Welcome to the next episode of Legal.io Community Spotlight, a series in which we highlight the careers and experiences of some of the most impressive legal and legal operations professionals working in-house.

In this episode, we explore the career journey of Jane Stahl, General Counsel at Shaw Industries. Jane shares about the vital role empathy plays in her career as well as enterprise legal department success as a whole. Pieter and Jane cover:

• Jane's career journey to date
• Key responsibilities in her role as General Counsel
• Key challenges and lessons learned in her role over time
• How empathy is crucial when it comes to enterprise legal department success   

Pieter Gunst

Hi everyone. My name is Pieter Gunst. I'm the CEO of Legal.io and it is my distinct pleasure to be here today with Jane Stahl, the General Counsel at Shaw Industries. Shaw Industries is a flooring solution provider for commercial and residential clients and Jane has a long and storied track record as the company's GC. And I'm really looking forward to diving into a bit of her journey here today.

Jane, thank you so much for being here with me today.

Jane Stahl

It’s my pleasure, Pieter, thanks for having me.

Pieter Gunst

So Jane, let's dive right in. What's been your journey becoming the General Counsel at Shaw Industries?

Jane Stahl

Well, like so many people. I came out of law school and I went into private practice with the same firm that I clerked with when I was in law school. I had a very traditional trajectory out of law school. I went to law school in Tennessee at the University of Tennessee, and then I started my law practice in Chattanooga, Tennessee where I did both the clerkship for a judge and also then I was in private practice doing labor and employment and general litigation.

So a very, I would say, familiar story to many. I did that for about seven years. And I got a cold call one very early morning, which I wasn't always in the office at 7:00 in the morning. In those days, I had a baby that was eight months old, so that wasn't always the case, but I happened to be in that morning. I got a cold call from a recruiter from Shaw Industries which was a company not particularly well known to me but just 30 miles down the road from Chattanooga in Dalton, Georgia.

And the inquiry came, “He, would you consider coming into an in-house role where you'd be managing litigation and doing labor and employment counseling for a company?” At the time the size was just under 30,000 employees. I wasn’t really looking for a job, and they said, “Well, that's who we want; people who aren't looking”. So at any rate, I interviewed for the position in a very small legal department, but when I interviewed it was a department of one. There had been some changes in the department and my boss at the time (who is still my boss today) and was looking to fill out that in-house role with labor and employment (which was really my background and also litigation). So, I came on and I've been here for almost 22 years.

Pieter Gunst

How big is the company now and the department?

Jane Stahl

About 22,000 employees. So the footprint for labor is not as big, but it's still pretty big. I have a team of about 14 people working for me today.

Pieter Gunst

Wow.

Jane Stahl

So we've grown it a lot. Had tremendous growth in the department, which it needed. But most of that growth has come in the last I would say, five to seven years. For a long time, we were a department of four.

Pieter Gunst

Now, when I was in law practice there was a distinct group of attorneys, starting at like year two or three, that were really looking to go in-house. But you got recruited. You were there a little bit longer. Were you thinking at that point, “Hey, I would love to go in-house”?

Jane Stahl

No, I really wasn't. I didn't know too many lawyers who had gone in-house. I didn't have clients who were in-house lawyers. I had one national client where we dealt with the Assistant GC. To be honest with you, he was not a particularly easy person to work with, so my history and my picture on in-house counsel was not particularly favorable at the time. So, of course, I've heard in-house lawyers but it's just wasn't a career path I was ever picking.

Pieter Gunst

Yeah, amazing. So, I figured the role and your day to day changed a lot on that trajectory. I'm interested, given that trajectory you've been with the company for quite a while now. You're a deep subject expert in everything when it comes to Shaw. What does a day to day look like for you right now? What is a day at work? 

Jane Stahl

Right now, I think my role is not very different from any GC. We are privately held by Berkshire Hathaway, so I don't have those public company pressures. SEC, Wall Street, those sorts of things aren't really pressing on me. Obviously our parents have to deal with those issues and they do, beautifully. So, we are a large, private company [and that] is how we operate. The regulatory environment for all corporations, I think, has changed so dramatically in the last ten years that I would say my day to day is really making sure that we, as a team, have our arms around the regulatory environment in which we find ourselves; whether it's manufacturing or sourcing goods to sell around the world. That global complexity is certainly part of my day to day and that's where I spent most of my time making sure we've got [that] handled. And partnering with really talented business people who really understand that compliance and regulatory landscape. But we have to come in alongside them, partnering with them, making sure that what they're trying to achieve from a business perspective is obviously aligned with the regulatory landscape. That's my day to day. My background was in litigation, so I do hold on to one or two pieces of litigation because some days you just want to have fun. Not that all litigation is fun, but that is where my passion was for a lot of years (and labor and employment counseling). I do hold on to a little bit of that. But that of course, in an in-house role, is really a function of managing that relationship with outside counsel. That's a really important part of what I do day to day as well. Managing that function whether it's in litigation or in other areas where we're needing deep subject matter expertise.

Pieter Gunst

Right. And now depending on the industry, I find that some General Counsel, it's very litigation-heavy. It's by far like the 80/20 of the budget kind of deal. Is that your world as well or does that shift more to transactional?

Jane Stahl

Yeah, it's really more towards- we don't have a line of litigation for our company our size, in my opinion. But it is all outsourced, right? So we're not managing any of that litigation, we're not going to court, we're not taking depositions, we're not writing briefs, we’re really managing a core group of people who are doing that for us. So I would say it's not the 80/20. I would say just understanding the regulatory framework in a global market that is changing all the time. Whether that's in the supply chain or environmental, right? Just understanding how we fit and making sure that we're keeping all of our stakeholders in mind as we are in the marketplace is really where I spend most of my time. Not really in litigation.

Pieter Gunst

Yeah, understood. It's interesting then to learn a bit more about in the context of your day to day and in a business like this, you know, what are some of the challenges or maybe a core challenge that you have encountered along the way and what did you learn from it?

Jane Stahl

Well, I think if you're asking, Pieter, the question, If I look back on a career at Shaw - almost 22 years - where it's kind of the cornerstone of learning that if I hadn't gotten it right, I probably wouldn't be here.

Pieter Gunst

Oh, tell me that!

Jane Stahl

Yes, I would say not being the “Department of No. Legal departments get a bad rep for being the “Department of No”. I would say, when I first came in, I just don't think I understood the power of building trusting relationships across the enterprise. I didn't realize how important that was going to be to my job of protecting the enterprise. And I'll tell you what I mean by that a little bit more, is if you don't come to a business meeting with empathy, with curiosity, with a mind and heart, to hear and understand what people are going through before you start piling on your legal know-how and your expertise, people aren't going to feel welcome and they're not going to engage with you. So you have to make that engagement with your business partners as pleasant as possible, even if you are having to say no or even if you are having to help them correct the course. You have to make that enjoyable or they'll not come back.

If my business people don't come back to me, I don't know what's going on, and I can't do my very important job of protecting the enterprise, right? So that, to me, I think the underestimation of the relationships that needed to be built. Nobody told me that in law school. That's not something you learn. So, particularly as an outside counsel, you're coming in for a critical moment, particularly in litigation; you're hearing all the story and then you're fashioning a solution and you're going. Nobody loves it. It's not a great transaction. Nobody loves to be in litigation, except for the lawyers. And so you're not really in the business of building relationships, or at least I wasn't. That to me was the key. That was probably the earliest misstep I had. And I very quickly realized; if you want people to come back, seek advice. They want to do the right thing, but if they have a terrible experience with you, they're not coming back. And so I think that's the most important lesson I’ve learned here.

Pieter Gunst

That's so fascinating. I see this in myself as an entrepreneur as well. It's so easy to come into a discussion with preconceptions to not really go up to the “why”. To be busy and wanting to get the next thing done. How do you train yourself? Is that running into a wall a couple of times? Just seeing, “Oh, this technique doesn't work”?

Jane Stahl

Yeah, it's coming in. I mean, I have a strong personality, and it's me coming in and realizing that when I come in and dominate the room with my subject matter expertise, it shuts the room down. And you don't have to go into too many of those meetings where you realize you're not getting feedback to realize maybe you're not doing something right. So I think that is what happens. And I will say it's something I work on all the time. I sometimes have to write- I had an HR person once tell me he would write at the top of any notepad “WAIT” - why am I talking? Sometimes you do have to remind yourself that if can't defend why you're talking, maybe be quiet. And that's particularly true for me. A lot of lawyers have that dominant personality and it really comes from a place of wanting to help. And young lawyers, I won’t even say young, I'll say new to the profession lawyers are eager to get out and make their bones and prove that they know what they're doing and help people. But truthfully, some of the best help I've ever given people is just to sit back and be a sounding board. So my role as a sounding board has turned into a really an important part of what I do.

Pieter Gunst

I do find it fascinating that indeed the law firm trajectory - so common for many of us - it doesn't train you for it. It doesn't teach you those skills. When I went in-house, I looked back at my law firm years, it was like, “Wow, I can't believe they took that from me”. You know, given how I didn't really step into the business or wasn't taught to do so. And you're not trained to write a memo, right? And to win the fight.

Jane Stahl

And win the fight. When you're a client, when you only have one client and it's also your employer, winning the fight starts to look very different, because you really need to have an “enterprise first” mindset. And that's really different. I think it's really gratifying. I feel like I'm part of something bigger than myself and that is a good day.

Pieter Gunst

Do you feel it's trainable and also for the outside firms you work with?

Jane Stahl

I do think it's trainable. You know, one of the things that you have to do is - if you're outside counsel - to be able to develop that skill in your new lawyers is really important. I mean, one of the things early on, I would have described my role at Shaw as being a translator between my outside counsel and my business people: I knew what my business people were trying to say and I knew what my lawyers were trying to say, but they were talking past one another. That was one of my really first great successes as an in-house lawyer. Recognizing that divide. Now I have lawyers working for me who are having to do that same thing too and it's something I counsel them on. You have to know what the lawyers are saying. You probably don't have to spend too much time understanding what your outside counsel lawyers are saying. But you really need to understand the business. Your business acumen is your greatest asset when you're an inside lawyer. When you're outside, it's not that your legal acumen is your strength. So, learning that balance is really important and it's something that I do teach and train with lawyers who work for me. And if you get it, you stay. If you don't, you don't like that, you don’t stay.

Pieter Gunst

Organizations are successful at the behest of their leaders. I think it's very clear that this degree of empathy is something that any organization would want in its leadership. And, I think, one of the things we spoke about before was this notion of building a strong culture that starts with empathy. I think also, particularly in the last couple of years, where it's been so much harder to connect to each other, this has been the challenge on the mind of leaders in legal departments and beyond. Can you dive a bit deeper in your thoughts on the importance of building that culture in-house and maybe how it changed in the last couple of years?

Jane Stahl

Yes, I mean, I think we are not alone in trying to understand how do you build a great culture when people aren't on site. And it's a little bit of a false question, right? Because it’s not like cultures were always so great when people were all together. I don't think culture is great because people are together, but I do think that sometimes you don't know that the culture is not great when you're not together. That I think is the key. You might be missing how not good your culture is if you're not together. When people are all together all the time and the culture is bad, you know it instantly. You feel it.

What you begin to feel with a hybrid culture or a truly remote culture, I think, is sort of a void. Which is, for busy people, sometimes a little bit quiet, a little void, is not always a bad thing. If it goes on long enough. you begin to realize now you're creating a culture that isn’t connected. Where the people don't feel like they're part of a team. Where people feel like they're alone, they're on an island. And when you're an in-house team that runs very lean and even though I told you we started with a very small group and now we have 14 people that report to me, it's still pretty lean for the size of our company and the size of our business. So, when you begin to feel like you're alone, there's no opportunity for greatness; great work, sustained work. I just don't think it's possible. I mean, I'm not a social science researcher, but I do try to follow what the current thinking is on high performance teams and what does it take. And certainly subject matter expertise on the team is very important. Competence is very important, but that's kind of a given. That's a baseline, right? That's not the key. The key is, do you feel connected? Is there something bigger than you at work? Do you feel like you're doing good work? Important work? Do you feel valued?

I mean, as a leader, I want people to feel like they have been heard. I want them to feel like I've invested in them in all kinds of ways. Whether that means I want to know their whole story, that they want me to know. I want to give them the resources they need to do a good job. All of that investment in them; whether that's emotional investment or resource investment, that's important. And then I want them to feel that their contribution and their expertise is valued, right? So people need to feel valued, I think.

On my best day as a leader, I work really hard to make people feel heard and valued and invested in. And I think those begin to be the keys to high performance. Since I've been doing a lot of reading about this. It's interesting how much connection between teammates outside of work is important. I don't mean you all have to go sit in a bar and drink together and all. It's not our culture at all at Shaw.

What I mean is, you have to find a way to connect with one another about something other than the work, whatever that means. If that means you're about your dogs or about your vacation or about your parents or your children or your partner or your renovations. Whatever it is you're doing as a human outside of work that you're comfortable sharing, if you're not finding ways to connect meaningfully on that level, I don't know that you have the key. I think that is a key attribute to a high-performing team.

And when people are hybrid or remote, finding that time has to be really intentional. You know, starting this year, we've set up some very intentional lunches that we didn't have to do before because people were just here and we would just see each other. We’ve had to do some team building. I try to do that during business hours because people have lives outside of work and I don't need to take people outside of business hours and build that team. We try to say, “It's so important that we're going to do it during the workday”. It's more important than the work on that day. And I think that sends a really loud message. So building culture is something that's really important to me.

Pieter Gunst

Yeah, I think one of the ways I've thought about this problem as well is how can I exit every meeting, virtual or in-person, with more trust than I entered it with. I found that a very helpful mental model, because I think of our discussion earlier about lawyers being trained in certain ways, [this is] certainly not my default. It's interesting to hear how you've intentionally embedded those moments during work hours to create a safe space for people where they can then perform. And I figure you can also have the hard conversations, because that's the flipside of celebrating wins together.

Jane Stahl

Is holding each other accountable. And feeling still supported when that's happening. Still feeling like you're an important part of what's happening, even if you've had a misstep. And finding out what's the lesson to be learned there. So absolutely, those are all- and you can't do any of that without trust. 100% agree with that. You can't do your business counseling with your business partners without trust. And you can't build a team without trust. Even in your own sector, for sure. It's the key to everything.

Pieter Gunst

Jane. I can tell from this brief conversation that you are a leader that values that greatly and to great effect. I am so grateful for you spending some time with us.

Jane Stahl

Well, thanks so much for having me.

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