Leading through Adversity: A Conversation with Sara Khaki of Atlanta Divorce Law Group
With all the confusion and uncertainty, it can be difficult to decide what the best strategy is to navigate your firm through this. To help provide some clarity, I sat down with Sara Khaki of Atlanta Divorce Law Group to discuss her high-energy approach to making sure both her business and her team come out better on the other side.
See our full conversation below:
4:18 - Prepare for future challenges. “I need to think about what are the challenges my team and my clients are going to face two months from now, three months from now, and what are the marketing messages that I need to be ahead of and have planned out. That will keep you from going insane. That will keep you from driving your people crazy, your team crazy. That will give your clients the self-assurance that you’re not taking them through a roller coaster ride of being reactive to last-second news. You are building a future for them because you’re building a future for yourself.”
6:02 - Build a future mindset. “I understand this is going to be tough and you laid people off, but what lessons can you learn from that? Because you can’t say something happened that was out of your control and you have to let go of people. You’re a business owner, you’re not in control over anything. You never were. Every day was filled with the unknown. You just weren’t aware of it. Now build with that mindset for the future and give your team the security and the self-esteem and the love that they deserve when they come to work for you.”
8:30 - Being there for the team. “Our job as leaders is to remove the obstacles out of our team’s way so they can do their work. Right now, some of those obstacles might be some very personal things. It might be the need for a mental day to take a break from all the stress of parenting, educating their kids, worrying about the health of the elderly, and then having to do work. So every morning we have that call and I check in with every single person and ask, ‘How was your day, how was yesterday, what do you have on your plate and what obstacles can I help remove for you?’”
9:41 - We are in a marathon. “If you’re doing that whole ‘fake it until you make it’ routine with your team and you’re putting them in a position where they feel that they have to fake it until you make it, the whole thing is going to come crashing down. It’s not a sprint, we’re in a marathon. This is not going to be just two or three months or whatever. This has changed the entire playing field. For those of us who love and celebrate change, will accept it, we will welcome it, and we will find it as a way to improve our firm and improve our team and improve as leaders.”
11:55 - Step the game up. “I also think that as far as marketing goes, everybody’s going to step up their game and have to be a lot better at it. Putting out a website that just says, ‘I’m here and this is my virtual business card,’ will just not do. You have to connect now with your clients more than ever. Whether that is making a video or that is calling your clients one by one and touching base with them, or doing Zoom meetings like this with them. People are going to their trusted resources more than ever now.”
15:13 - Celebrate the team. “I think it’s important for your team to know where the scorecard is. Here’s how we’re doing. Today on our daily call this morning, I gave them the scorecard for March. I celebrated them. The fact that despite everything, in March we actually beat the budget. We beat the number of new clients we wanted to bring in. Our quality, everything was on par. So I celebrated that with them. Just put the data in front of them and let them know what you expect. But none of that nagging, none of that, “I am sitting here busting my butt for you guys and working and hustling so I can keep you your job.” If you’re going to be that leader, they’re watching and they will not stick around too long.”
16:00 - Become a better leader. “For those of us who are deciding to step up and to be better leaders than ever when all this is done, we will most likely have a much better labor market to tap into than ever before. I would hate for somebody, because of fear, to lose their A-team players to Michael Mogill or to Sarah Khaki because we’ll scoop them up. They saw how you performed during this time and we’re only going to grow from this. This is not the time to come across as the desperate leader who is nagging at the team. This is the time to influence them and to help them self-motivate themselves and really show them compassion.”
