TRP 238: Creating Boundaries for a Thriving Practice with Anna Rappaport

[00:00:10] You're listening to The Rainmaking Podcast, hosted by high stakes headhunter, author, and professional speaker, Scott Love. You're listening to The Rainmaking Podcast, and my name is Scott Love. Thank you for joining me on the show. Now, you're a busy professional. You have competing time demands. You have all this pressure of everybody around you that needs something from you.

[00:00:37] What should you work on first? Your clients, your colleagues, your subordinate, employees that you're trying to mentor? How does that all work together? How do you protect yourself from being pulled in too many different directions? We're going to talk about that today. Our topic title for today is Creating Boundaries for Thriving Practice. And our guest is Anna Rappaport. Now, Anna is a repeat guest. She's been on the show before. She's fantastic.

[00:01:04] She's a business development and also a performance coach for attorneys. She's a former lawyer. She has 23 years experience coaching attorneys and 11 years of experience mentoring and training other coaches. I've seen her speak before at legal conferences, and she's fantastic. And as you'll hear from today, there's going to be some specific action ideas that I know are going to help you increase your performance.

[00:01:29] As always, this show is sponsored by Leopard Solutions, legal intelligence suite of products, Firmscape, and Leopard BI. Push ahead of the pack with the power of Leopard. And now here's my conversation with my good friend, Anna Rappaport. Thanks for listening. Hey, this is Scott Love with the Rainmaking Podcast. Our guest today is a good friend, Anna Rappaport, a repeat guest. And today we're talking about creating boundaries for a thriving practice.

[00:01:58] Anna, thanks for joining me on the show again. Yeah, thanks for having me. Great to see you again. Absolutely. Absolutely. Likewise, likewise. And so we talk about busy rainmakers that might have a sense of guilt for having family time or health time or things like that because they're not working for their clients during those times. And so let's kind of get some working definitions in place when we talk about boundaries. How would you define that, Anna?

[00:02:25] Well, fundamentally, boundaries are when you say no to something. That can mean saying no to responding to emails between 1am and 6am. For some people, that may be a no brainer, but for many people, they wake up in the middle of the night and start responding to emails. So making some definitions about when you do that, that would be a boundary.

[00:02:55] Right. Making a rule for yourself about when you do or do not deal with work when you're on vacation. That could be a boundary. I mean, a lot of people would say, well, it's impossible to be 100% away from work on vacation. And that's a reasonable choice. But nevertheless, you could still create some kind of boundary.

[00:03:22] Like I'm only going to respond to emails during a particular segment of time so it doesn't interfere with the activities you're doing with your family or only like every other day or only. Right. Right. So there's ways of defining it so that it doesn't take over your entire life 24-7. Right.

[00:03:45] So if we could kind of parse this into different segments, if you will, what would those boundaries be? Is it at the end of the day when we end work and we start work? Is it when we're with our families at night? Is it on vacation? Where are the main segments of where we should be cognizant of setting boundaries? I see it in a lot of areas. Certainly, when you are responding to emails is a huge one. Vacations is a huge one.

[00:04:13] There can also be when to take on work, when to say no to other partners in your firm or when to say no to prospective clients or existing clients. Because you are amazing. You're responsive. People think you're fantastic. And they call you up and say, I know that it usually takes, you've told me that it'll take six weeks to get a deal done.

[00:04:40] Would it be possible to get it done in two before the end of the year? Right. People get that sort of inquiry all the time. And saying to people, no, the timeline I gave you really is the timeline. Like that's a boundary. So I'm not sure if I could even define all the many ways in which I show up. Essentially, anything you do to defend your time and sanity probably qualifies as a boundary. Okay, that's great.

[00:05:10] So let me ask you this question. Do you think there is a stigma, a negative stigma against having boundaries? The same way mental health. There is a stigma with it. It's starting to shift a little bit because people talk about that being vulnerable, things like that. Do you think there's a stigma associated with people that do say no? What do you think about that?

[00:05:30] What I've seen is this phenomenon where people will generalize around it such that a client will say, I don't want to be one of those people. Right. One of those people who's unreliable.

[00:05:47] They generalize saying, if I don't respond to an email immediately after it comes in, I automatically start thinking that people are going to see me as one of those people who takes five days to respond to an email. Right. This is a very human thing. We tend to over generalize, but taking five days to respond to an email. Yeah, that's not great. Right. Like that's going to be a problem.

[00:06:14] But taking a couple hours to respond to an email or responding to emails only during certain working hours. I think there's very few people who would have a real problem with that. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. That's right. I think people need to understand what is the expectation that their clients have and are they themselves being unrealistic in those expectations?

[00:06:38] So let's say we're looking at a successful attorney that isn't saying no, that has no boundaries, that's accessible all the time. I would get the feeling that, oh, yeah, that's what the law firm leadership wants. You know, what do you think about that? What's the perspective of those at the top of law firm organizations? What do they think about this and those people that are setting boundaries in their lives?

[00:07:01] I think the people in leadership vary so dramatically, it's hard to generalize. But, you know, I have done programs with with like practice groups where we have explored, you know, essentially how to make the practice group work better. And one of the things that's touched on is what kind of expectations are reasonable and what do what do the associates think the expectations are?

[00:07:30] What do the partners think the expectations are? And the takeaway really is that there are people who create boundaries within those practice groups who are very successful, who take care of their work. And then there are the people who don't. And the biggest difference isn't around the level of success they have, the level of effectiveness they have.

[00:07:54] The real impact is on their sanity and whether they feel like inclined to stick with the practice or not. Yeah. How important is it, do you think, for a partner in a firm to learn how to effectively delegate certain things? I mean, it's it's critical, right? If you don't effectively delegate, you can't build your practice.

[00:08:16] You are are left at, you know, you can accomplish whatever you can accomplish, but you you can't get to that next level. Yeah. Right. What's what's the best way somebody should do that? Let's say partners going on vacation for a week and this is the vacation for the first time in my life. I'm not going to check my email for the first time in my life. I'm going to be completely present with my spouse and my children and my friends, whoever those people are for one full week.

[00:08:45] How do you think that partner can do that before he or she leaves work in terms of delegating things to certain people in the office? I think, first of all, people need a lot of heads up. Right. Saying the week before I'm going to be gone is not remotely adequate. Right. Making sure that the key clients are aware that you're going to be away and that it's you will not be able to respond to certain things or even, you know, you don't have to tell people you're on vacation.

[00:09:13] It can be like, I have other commitments and I will be absolutely unavailable. Maybe they will think that you're in the middle of a deal or a trial or whatever it is that they think you're doing. But, you know, it's not like you have to tell people I'm at Disney World or I'm in Europe or whatever your thing is. Right. But letting your partners or your senior associates on the deal or whoever it is know that you're going to be gone.

[00:09:39] They are expected to manage it. I mean, being realistic, if there's some huge crisis, like most people would consider it reasonable. OK, you can reach me here if there's a big crisis. You know, if there's something big, call me. Do not email me. Right. So that at least you can not be constantly checking and monitoring things. Yeah, right. Here's an alternative to and this is what my husband did when we went on our honeymoon.

[00:10:10] Because I said, I mean, I have more control over my schedule than than a lot of people do. So I was able to take the time off for real. But he said, what do you want to do with the honeymoon? And I said, I want you to not work. And he said, I don't think I can do that. I said, OK, well, in that case, I want a couple extra days. Right. Like so the deal was he would work up to one or two hours a day.

[00:10:39] And instead of being gone a week, we were going to be gone, you know, nine days. So that felt like a reasonable compromise to me and reasonable compromise to him. So, you know, sometimes there might be other ways of of defining things if, you know, depending on people's circumstances. That's a great example. I appreciate you sharing that, Anna. Let's look more in the day to day instead of leaving for a week.

[00:11:07] And I really like the idea that a week is an advance notice is not enough. I really like that a lot. But let's talk about the day to day. You come home. If you're married, if you have kids, they're around you. They want time from you. And you're looking at your phone. What advice would you have for people in terms of the day to day? When they should shut it off? When should they shut it off? When can they come back and turn it on? What have you seen things that work well for successful partners?

[00:11:34] The biggest issue I see is that people really try to do this, but their brains are still connected to work, even though they are like, I'm consciously decided. I put my phone away. My phone's in the other room. I'm not looking at it. This is time with kids. But their minds are still occupied with it. And like, well, if I'm going to be thinking about it, I may as well check it or I may as well be doing it, which is certainly understandable.

[00:12:04] But that's when I think it's really helpful to get some tools to help a person deal with anxiety. What I've found is that most people don't really have tools for dealing with anxiety. Maybe they talk to their therapist. Maybe they get exercise. Maybe they take some anti-anxiety drugs. Like those are usually the things that people do. But there's other techniques that people can do,

[00:12:34] even simply getting present to the physical feelings in your body. Right. And because we're lawyers, we tend to think, you know, things go straight to our brain. Right. But noticing the physicality of it can help separate the sort of the feelings of anxiety from the thought processes. Right. Because when the anxiety is combined with the thoughts,

[00:13:03] it's very hard to tone it down. Right. Because it's kind of become a ball of worry. Whereas being able to take a few deep breaths and notice like, okay, I feel tension in my shoulders. I feel a pain in my, you know, in the right-hand side of my head. Whatever the things are, it helps you to get present.

[00:13:30] And then from the space of being present to your body, it can then help you to then make that transition to being present with the people in your life. That's great advice. Tell me about somebody you've worked with where you've helped them get to this point. You don't have to mention their name, of course, but what were the challenges that they had with not being present for their loved ones? How did you coach them to do the things that you mentioned and how has it helped them professionally and also on a personal level?

[00:14:00] Well, this is a, I've been, for the last couple of years, I've been training in this technique called focusing. It was originally started by someone named Eugene Genlin. He was a psychology professor at the University of Chicago in the 60s. And now there's different branches of it. But what I've been trained in is called inner relationship focusing. And it's not something that I do all the time by any stretch with clients,

[00:14:30] but it is a technique that I then help people to use. So when people are in a space of particular worry, anxiety, anger, you know, whatever those kinds of emotions are, it's a technique that involves a variety of things, one of which is just getting present to the body, right? There's other things that do that too, right? Through meditation, there's all kinds of things that deal with the physical aspect of it.

[00:14:59] The inner relationship focusing part is where you get present to the different feelings. Like there's the part that's really worried and the part that thinks that that if you don't do this thing right now, everyone's going to hate you and you're going to get fired. And then there's the part that's worried that, you know, the other part is being stupid. And like we have a whole lot of different voices in our heads.

[00:15:27] And so kind of parsing that out, that's something that I will do with people and it helps people to kind of tone down the feelings. And so that's something that we can certainly do at some point during our coaching session sometimes. And it's also something that people can do when they're noticing all that anxiety. And what happens is the more comfortable people get just taking those kinds of pauses, right?

[00:15:57] Like when you notice, you know, like I had a client who was having this problem with his family, like just not really being there with them. And he would take 10 minutes. He had a situation where he explained it to his wife and he would say, okay, I'm going to take 10 minutes and try and tone myself down. And then he'd go away, do that, and then come back and be calmer. And she noticed that that really helped that he seemed to be more present.

[00:16:27] And what it really did was that being a skill, like when you have that skill, it then helps you to not get as wound up about any of the things that happen at work, right? There's, you know, some issues with clients that can be a little crazy making. There's issues with other partners that can be, you know, a source of anxiety.

[00:16:52] And so what it does is instead of spending as much energy, like he was spending quite a bit of energy being worried about those things. And so instead of spending the energy on that, that sort of mental energy was then able to focus on just the work. Right. So, I mean, it's a little hard to measure in terms of like, were there actually more hours? Or that, you know, it's a little hard to measure concretely.

[00:17:22] But the experience was, oh, this is more sustainable. Like maybe I won't have to quit my big law job in order to have a decent life. Do you think, have you met people that they've mastered this, what you're talking about? They've mastered this, managing their emotions, managing the stress, and also setting those boundaries and their practices thriving and their family is healthy.

[00:17:51] Have you met people that actually have done this on a sustainable level? Yeah. I mean, we, I work with people and this is part of what we do if they want to. We do a lot of different things depending on people's goals, but it's absolutely possible. And I mean, like anything, when you're looking at balance, when you're looking at emotions, things go up and down, right? It's not that it's ever going to be perfect. But if you go, if your starting point is,

[00:18:20] I'm losing my mind, I'm having health issues, my spouse is mad at me a lot, I'm in a constant state of anxiety, and you get it to the point where all of those things are better, right? And your practice is still doing at least as well, then, right? Like that, that's a huge win. Yeah. Sorry, did I answer your question? You did. You did. I like knowing that it's possible. That gives me hope. Imagine you're coaching someone

[00:18:49] that has a thriving practice and they're at dinner and they keep their phone with them at dinner. And when the phone rings, they step away from the table. Is that allowed or is it not allowed? What do you think about that? What's your rule, your suggestion on that? I mean, I don't have any hard and fast rules. I think one of the things I do with people is we define what kind of boundaries work for them. I mean, there are people who have weekly calls with, you know, their big clients on Sunday nights,

[00:19:19] right? So they're all prepared for the coming week. And if that works for you and that works for your client, that's fantastic. There's nothing wrong with that. Right. Or if there's genuinely an emergency, if someone, I mean, I think very few lawyers really resent it when there is a genuine emergency. I think where people get upset is where your disorganization is trying to, is creating an emergency for me. Right? Like that's where it's usually a problem,

[00:19:49] whether it's the disorganization of partners in your firm or disorganization of clients or like someone else not doing what they're supposed to do. Right? Like creating boundaries there is much more necessary or it's much more of an issue, I think, for people that once in a, you know, once a year, twice a year, sure, interrupt my dinner. I can make an exception. That's fine. Yeah. I like this, how you see what you're coaching clients,

[00:20:19] what they really want and you kind of work around that. I think that's a really good model. So as we bring our time to a close on, if we were going to talk about three action steps people can take to implement the idea of creating boundaries and still maintaining a thriving practice, what would those three action steps be? Well, this is a process, right? It's not like three action steps is going to get you there, but certainly as a starting point, thinking about what's your biggest area of stress,

[00:20:49] right? Because for some people, maybe that's, maybe it has to do with the emails. For some people, maybe it's that they keep getting pinged constantly about things that are not that important to them or it could be all kinds of things, but figure out what one thing that is a big source of stress. Great. And then, and then from there, think about like, what kind of boundary would you theoretically create about this, right?

[00:21:18] Because I think most of the time, the biggest obstacle for people is there's just a sense that this is just the way it is and that it's impossible to fix, right? So, like, what's the thing? What could you potentially do about it? Like, what kind of boundary would actually work for you, right? And when I say boundary, I should also say that sometimes it's a matter, like, a big part of it is the communication, right? So,

[00:21:48] people are pinging you constantly. Well, maybe there's a boundary to create for yourself in terms of saying, once a week I'm sending people updates or something like that, right? There's all kinds of ways of dealing with some of these stresses, but, you know, what kind of boundary would work for you? And I should also say that, like, specifically, I know I keep mentioning the emails, but it's just something that comes up all the time, right? You know, sometimes creating

[00:22:17] a boundary around that, it could be, it could change over time, right? The first boundary you're creating is I will not look at emails before 6 a.m. And then if that's going okay, you could move it up till 7 a.m., right? Because, which may sound silly to some people, but for a lot of people it's really hard to even create that kind of, you know, boundary. So choose something and then even if the boundary that you want

[00:22:47] seems too inaccessible, right? It's often if you think, okay, this is what would work for me, but then if it feels too big, just choose one small step in the direction, in the right direction. What's an example of that? Okay, so you want to start saying no to clients who are pushing unacceptable timelines, right? So that's what you want to like absolutely stop doing that.

[00:23:17] And you could choose to say I am not going to, trying to think of something very specific, you could choose to say I am not going to add more like an add an additional additional work like to the deal, right? Like you're in the process of doing a deal and there's certain things that are operating assumptions. And if they add more than two extra

[00:23:47] elements that create more work for you, you will say there is no way I can do this in this timeline and then you go to, you know, you extend it by a week or, you know, whatever the thing is. I think that's reasonable. I like that a lot. Right? So, I mean, that could be, that might not be your ideal version of the boundary, but it's like, okay, I've made this decision. Once I will put up with, twice I will put up with, the third time we're absolutely extending it. I love that. So let me go over these. I like the three steps.

[00:24:17] Number one, what is your biggest area of stress? Number two, what kind of boundary could you create? Number three, even if the boundary seems too accessible, if it feels too big, sometimes you have to say no. And I like the fact that you said, and it sounded like it's almost a negotiation where you're negotiating expectations from you and a client. What do you think? Is that a correct way to summarize what you said? So you're probably familiar with sort of standard negotiation theory.

[00:24:47] And so what's your BATNA? Best alternative to negotiating right? Like you need to have a boundary that you are not willing to cross. Yeah. And so defining what that is for yourself is really important because there's no way you're going to be able to communicate it to people unless you've defined it for yourself. So in this example I gave, right, the ideal boundary might be you don't let them keep changing

[00:25:16] the scope of work, right? But realistically, you're like, well, I'm not sure if I can do that. So what is a boundary that you will at least for now feel like it's possible to enforce? Great. Choose that, not, right? Being the first time you put up with it, second time you put up with it, third time, no. Great. Well, Anna, thank you for sharing this wisdom. This is really interesting and applicable and

[00:25:46] I know people will get a lot of value from implementing these ideas. Tell us about your coaching practice. What do you have, what do you do that you'd like our listeners to know about? So I, most of what I do is executive coaching. I work with people on business development, leadership, and career strategy, all of which are related to communication, managing yourself, managing other people. So, you know, mostly it's one-on-one coaching. So if someone's interested in having a conversation, I'd be more than delighted to

[00:26:16] chat with them. I have a thing on my website where you can schedule free 30-minute consultations. We can check in, see if what you, you know, what your issues are compatible with what I do. And I mean, I do also work with larger teams to try and get people to communicate better. And that can have, that can be related to business development or it can also be related to just general collaboration, teamwork, helping

[00:26:44] law firms keep people, right? There's so much issue, so many issues with people leaving because people are unhappy and I mean, I know you know this and I imagine most people, most of your listeners do, but just to really reiterate how much of, how much of laterals moving has to do with people being unhappy where they are. Exactly right. I think, yeah, I hear that all the time. I hear that all the time. And for everybody

[00:27:13] listening, make sure you go to the show notes where you listen to this podcast and we'll put Anna's LinkedIn link, we'll put her website link and her contact information directly on the show notes. Anna, thanks for being a great guest on the show again. I'd love to have you back on the show in the future and continue our conversations. Me too. Thanks a lot. Thank you for listening to the Rainmaking Podcast. For more information about our recruiting services for

[00:27:43] international law firms, visit our website at attorneysearchgroup.com. To inquire about having Scott speak at your next convention, conference, sales meeting, or executive retreat, visit therainmakingpodcast.com.