Corporate Corner- Icard, Merrill Cullis, Timm, Furen & Ginsburg, P.A.

Corporate Corner

with Telese L. Zuberer, Shareholder & President

Tell us one exciting thing happening in your company right now. We are growing! We have more highly qualified attorneys interested in joining us than ever before, and they come with amazing resumes and drive. Our summer intern program has been a huge success and is pulling in the top of the class candidates out of law school, who are also being welcomed by the younger group of attorneys already with our firm as mentors and friends. It is an uncanny camaraderie to watch, and easy to envision that this group of young professionals will be the next level of leadership in the decade to follow.

Q

What is your favorite activity / what do you do to decompress? Hiking. In the mountains. Pushing my lungs and legs until they burn while taking in the beauty and serenity of something far larger than myself. I do not get to go often, but it fulfills and resets me like nothing else can.

What is your biggest leadership lesson learned? The best lesson I learned about leadership was one that I witnessed at my first legal job nearly 25 years ago - people will do best in a position when they love what they are doing. They may not love every moment of every day, but overall, if the job is fulfilling to the person’s skill set and method of working, they will shine. My role as a leader of a business is to recognize this so that I can match up the right person with the role. I don’t mean qualifications on paper - I mean whether someone needs mentoring or they like to work on their own; whether someone feels fulfilled and validated by their boss; personalities, styles, preferences for communicating. These are the things that will make someone want to give their best each day or be checking the classifieds for a new job on their lunch break.

Q

What book are you currently reading? Fortune’s Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt by Arthur T. Vanderbilt, II. It is a fascinating story of a man that made a vast empire of wealth out of $100 loan from his mother based on the grit and perseverance to succeed, and how the family inheritance dissipated by a sense of entitlement and disregard for the labor required to maintain it. There are so many business lessons imbedded in what otherwise reads like a literary soap opera. The continued theme through the book was that it took more discipline to maintain the wealth and success than to make it. Lots of lessons imbedded in a very interesting story. How do you keep your employees motivated? Sharing my vision for the firm’s future. I try to do this often in shareholder and board meetings and strive to be very visible and accessible to staff around the office. We are in a time of transition, and that can either be perceived as frightful and unnerving, or exciting and visionary. I am going for the latter, which is best done by involving the group to embrace what changes and new opportunities the coming years may bring.