Introducing Stephen Zubiago

Foreign.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us here at JLC Media Jorgensen Learning Center. We're very grateful that you took one of your primary assets for the 21st century, your time and spent some of that asset with us today. I am truly excited about this. I believe this is going to be a fantastic, fantastic conversation that we can all learn from. And as you know, our entire company is focused on learning and a culture that supports learning. So thank you so much for listening to us today. Before we get started, let me do a quick introduction. Colleen Sullivan is an associate with us at Jorgensen Learning center and she is our chief operating officer. And Nicole is our chief marketing officer and the woman that has put together all of this media for us over this last year. After Covid hit, she pivoted into that space and she's the one that will be with us today. So thank you, Nicole. And with us today is someone who became my friend through my son, believe it or not, and who I truly admire. I watched him negotiate and navigate the worlds of relationship and developing in business. And he's just, I think you're going to love him. His name's Steve Subiago. And the way we do this is Steve's going to get a chance to tell us who he is and anything he wants to tell us about himself with, you know, be careful. Not everything, but, you know, whatever it is that makes sense to you would make sense. So welcome to the JLC team, Steve.

Thank you, Ray. So I'm Steve Zubiago. I'm the CEO and managing partner of Nixon Peabody, a national and international mLaw100 law firm. We have offices throughout the United States and all the big cities. Boston, New York, Chicago, LA and San Francisco and Washington, D.C. as well as some smaller offices scattered throughout the United States. We have about 100 and actually 1300 employees. 600 of them are lawyers. And we deliver a full range of legal services. And I've been lucky enough to be the managing partner and CEO of the firm since the beginning of the year. Prior to that, I was a practicing lawyer for almost 30 years doing healthcare regulatory and corporate work for a range of healthcare providers throughout the world. So that's my snapshot introduction.

That's wonderful. I love the idea that you're doing your best to lead lawyers. We've all worked with lawyers in our life. And you guys tend to litigate in a heartbeat. So this is really just wonderful to learn from you how you're dealing with that particular phenomenon going forward. So, Steve, thank you so much for being with us today.

Yeah, I can tell you, Ray, it's not only the, it's not only the litigation aspect of some of my partners, but we're a partnership and we're a professional service provider. So while I have the title of CEO internally, CEO is really an external term to the external world within the firm. I'm really the managing partner. I manage a partnership. And for organization of our, of our size, and by size I mean our number of employees and our revenue. We are an incredibly flat organization. I would say we have essentially three levels and that's it. Most corporations are much more intricate, structured management process. We, because I have partners, owners, you know, we are just not very layered at all. We're very direct. And that has some advantages and disadvantages when you're in my position. You know, the advantages can be that we can make decisions quickly, but we're not a true corporate model. I lead my partners by example and by consensus, not by fiat. For sure.

I really like that. And I think what we're going to do is push into that space a little more the literature on leadership over the past 40 years. Now it's 39 years these gentlemen have been doing this Kuzis and poser. They said the number one thing in leadership is for the leader to model the way. To model the way. And tell me a little bit, and I'm going to ask Colleen and Nicole to push in a bit there too. Tell me what it is you are attempting to model moving forward as the CEO of this incredibly wonderful, complex and obviously not very layered organization that you said.

Yeah. So a law firm partnership in terms of modeling leadership is actually a, a good entity to do that because as lawyers, what we try to do is provide excellent advice and legal services to our clients. And I've, you know, I've had a 30 year career where I've got a track record with my partners, hopefully of, of doing that. So that's always, always number one. Then on some of the softer stuff, it's working hard. Transparency, honesty, the ability to listen is very important for a practicing lawyer. But I'm finding even more important in being a managing partner and managing a firm and then in the management role. One of the things I've really tried to lay out and it's, you know, my predecessor certainly did this and I'm trying to double down on that is, you know, is respect for all our professionals and our staff. Treating everybody as a person, even though we're big, really taking the time in each individual instance to create an atmosphere of respect. And openness and understanding. And I believe by trying to model all these things, what I'm finding is it's a big organization. I can't solve every problem myself by having direct contact. So I've got to get a lot done by modeling the right behavior so people mimic it, and then also having my management team with me model that behavior and have people mimic it. So I've actually seen the. You know, I sometimes think of it as symbolic, you know, modeling the behavior, symbolizing what you want done and doing it, and then that kind of leads to what you need to happen.

So that's beautiful. And I'm going to ask my two partners to kick in here in a minute. So before we started, the four of us were chatting about what was my focus in question. And it is this. The person that represents the organization tends to be the chief vision officer, the person that keeps the vision alive. And I think you just articulated what that looked like for you. Can you speak a little bit more about that, Steve? What does that mean to you? And I say that that's Simon Sinek, by the way. And a truckload of other people talk about the chief vision officer is the CEO. How does that land on you, brother? What are you thinking?

Sure. So, absolutely. And when I started in this job, I was a little bit burdened by that because I wanted to come up with some new and creative and innovative kind of new thing. And what I've come to understand in my short tenure, I've been in the position now seven months, is that it doesn't have to be something new. We're a law firm. We provide services to our clients. What it's got to be is it's got to be open and adaptable and changing at the right pace. And that pace can sometimes require us to be a step ahead on some issues. You want to be taking the step at the right time or maybe even a little step behind. Let something else lead. You don't have to be first all the time. But that vision is setting the framework within our organization for our partners and all of our professionals to be successful. So to me, it comes back to modeling hard work, modeling honesty, modeling openness, modeling transparency, modeling listening, understanding what our clients need or what our internal clients need, and figuring out the best way to bring them the resources. Another in my job, I'm speaking always positively. And my predecessor told me this. You know, one of my most. One of my biggest jobs as a manufacturer firm is to tell people no want to do things. And so figuring out how to do that with an analytical approach, with data, with humanity, with humility, with openness, with a way that no means. Well, no on this, but here's other ways you could achieve what you're trying to achieve, or there's another direction that we could go to showing people the options and the possibilities. And for me, if I can create, have our organization continue to be like that and even enhance it, then that's going to allow my really creative and smart partners to have an organization in which they can lead the vision, change, and the changes that are necessary and really flourish. So that's how I'm thinking of it at this point in time in my tenure.

No, I really like that a lot. So, Colleen, what are you hearing Steve say and what rises up for you as a question or a query for him?

Yeah, I'm hearing a lot of different things, A lot of really great things. I'm hearing one of the key leadership capabilities that you've identified is this ability to listen, to understand. And you really mentioned that in terms of internally within your organization, as well as supporting your external clients. And how can we really listen in a deep, respectful way so that we can enhance the quality of that professional relationship and really continue to have trust? I heard another big piece about a framework, and I think that was that vision when you were talking about vision. And that really surfaced with me, Steve, where you talk about you're modeling the way and providing a framework perhaps for people to be able to really latch onto. So what are those cultural pieces that you are expecting? And I heard respect and transparency and humility and really setting the expectations and modeling the way and setting the expectations that those in the organization embrace that as a cultural piece that will enable really, success throughout the organization. And that really surfaced with me, that sense of modeling the way and the framework.

So, Steve, how did she do, capturing your messages? Did she get everything or pretty close, and what might she be missing?

No, no, I think, I think she's. I think she's, she's right on with it. And I don't, I don't think she's missing anything interesting.

Yeah, this sense of culture and the culture of learning. One of our clients is, is Navy Medicine, and when they were going through shifting from just running a military treatment facility to developing the necessary practices for readiness, and obviously today we need that. That was a shift into how do we create a culture of learning that will enable that going forward. Ms. Nicole, what are you hearing Steve say? Great conversation. And do you have a question for him?

What stood out for me was Hearing you talk, Steve, about this sense of being adaptable and agile in your environment and, and focusing in on possibilities. He said there may be times when you need to say no, or we're not going to go in that direction, or maybe we're going to sit back and see how this plays out before we make a decision to jump into something. And I love the way that you articulated that and focused your people on possibilities. If you can get them to see that, yes, maybe not this direction, but let's look at what those possibilities are for us. And you were talking specifically about how do I get people to lead in their own right in that way where they're constantly focusing in on what those possibilities are, especially in these times that we're all trying to lead in right now. The ability to look for the possibility was really intriguing to me. So I'd love to just hear a little bit more about how are you getting people to focus in on possibility right now when things. People are getting real stuck in their own thinking or that need to be right.

Right. So the, the best example of how I'm dealing with these issues you're discussing are our firm's response to Covid. And so a completely new issue. We were well into the COVID pandemic when I took over as managing partner and we had been led ably by my, by my predecessor, no doubt about it. But really, when I started at the beginning of the year, the hope was that Covid was going to start to subside. And I was really looking forward to being able to use that as, as, as part of how I would start my tenure. And I would be able to travel more and be in person more, and people would be able to come to the office and they'd be able to work differently. And I'd take advantage of that new energy and enthusiasm and, you know, drive our organization to new heights. And it hasn't worked out that way at all. You know, we're still all working from home. There's been several starts and fits with respect to Covid, and people are clearly have, you know, Covid fatigue, not to coin a frame. Others have used that. So we have taken a kind of step by step, incremental approach. We've done some things that, that we think have been progressive. We required vaccination of our people a couple of months earlier than everybody else was doing it. We're now on the precipice of requiring some of our employees to come back in the office. But while we're doing that, our attorneys still have the option of working remotely. And in fact, we've adopted a very progressive program where our attorneys, and that's partners and associates can elect to work remotely full time if they desire. There's some conditions upon that and some things that they would have to do. And I could. But I can tell you, two years ago, if somebody had thought that a law firm of our size and our law firm in particular would be adopting this policy, they would say, you're crazy. That would never, ever happen. And we're actually doing it now. We had a pandemic that, you know, that forced our way to change our thinking. But certainly the reflexes that everybody would want to go back to the way things are normal. And we just think that, you know, this is a life changing work changing event. Things are never going to go back to, quote, normal as they were before. And so we've got to be adaptable and open. But in that process, being adaptable and open, there's all different ideas and thoughts about how we do. So as many times I'm being progressive and saying yes, I can assure you there's double or triple the amount of times where somebody might say, I'm not being progressive enough. And I might be saying, I might be saying no. And on the other hand, there still is an important cadre, not only in my firm, but in the world in general that are like, I want it back the way it was. I want to go back, you know, I want to go back to January 2019. And, you know, we just, we just think that's not where the world is going. And we think it would be, you know, quite honest, it would be foolish for us as an organization to adopt that approach. And that's why we've come across some of our more, some of our more progressive things. But it's, it's been challenging to make the decisions on how we should handle it. And then once we make those decisions, it's been very challenging to communicate them through our organization and make the different factions understand. And what. I've spent way more time on it than I thought I would. It's really forced me to communicate clearly, not only in writing, but, you know, in my, in my spoken communication. It's caused me to find all different ways to communicate. You know, sometimes I do it in writing, sometimes we have these big, big zoom meetings. You know, I've done zoom meetings with, you know, hundreds of hundreds of employees. I let them ask me questions. That's gone really well. On occasion, it's gone less well on some occasions. We work through it, you can always just say, hey, we should have a follow up call about that. So it's just been a very interesting experience, but overall it's worked out well. One of the things that I always say is a help in the pandemic is everybody's experiencing the pandemic differently, but everybody has the pandemic experience. So my competitors are dealing with the same things. My, you know, my clients are dealing with the same thing. The parties on the other side of an or, you know, transaction, everybody's dealing with it and it's, you know, like, like anything else, you know, as a, as a competitive organization. You know, I keep telling my management team, I'm like, come on, let's, let's handle how we handle Covid better than everybody else. And that'll be, you know, that'll be good for our firm and good for our people. And you know, that's. So that, that's, that's been our approach to it.

So Steve and those of you that are listening, that do listen to our podcast, Steve has actually brought up something we're doing in the last few weeks. What's the literature say about what's the best things to do moving forward? If there is a post pandemic and there really isn't, it's just a difference in terms of our culture. The first was to over communicate. The second was to listen, listen, listen. The third was to increase the quality of the team's that you are on and the teams that you lead. And the last one that he kind of alluded to in that last piece, I'm going to ask him to play with for a moment the need in the fourth spot to build, keep social capital alive. And one of our consultants talks to her clients in this way to remind ourselves of the relationships that we had and to build the ones we didn't have. People joined the firm during the pandemic. We didn't really know who they were. So talk about that social capital one a little bit. I think our, think our audience and people that are listening to you would love to hear you talk about that a little. Steve, how are you building that?

Sure. So I agree social capital is hugely important. And as I described in our partnership, I have certain authority as the managing partner of the firm. My goal is to never exercise that authority. That might, that might sound funny, but that's my goal. My goal is to always be able to persuade and have people agree so that we never, you know, we don't have to make a ton of decisions or vote on things or you know, our debate that, you know, we engage in a process and then the outcome becomes the outcome that everybody agrees to. Now to do that you have to get on the same page. So, so, so, so I have tried to over communicate, as you mentioned, and, and, and what I. And one of the things I've learned about over communicating is you don't always necessarily have to say something different. And especially if you're saying something that is new and important. A lot of times the first time you say it to somebody because it's new, they're not listening. They're just thinking, oh my God, how can I come up with that? Why are we doing that? Why isn't he letting me come back in the office? Or why are we having all these rules? So sometimes when you over communicate, you just have to say the same thing. You might package it a little different, but that there's nothing wrong with that. And then of course, the listening, and then you mentioned the quality of the interaction. So again, I was bragging about how flat a firm we are. But I can tell you we had one key committee that was mostly staff and not lawyers, a few lawyers. And when I started, it became very clear to me that they were making a lot of this, dealing with a lot of issues and making a lot of decisions where they were either making important decisions about how we were doing work or their thinking was framing the next step in the process. And I was like, I'm on that committee now. That committee is where things are happening. And I think when I told them the first time I was coming to the meeting, I'm not sure they believed me because when I showed up on the first call, I could tell it was like, oh my God, he's here at the meeting. But it just became, and I think they were quite honestly not realizing their importance. They were doing great work. But it was clear to me, coming new into the job, like this is where decisions are getting made or, or the discussion is getting framed to the next stage. And I'm like, I'm going to cut it out. I'm on this committee. And so now I go to that. I go to those meetings all the time. When I join, I can always tell, like they're like, oh, Steve's here. But I just found it, I found it a good way to be. And then kind of back to the, to the social capital. So, so, you know, as we start, started, you said lead by example, you know, you know, your activities and your energy and all of that, but then also gaining trust by listening and then getting that capital so that we can get to the point now where, staying on the COVID theme, where as we roll out new things, I'm actually finding we're getting less and less questions because over time, people like, no, what we've done has made sense. It's a measured approach. I think everybody that works in our firm knows we're looking out for our. For our safety, while also trying to balance their ability to serve their clients and develop new business and all of those things that are important to our lifeblood. So. So over time, I will say more recently, I have started to travel more. And while I think we've coped well, I'm not going to kid anybody. It's easier to communicate and bond with people and build that social capital by being there directly in person. There's no doubt about it. I'm not going to stand here and say, we've made it work. We can make it work, but the best way to do it is still in person.

I love it. I love it. So one of our little games that we play with each other is to keep reminding ourselves as a team, the conversation is the relationship. And I need to be in conversation with people. If I can be sitting across from Nicole and Colleen having dinner, that's different than talking to them on Zoom. So I get it. So it's almost like I've got to figure out ways to make this happen so that I don't spend my entire time traveling around everywhere trying to talk to everybody one on one, but still do my best to build those quality relationships. Steve, you've been magnificent. The last thing we ever do on these things, we all get a chance to what we call check out. We check out of a meeting, and I do a quick provocation, and I'll let Colleen and Nicole model that, and then you get to go last. So this has been one of those truly insightful conversations. And the way you were, you're very disarming in the way you talk about the work and talk about what it means to lead. So, Colleen, you start us off here. What is your biggest takeaway? What did you learn today that is. Wow, that was really interesting. And by the way, that is what a demonstration of vulnerability is, your ability to learn. Some people show up knowing and never learn anything, right? They retire knowing what they knew when they started. So this is like building that capability, and we do it all the time. So, Colleen, what's your biggest learning takeaway from this conversation with Steve today?

I think probably one of the biggest things that I heard was in just even the language, the inclusive leadership language you use consistently, whether or not you were intentionally doing it or that's just how you engage in your everyday leadership conversations. But what really came across was your leadership presence, one of just humility, one that truly shows up in a space of curiosity. I heard you consistently say, I'm not showing up with all the answers. I'm not ruling us. Even though I'm a CEO, that doesn't necessarily mean that I am the one making the final decision. And the other piece that I really appreciated is, sounds like you're mutually invested in everyone's success, right? Internally as well as externally with those clients, and you view your role as brokering the resources to really help support the team move forward. So those were the two biggest things that. That I learned from this conversation. And I'm so grateful that you joined us today. And I'm out.

Thanks a lot, Ms. Nicole.

I really loved hearing about the way that your organization operates, the flat. The flatness of your organization. And I loved your recognition about this committee where decisions were being made or they were setting up the framework for future decisions to be made, and you wanting to come in and be a part of that meeting. And you didn't say this specifically, but what I took from the whole conversation, I imagine you showed up in a way where you left your title behind and you were. You were in that meeting and they were running that meeting, and you were there as a. As a participant of that conversation to learn with them and assist and just be part of that conversation. So I really loved hearing about that aspect. And I'm curious how that has shifted and changed. You being a part of that conversation has shifted and changed your social capital within all the levels of your flat organization. So I really loved hearing about that today, and as Colleen mentioned, really grateful for you being here with us for this conversation. Amount.

All right, Steve, you get your chat at it. They heard two really very insightful pieces there. I love that you can see why I love these women. They're just absolutely tremendous. What was your biggest learning today, Steve?

So before I get to my learning. So I appreciate hearing both of your comments. It's very helpful to me. So, Colleen, I do try to use inclusive language. So one of the little things that I do is when I talk to my partners, I say, I don't say I'm the managing partner. I say I'm your managing partner. And I mean that inclusive. I mean that seriously, that I am their managing partner. I always say that I'm your managing partner. And I think that just sits because my job is to service them. And then, Nicole, as you mentioned, when I joined that committee, I do very much, often I need to lead. I have the title and I need to lead, but I really pick my spots when I do that. Otherwise, I try to be the listener all the time and I try to be the one that's just there. And I let the conversation ebb and flow and I let people work it out and I always try to hold back. I'm not the one that comes to the meeting and says, here's what we want to do, here's what we need to do. Because if I really think that I don't need the meeting, quite honestly, you know, so, so, so I've been, I've been careful about that. So, so my takeaway is, Ray, you, as you, as you probably have guessed, I do a lot of this very instinctually. And, and, and, and I'm lucky that, you know, over time my instincts have served me pretty well. But what you did is you gave me a little bit of a framework based on your tremendous experience about how to describe the things I'm doing. And, and that helps me, that helps me actually refine it and think about it with a little more depth. So I, I love how you gave the background. You know, you referred to some of the studies you've looked at. You gave me certain criteria. I took, I took good notes while we were talking here. And I'm, I'm going to try to use that to, you know, to double down on my learning and be better at what I'm doing. So that's it. I'm out.

I will actually do the same and work on double downing on my own learning. We stay in that. In fact, you've seen my emails in learning, right? I just kind of stay in that space all the time. I am so grateful to you, brother. Thank you for being on here today. And I am. We'll see what happens later. Maybe I'd love to get a debrief with you about what is something that if you had your way and you met somebody and said next week I'm taking over a role as CEO.

What.

Would you tell them? That may be another conversation for us to have. I think maybe we can do it.

Let's leave that as a teaser. Ray, Colleen and Nicole, thank you so much, everybody.

Thank you for being with us at JLC Media. Want to learn more about us? Go to gojlc.com everyone. Thank you for taking your asset of time and spending it with us. We appreciate it very, very much. Thank you. Take care. Sincerest thanks for listening to this episode of the Everyday Leadership Conversations podcast. The Jorgensen Learning center offers a variety of programs for individuals and organizations to enhance their communication and leadership skills. To find out more about programs and upcoming webinars, check out our events page@gojlc.com.