3  Working effectively with colleagues

The following video highlights different forms of interactions with colleagues in legal workplaces.

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Transcript: Video 5  Working with colleagues

STEPHANIE BELL
Yeah, so I think colleagues in chambers can have a massive part to play in supporting healthy mental health because it's your colleagues in chambers who might know the solicitors that you're working with. They know your clerks. Your peers will know the difficult QC in chambers who you've been working for, the little issues that come up. It's that safe base to go back to after court.
But on the flip side, if your chambers isn't that, if your chambers is a toxic, competitive, difficult environment where people don't really talk. People come in, go to their room, go home or don't come in after court, and people just complain about their fees or compete over cases, if that's your chambers, then that's very difficult. You don't have that safe base to work from.
VLAD VALIENTE
Now, in terms of the healthy professional, I think it's someone that ultimately is happy in their job, enjoys what they're doing, and that kind of enthusiasm is infectious for the rest of the team. And so that creates the right environment and the right healthy environment for everybody to work in. And that's what, I guess, we should all be striving for as much as possible.
PAUL NEVIN
In both the legal workplace and other workplaces that I've been in, it has been my experience that if you have a person who, for whatever reason, is not in a good place or is not expressing positive feelings or is maybe perhaps even suffering mental health difficulties themselves or all of these things, they can bring a team down. One person can bring a team down very quickly. They can reduce the morale of a team. And a whole team can find it very difficult to bring that one person up. It's not so easy.
So an unkind way to put it is, I think, in this life, there are people that sometimes who can be mood hoovers and they entirely change the feeling of a room and upset the fine balance. And often, you need to find balance to get the good work done because we are distractable creatures. So there is always conflict in workplaces. And sometimes that can go on for years and sometimes techniques can help, but sometimes it can't be fixed. It's tough sometimes.
PATRICIA WHITE
Within the profession, we have to adhere by high standards and professional obligations. And I think it can be quite difficult if, perhaps, you have a colleague that maybe is not reaching those standards as high as you would expect them to do. So that can cause some frustration in trying to work with someone who perhaps is not achieving quite as a high standard as expected. And therefore, the frustration can lead ultimately to mental health issues where one is perhaps in a situation where they're suppressing how they really feel and just accepting a particular set of circumstances and scenarios.
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Video 5  Working with colleagues
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Legal professionals often work closely with a range of colleagues. This can include other legal professionals within their workplace, colleagues externally at other workplaces, support staff and also professionals in other fields, such as expert witnesses. In-house lawyers will also work closely with non-lawyers in their workplace.

Working with such a range of people will have an impact on your emotional wellbeing and also the wellbeing of your colleagues. For example, if you are under significant pressure you could end up forgetting to include courtesies such as ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ in your interactions with colleagues and perhaps be more irritable with the people around you. This can lead to colleagues reciprocating or distancing themselves. As a result, individuals may end up feeling more isolated and less well-supported in their work. This could lead to them feeling less engaged and motivated.

The next activity is designed to help you assess your current relationships with your colleagues.

Activity 4  Who do you work with?

Timing: Allow around 20 minutes

Using the boxes below, list up to five individuals who you interact with either daily, frequently or occasionally in your working life. Although your answers will not be read by anyone else, if you prefer you can identify them by initials and pseudonyms. Then pause to reflect on:

  • How your interactions with this individual emotionally affect you.
  • How your interactions with this individual may emotionally affect them.

For each colleague, enter the emojis that best represent your reflections then describe the impacts your colleague has on you and the impacts you think you have on your colleague. After, press ‘SAVE’. Press ‘+’ and ‘−’ to add and remove rows.

Emoji descriptions
🙂 – slightly smiling face 😐 – neutral face 🙁 – slightly frowning face
😤 – face with look of triumph 🤣 – rolling on the floor laughing 🤪 – grinning face with one large and one small eye
😁 – grinning face with smiling eyes 🤩 – grinning face with star eyes 🤐 – zipper-mouth face
🤡 – clown face 😲 – astonished face 🤓 – nerd face
😴 – sleeping face 😏 – smirking face 🙄 – face with rolling eyes
🤗 – hugging face 😘 – face throwing a kiss 😖 – confounded face

 

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Discussion

As you work through the subsequent sections, you should return to the results of this activity to reflect on how you could potentially enhance your relationships with these colleagues.

Continue to 3.1 Working in a legal team.

3.1  Working in a legal team