How to win trust and build influence with Joanna Brand

Over the course of a long and distinguished career in corporate and commercial law, most of it in-house, Joanna Brand has built up a wealth of knowledge. Joanna, who joined Law Squared as an Energy and Infrastructure Lawyer and a Service Relationship Manager earlier this year, was a keynote speaker at this year’s InView Connect conference in Sydney. She spoke to our audience about the value of authenticity and making connections.

Make no mistake, Joanna Brand is a high achiever, so when it was suggested that her move to Law Squared positioned her at the vanguard of the ‘achievement quitting’ movement, she was taken aback. Achievement was something she regarded as embedded in her DNA. However, instead of hotly denying the concept, Joanna chose to mull it over. While it was true she wanted to keep using the skills and experiences she’d gained over the years, also true was her desire to become more connected to her family. Realizing that her drive to succeed was not always compatible with her ability to improve that connection, she made some major life changes – one of which included taking a proper break.

Stepping off the career hamster wheel which she’d first hopped on as a 17-year-old, was a revelation. The high achiever – the woman who had spent years at Harvard, worked in private practice in the US and Australia and then in-house as General Counsel and Company Secretary across a range of industries, completed an Executive MBA, sat on multiple executive teams and traveled widely – suddenly had the time to seriously consider what she wanted out of life. She asked herself some searching questions: if she was 17 years old again, what advice would she offer her younger self? As it turned out, understanding how to win trust and build influence was at the top of her list.

Given that the legal profession is built upon the premise of upholding the law, lawyers and trust and lawyers should be natural bedfellows. But Joanna says that from a business’s perspective, lawyers are neither everyone’s favorite people nor intuitively trusted – and this can make it difficult for in-house legal functions to become strategic business partners.

Trust, however, is something that can be won. For Joanna, ways to achieve this, particularly if you are in a leadership role, include being as transparent as possible (while working within the confines of business compliance and confidentiality), and having a consistent and calm demeanor. Being a good listener is also of paramount importance.

“Most of us are good talkers, and that’s probably part of the reason some of us became lawyers,” says Joanna. “But if people feel you’re really hearing them, that helps to build trust. Part of listening is simply about being human – showing up as warm, empathetic and collaborative. And, also, hopefully being somewhat humble in your relationships.”

Understanding your business is your business

Another vital component of Joanna’s ‘win trust and build influence’ mantra is making sure you understand your business. As she says, without an understanding of your business’ key strategies, risks, and levers, offering meaningful advice is difficult.

“My philosophy has always been that I’m here to help the business deliver its strategic outcomes while appropriately managing risk. The word ‘appropriately’ carries a lot of weight, because what is appropriate changes across companies, business lifecycles and industries. Understanding not only your business’ strategy, but also its risk management appetite, is key to building trust, and should allow you to have influence and be a voice in the decision-making process.”

She says that having oversight is essential, as is knowing the way reporting lines work and how to prioritize work appropriately. For example, if site visits are available, make sure to go. “It gives you a sense of the landscape, and a sense of what the people on the ground are dealing with – whether it’s different countries, terrain or community sentiment. Anything you can do to spend time with the rest of the business and build up relationships will be worth the effort.”

Communication is key

For Joanna, communication style is important, because your ability to influence often relates directly to your aptitude for communicating effectively. One of her top tips is learning to read the room – advice she says her younger self could have really benefited from. “When you start a new role or even a new matter, recognize that you are walking into a set of dynamics that pre-existed your arrival, and that you need to read the room as quickly as possible. Rather than charging in, take a second, and try to figure out who’s who in the room and what’s motivating each of them.”

Identifying key stakeholders and knowing which outcomes you want to influence are good skills to develop, as is understanding the dynamics of change management. Joanna’s advice is to be mindful of the fact that your arrival in a new role or a matter brings change. And while to the person implementing the change it is like a “shiny new thing”, the people impacted by the change are probably focused on what they’re losing. Acknowledging their concerns and being empathetic can help turn around resistance to change.

While being authentic will help your efforts to build effective relationships with your internal stakeholders, Joanna adds that it’s also necessary to be adaptable depending on your audience – and that being a situationally appropriate version of yourself is what is required.

“Know when to fold ‘em” is another gem that Joanna offers. She points out that career decisions don’t always work out as you hope they will. You might take on a new role at a new company for all the right reasons, but the team or the culture just isn’t the right fit.

“I don’t think you can succeed where your personal values and an organization’s values are not aligned. But remember, if you leave a role that isn’t right for you, you’ll still have learned a huge amount,” she says. “When I was in a situation like that, I learned I wasn’t going to be successful at that company because our values didn’t align. I learned that my good intentions, good intellect and good ideas aren’t always enough. I learned that I was resilient, and I also learned that a difficult work situation can absolutely impact your personal life.” These are all lessons which Joanna has used to her advantage going forward.

Joanna also talks about self-awareness. For her, this is the key to everything, personally and professionally – and she believes that the learning process is continuous. The importance of self-awareness was brought home to her when she attended her twenty-year reunion at Harvard Law School. “At the time, I was in a bad patch career wise, and I remember looking through the windows of the classrooms, seeing the students and thinking wow, those people must be geniuses, they’re at Harvard. I’d totally lost that part of myself, who I was and what I’d achieved. Sometimes, when you experience rough times at work, you get knocked around and forget what you have accomplished.”

The changes that Joanna has made (or what she terms the “new current version of me”) have left her more connected to her partner and her family, supercharged her energy for her work at Law Squared, and put the spark back into her life. She likes how she is and how she feels – and is reveling in the positivity that comes with knowing she’s made the right choices for the right reasons.

As Joanna says, mistakes are an opportunity to learn. Every decision and situation, no matter how dire they may seem at the time, will produce nuggets of positivity that can help us all as we look towards the future.

To watch the full recording of Joanna’s session at InView Sydney 2024, click here.