We grow our business, by growing our people

Transcript

When I first found out about the job I thought oh no not a law firm that will be pretty grim I thought I'll just go and I work for six months and then I can escape to something better, but it sort of reeled me in and nine years later I'm still here.

I joined Clayton Utz nearly 20 years ago.

I guess two things have kept me at Clayton Utz the first thing is my amazing colleagues and the people that I've worked with and the second thing that has kept me at Clayton Utz is really the developmental opportunities that I've had.

My roles have evolved during my time at Clayton Utz I've moved into a more of a general business manager role and I became the national director for diversity and inclusion.

I've been invited to participate in short programs and longer programs as part of the Excellence program I've also been provided with a mentor I feel like the holistic development opportunities that Clayton Utz has given me has really helped me get to where I am today.

And when you have that support you flourish.

A law firm acts as a team and without there being a team you can't actually succeed if you have mentoring then you are making that team grow together I play a part as a mentor to the graduates and the junior lawyers but I also have my own Mentor who sits in a different Practice Group to real estate.

A key part of our Excellence program is to help people develop their leadership skills.

The business Excellence program that I was part of it's all about evaluating yourself against all your strengths and weaknesses and understanding what..what are those factors that needs Improvement or required Development.

I've had lots of support over the years and that might be through some training opportunities leadership development opportunities the senior leadership team were really good at sort of sponsoring me promoting me profiling me and celebrating the successes of what I did.

Mentoring can open the eyes for the mentee to a different way of how you might think about a problem they might be going through but for the firm's benefit the mentors can open their eyes to how a mentee sees the firm and how the firm could improve and how they can make opportunities for attention of talent.

Programs like this would help you understand what are you missing what is your blind spot.

My personal view of a mentor is someone who's flexible I just want to talk to them and by talking to them it helps them open their eyes as to what they might be going through and what can lead to better things for them.

It's really important to me that I continue to develop as a leader and that is something that Clayton Utz has really provided me.

It's quite natural when you get into programs like this to talk about business all about business but that has not been the case with the group of people I worked with we were connected on human level genuinely and sincerely knowing about the other person is what we got into and we made a very good friends.

In my time at Clayton Utz I think I've held over four or five positions and every position has been new and exciting has given the opportunity to grow and develop more.