Why managing yourself matters more than you think (and how to do it well)

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Deep Dive

Manage Yourself to Drive Impact and Enjoy Yourself More

We often talk about managing your team and about managing up. But something we don’t talk about enough, and that is an essential skill for in-house lawyers, is the importance of effectively managing yourself.

Managing yourself means regulating your emotions, limiting the toll stress takes on your performance and wellbeing, and making intentional choices aligned with the lawyer, leader, and person you want to be—even in high-pressure moments.

In-house lawyers who master this perform better, and they make the people and teams around them calmer, faster, and more effective. As a bonus, they tend to enjoy their work a lot more, too.

This newsletter sets out steps you can take right away to start more effectively managing yourself.

Taking Ownership

One of the clearest differences between in-house lawyers who drive real impact, build influence, and get promoted—and those who are viewed as merely competent—is the level of ownership they take over their work, their careers, and their lives.

Ownership, which is an essential component of managing yourself, shows up at every level. It’s in the small things, like proactively managing a deadline on a short-term project. And it’s in the big-picture decisions, like intentionally designing a career and life that fit you, and then executing against that plan.

Of course, not everything is within your control. Things will happen that derail your plans. Things have already happened in your past that affect how much capacity you have in any given moment.

Maybe Susan in accounting didn’t send the invoice you needed to confirm how a contract was treated last year. Or a relative unexpectedly comes to stay with you, shrinking the time you normally have to work in the evenings. Those disruptions aren’t your fault.

But how you respond to them is within your control. And that response is where ownership lives.

Here’s how to start:

• Surface issues early—paired with a recommendation.
  Trust is built when problems come with options and a point of view. It’s lost when negative surprises derail things last minute, especially when there is no clear plan to fix them.

• Prioritize for business impact, not task completion.
  Promotion-ready lawyers focus on what changes outcomes, even when it means letting lower-value work wait.

• Drive decisions to closure.
  Leaders trust lawyers who move work forward, land decisions, and close loops, especially when things don’t go according to plan.

• Own the constraint.
  Senior leaders don’t expect perfect conditions. They expect you to recognize constraints quickly and adjust without drama.

Acting Intentionally, Rather than Reactively

In-house lawyers who are good at managing themselves don’t eliminate stress, but they do learn to respond to it more slowly and more deliberately than those who don’t.

Reactive lawyering is fast, emotional, and often invisible to the person doing it. It shows up as immediately saying yes, firing off emails while frustrated, over-analyzing low-stakes issues, or defaulting to “no” because it feels safer. In the moment, it can feel productive. Over time, it erodes trust and influence.

Intentional lawyering looks different. It creates a brief pause between stimulus and response—a moment to ask: What does the business actually need here? What outcome am I trying to drive? How would a senior leader want this handled?

That pause is where better judgment lives.

Lawyers who act intentionally are more selective about what they escalate, more thoughtful about how they communicate risk, and more consistent in how they show up under pressure. As a result, they become easier to work with, more predictable, and more trusted—especially when things are messy or time-sensitive.

Importantly, acting intentionally means moving with purpose, even when that requires briefly slowing down. That discipline leads to better decisions, faster outcomes, and is one of the clearest signals that a lawyer is ready for more responsibility.

Defaulting to Being the Calm, Not the Tornado

When everything feels chaotic and you barely have time to think, how you manage yourself matters more than ever. Not just for your own effectiveness, but also for the emotional state, focus, and performance of everyone around you.

In high-pressure moments, in-house lawyers often default to one of two modes. Some become the tornado: urgent, reactive, spraying questions, risks, and half-formed concerns into already crowded conversations. Even when well-intentioned, this amplifies stress and slows decision-making.

Others become the calm.

The calm lawyer doesn’t pretend the situation isn’t serious. They acknowledge the urgency without adding unnecessary noise or stress. They synthesize information, separate signal from distraction, and communicate clearly what matters now, what can wait, and what decision is actually required.

This is one of the fastest ways to build impact and earn trust. Lawyers can easily become one more source of anxiety in moments of uncertainty. But the most effective in-house lawyers instead steady the room, frame the issue, and help move the business forward.

Lawyers who manage themselves effectively manage their reactions and show up as a stabilizing force, especially when others can’t. Over time, this shifts how you’re perceived. As a capable lawyer, and also as a leader people rely on when things are hard.

Don’t Forget the Magic

Last week, I shared practices to help you thrive at work in December, even when there is a lot going on at work and at home.

My final tip was to embrace gratitude. Having a job this holiday season is a privilege. Even the stress—of trying to make things special for the people we love—comes from a place of abundance. And being alive, in a moment when so many have lost that chance too soon, is something I don’t want to take for granted.

This past weekend, my family and I went to New York. My husband Chris and I each lived there for over a decade, and it’s where we met and got married. But our son had never been to Manhattan.

So we took him to see the Rockefeller Center tree and to watch the skaters. We waited in line for FAO Schwarz in the snow, visited museums, and we saw friends.

It was exhausting. It meant more nights away from home when we’ve already had many recently. And I wouldn’t change it.

I’m deeply grateful for the chance to be in a city I love, with people I love, doing things that felt meaningful. My hope for you this month is that, amid the noise and the to-do lists, you find and protect a little of that magic too.