By Maggy Baccinelli .jpg)
Maggy is the editorial coordinator of the ACC Docket and is responsible for editing the publication, writing monthly articles and creating corresponding multimedia pieces highlighting ACC members’ legal expertise and unique personal interests. Follow along as Maggy, shares her insights. The voice, views and stories expressed in this series are of the author and are not ACC’s.
Last week, as I walked into Acadiana restaurant for an event celebrating the newly published Courageous Counsel, I felt a twinge of nervousness. The book, written by Allstate Insurance’s GC Michele Coleman Mayes and SNR Denton Partner Kara Baysinger, documents in-depth, candid interviews with 50 current and former women general counsel at Fortune 500 companies. Some of them would be inside. But before I could think too hard, I was escorted straight to Michele and her group of colleagues. They welcomed me warmly into their discussion about dietary habits as we each passed on different samples of New Orleans-inspired hors d’oeuvres: Who eats fish but not meat; who eats meat but not dairy; and what’s this gluten-free thing all about anyway? I felt included. It was effortless.
It wasn’t until after the event that I realized how my brief experience showcased these women walking their talk. The event’s panel was similar to the lunch program at ACC’s Annual Meeting, featuring Kara as the moderator and Michele, but also included AIG General Counsel Stasia Kelly, who is the most quoted general counsel in the book. The women talked about Courageous Counsel, but they also touched on their own experiences. Many focused on using human interaction and inclusion to build business partner and colleague trust.
The women recalled interactions they learned most from. Michele drove home the importance of honesty and admitting when you don’t know it all. When she was hired from the outside for a former position over a non-lawyer who had been at the company for 15 years, Michele said: “I bee-lined it to her office. I said ‘I understand you should have gotten this job, but that wasn’t my decision, and I need your help to do this right’… We’ve been the best of friends for 25 years.”
Stasia said she’s built relationships by figuring out what people need, helping them get it, and then giving them all the credit. “It’s often unspoken; just understood,” she said. She learned the value of human interactions from her dad, a Boston cop. “He was a wise man and had the best people skills of anyone I’ve ever known. He’d talk and talk and talk about his day, and I’d sit there and listen. … I didn’t realize how much had rubbed off until later.”
Listening is the key to learning, but it’s not always easy. In fact, when asked to offer the more than 50 audience members one piece of advice each, Stasia said: “Keep your ears open, because you never know what you’re going to miss. Listen and be receptive.”
“Right,” Michele added. “You know when someone is telling you something, but instead of listening you’re playing that record in your head, like, ‘When is this person going to be quiet and let me tell them what’s right?’ Well there’s a quote I like that says, ‘We pretend to be listening when what we’re really doing is rearranging our prejudices.’”
Michele’s one piece of advice was that growth and comfort are incompatible. It’s a central theme of Courageous Counsel, because the only thing all the interviewed women have in common is their willingness to take risks, said Kara. “The other major lesson we learned is that there is no one path. We wondered if we would find a secret sauce, or a recipe for success, and there isn’t one.”
Before leaving Michele and Kara gave me a gracious goodbye, remembering my name and thanking me for coming while signing my book. They wrote: “Maggy, make your own path.”
Click here to take home the lessons learned from some of the top women general counsel at this year’s ACC annual meeting program. This program was moderated by Courageous Counsel co-author and partner at SNR Denton, Kara Sophia Baysinger.