When interviewing a new candidate, it’s often very difficult, if not impossible, to determine whether they’ll become a good team member.

All you can do is look at their experience, check that they’ve not left many positions after a short period while implementing skilful questioning, and hope they answer truthfully.

However, business owners often place them in unsuitable positions after hiring someone because they base their decision on incorrect criteria. They base how well they think a new team member will perform on their years of experience applying a particular law.

I call this their ability.

Ensuring someone has the ability we require of them to complete specific work is vital, especially if you want someone to focus on carrying out billable work; however, it’s less important than another key criterion to study someone on.

A more critical criterion for studying an existing team member is their mindset.

So, what is the difference between ability and mindset?

Ability includes:

• How well they understand their sector of law
• How well can they implement the right legal solution for a client without requiring outside support
• How skilled are they at completing work in the required time frame and to the required standard

Hiring or moving someone into a new position in your law firm based on only their ability as such often leads to disappointment because, without the right mindset, they’ll likely not have the level of discipline, self-organisation and people skills needed to deliver decent results consistently.

Alternatively, their mindset is so much more important because any required ability can be learned with the right mindset.

Mindset includes:

• How willingly a team member listens and is open to doing things in a new way
• How enthusiastic is a team member about learning something new
• How well does a team member participate in a team and support everyone around them

Having the right mindset is vital for anyone to perform at a high level because it doesn’t matter how technically skilled someone is; if they can’t integrate into your team well, adapt to your processes and learn what is required, they’ll cause you constant stress.

So, how do you implement this study of the people in your firm?

Firstly, on a spreadsheet, write a list of all your team members, then have two columns after titled mindset and ability.

Next, score each team member on a scale of 1 to 10 based on your observations of their mindset and ability.

Those with a high mindset score will usually be your star team members, and any of those with a high mindset score but a low ability score are well worth investing your time in training. You’ll find they’ll be like sponges and will give you and your firm a great ROI.

On the other hand, those with a low mindset score, especially those in a managerial position, need to be examined more closely. They’ll struggle to lead and manage others if they aren’t enthusiastic about their work.

They’ll also set the tone for everyone in their team to play small and quietly quit.

I recently implemented this scoring process with a client of mine. We quickly discovered which department heads needed replacing because we saw that those with a low score in their mindset were avoiding holding their team members accountable.

In replacing these managers, he placed the right new people in these managerial positions, significantly lowering his stress while substantially increasing his firm’s growth and profits in one year.

It’s fundamental to understand that it’s much harder to increase someone’s score in mindset than in ability, and often, if their mindset is poor, it’s just not worth your time.

Today, try this out, score all your team members on their mindset and ability to see who to support in your team next or look at more closely so you can place each team member in their ideal role to accelerate the success of your law firm.