie, it’s very related to that, is persistence. Most sales requires persistence. Again, there are there. You can come up with examples where it’s not persistent. But most in this day and age, you know a lot, especially for professional services and legal, is going to fall under that. It’s going to be longer sales cycles, it’s going to be multiple touches. It’s not going to be a poof one shot. And I like the big client. It’s not like it is on suits, right? And it’s like, you know, it’s a lot less sexy than that in real life. And so the attitude of persistence, somebody who does not give up and can stick to the plan and is just going to work that thing every single day, those are the people that, typically, again, you know, on average, are going to end up being more successful in sales. And that’s those become key attitudes that drive behaviors, that, if you’re hiring sales, people become important.
Steve Fretzin [23:53]
Well, yeah, and I agree with that 100% and I think when you’re hiring, and you know, my background is sales all the years, you know, from selling shoes when I was 16, all the way through selling franchises into my 30s, in it, you had to have thick skin and you had to be persistent and have a discipline, and more than in in maybe any other kind of environment, I’m dealing with people who have that in the legal space and billable hours and in learning their craft and all that. But when you have to take that and then address it into something you’re not 100% bought into. What I have sort of found is that I have to kind of start from wherever we are. Some people come in with a great attitude and dedication and all the things that they need to go after it. Then you get other people that, you know, they’re kind of like pissed off that they have to do it, and they’re not happy. What I try to do then is I try to have them start working on some of the behaviors, whether it’s making five calls a week, emailing, posting on LinkedIn, just get comfortable with some of the behaviors. They start to see that, that over time, they get results, proof, evidence that this thing that we’re doing together is working. And what I have found that that starts off a positive. Positive cycle of their attitude starts to get better, the negative feeling about it and the feeling about the word sales starts to improve, and then their belief in themselves goes up, and then everything kind of spirals in a positive direction. And so but again, am I always happier with a client that comes in with a great attitude? Day one? Of course, like we’re not starting from a negative. We’re starting from, you know, ground zero. But I feel like there are ways to improve attitudes. Now this is all a lead in to, can someone hire someone with technical skills that maybe doesn’t have quite the best trusting attitude, or the most, you know, persistent attitude or whatever, and work with them on that? Or is that a very tough thing to accomplish.
Mark Murphy [25:42]
It depends on how much that ad, that particular attitude, resembles the attitudes of the people that have failed in your firm. Okay, so for example, I like to do, I call it the 333 exercise, take the three best people and the three worst people in your firm over the past three months, and look at what are the commonalities of the three best people? What are the commonalities of the three worst people? So for example, you may find that your one of the major attitudes of your three worst people is a kind of negativity and defeatism, like, well, that’s not going to work. That’s never going to work out. But maybe what you find is that you hire somebody that doesn’t have much in the way of discipline. There’s sort of an unmade bed and scattered all over the place, but they and so that’s not great, but they don’t have that negativity, defeatist attitude. And so you look and go, Well, yeah, I mean, is that the ideal, no, but it’s not a deal breaker. Then, as long as have one of those deal breaker attitudes that I know just and maybe it only is a deal breaker, because I personally can’t live with it like it’s my firm, and if I have to listen to that defeatist attitude, I’m going to fire you inside of four months because I just it will make my head crack. Happen? Yeah, but I can work with attitudes that might not be the perfect, ideal attitude, as long as it’s not one of my deal breaker attitudes.
Steve Fretzin [27:14]
Or the core of what you’re trying like, What’s your why? What is your firm’s culture? What are you all about? You want to bring in people that are have a similar mindset and not are not going to pose in, by the way, you know, like a messy bed a disorganized office that you know I used to be, you know, one of the most disorganized people that I knew. You come to my office, I have no paper, and people are tired of hearing me brag up, by the way. But like, you know, I’m, like, the most organized person I know, and that’s not how I’m built. So there are ways, you know, getting things done with David Allen and other things, like tools, you can help people to improve, you know, some things. And, you know, my teenager has the messy room. I used to have a messy room too. Guess what? Now I’m neat as a pin. So you just, sometimes it just, it’s time, and it’s maybe getting some mentorship coaching. Hey, man, this is so great. Before we wrap up, I just want to mention your book, hiring for attitude. Can you just tell a little bit about what that is? Because I think everything you’ve shared here today are these are critical skills and critical components of what successful law firms need to do to hire. So just take a moment on your book.
Mark Murphy [28:17]
Yeah, so the book is essentially a guide as to how do you find the right attitudes at your firm that drives your firm, that makes you unique? Secondly, how do you then build interview questions around those attitudes? Third, how do you then actually assess candidates answers like learning how to listen, like all those word choices and stuff I mentioned. And then how do you recruit people that have those attitudes? Because if you can fill your pipeline with people that have more of the right attitudes to begin with, it just cuts down on the amount of work that you have to do in the interview process. You know, just one less thing you have to grapple with.
Steve Fretzin [28:57]
Yeah, I love it. Marx. Thank you so much, man. 30 minutes came and went. That was your book. But let’s also talk about a game changing book that you pointed out to me, which is think again by Adam Grant. Can you take a minute on that?
Mark Murphy [29:09]
Yeah, the one of the things I love about that book is that it’s you’re really gonna rethink what it means to be wrong. So we talked about, you know, could you tell me about a time you made a mistake at work? Well, one of the things think again will do for you is help you think about, you know, it’s okay to be wrong, that real intelligence is not always being right. Real intelligence is the ability to rethink, to unlearn things, relearn new things, and stay mentally flexible. So it’s, you know, those are we call it coachability, like in hiring for attitude, it’s coachability and Adam Grant. It’s, it’s thinking again, but it’s, I love it because it’ll give you a different take on it, not related to hiring, but it is such an absolutely critical skill that, listen, none of us are going to be right all the time. So learning how to bounce and rethink and unlearn. And reform have more fluid intelligence. Not just, you know, I memorized something once. The fluid part of it is really, absolutely critical.
Steve Fretzin [30:09]
Awesome. Well, everybody, check out two books. Check out hiring for attitude, by Mark Murphy, who’s with us right now. And then also, check out think again by Adam Grant. Want to take a moment to thank our sponsors. We’ve got pimcon coming up in October, and you’re going to want to check that off. You’re a PI attorney. It’s the best experience you’ll have at a conference all year. We’ve got law her podcast with Sonia Palmer, doing a great job lifting all women up and helping them to be their best selves. And I also want to plug in the be that lawyer program. If you’re interested in growing your law practice to an entirely different level, and you’re tired of taking orders from everybody else, and you want to own your own book of business, you know, take 30 minutes with me. Go to my website, fretzin.com, book a time. We’ll talk. I can tell you, if we’re a fit, we’ll keep talking. If we’re not a fit, I will be a good resource for you. I’ll try to push you to other people that may be a better fit. I’m not. I’m not opposed to that, and I enjoy doing that. So all good there. Mark, if people want to get in touch with you, they want to learn more about leadership. IQ, what are the best digits for them to reach you?
Mark Murphy [31:13]
Best way is to go to leadership. Iq.com, and you’ll find, you can find the books there, the courses we have. And there’s, if you go to our research tab, there’s all of the studies related to if you want to nerd out and go data, and then if you want to take some tests, leadership tests, go to the quizzes section, and there’s a dozen different free leadership assessments there as well.
Steve Fretzin [31:36]
Yeah, fantastic. And Hey folks, you know you hear me say this all the time, but there’s things that you can hear on this show that may be useful to you now, like you have a team and you’re hiring and you need to use what Mark is sharing. You may also consider that, you know, you might help your firm, or you might end up going out on your own and then scaling up something, and whether you’re buying his book or you’re taking notes on the show and in the different questions and the different things we brought up, this is all the kind of things that you’re going to continue to get from be that lawyer. So, you know, I’m not saying you have to have a pen and paper out every time you’re listening, but, you know, I listen to it again, and really, you know, think about how this can help you in your career and help you scale and build a practice of your own mark. Thank you so much. Man is just so impressed by you. And one of the, by far, one of the in 500 episodes, one of the best interviews we’ve had on not only leadership and attitude, but in hiring and just giving a lot of very tactical, actionable takeaways from my audience. I I appreciate you, man.
Mark Murphy [32:31]
Hey Steve, thank you so much for having me. It was all pleasures, all mine.
Steve Fretzin [32:35]
Yeah, well, I would argue with that and say The pleasure is all mine, but let’s not fight right. Let’s just say it was pleasurable. Thank you everybody for hanging out with Mark and I for half an hour. Great way to hang out in your car and walk your dog and listen while you’re working whatever you got to do. And again, just really appreciate you. If you’re a long time listener, new listener, please tell other lawyers about us. Don’t be afraid to give us a nice review on Apple or Spotify wherever you’re listening to your podcast, and check us out on YouTube and on above the law. We’ve got many of our podcast videos and clips coming up on above the law. If you’re a fan of that website, hopefully you are. Thank you. Everybody. Take care. Be safe, be well. We will talk again soon.
Narrator [33:17]
Thanks for listening to be that loyal. Life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve’s website, fredson.com for additional information and to stay up to date on the latest legal business development and marketing trends. For more information and important links about today’s episode. Check out today’s show notes.