Brittany Miao, Group General Counsel at Dragon Plus in Singapore, explores why influence starts with trust, early involvement and staying close enough to the underlying facts to understand what is really happening.
What challenge facing GCs and senior in-house lawyers today is receiving too much attention, and what important issue isn’t receiving enough?
The conversation today often focuses on the need for GCs and senior in-house lawyers to become more strategic, commercial, and business-oriented. However, a less discussed question is how they actually get there, i.e. how they develop the business understanding, judgment, and relationships needed to earn trust from the C-suite and demonstrate the value legal can bring to the business.
I have worked at two companies in the same industry, with largely similar businesses and even so, I have found that the path to building trust is never quite the same. The pace, approach, and factors that shape how legal earns credibility can vary depending on the culture of the organisation and its leadership dynamics.
This is an area where I believe the in-house community can continue to learn from each other: how different GCs and senior in-house lawyers have built trust with their executive teams, how long that process took, and what approaches proved most effective.
If your CEO were describing your value to the business in one sentence, what would you hope they would say?
My hope is for the CEO to say: “When faced with complex challenges, Brittany helps the company navigate uncertainty; after weighing costs, benefits, risks, and opportunities, she delivers well-considered solutions and sound judgments that, even with hindsight, prove to have been the best possible choices at the time.”
What separates legal teams that are merely efficient from those that are truly influential?
I believe that for legal professionals to exert greater influence, two factors are particularly important.
The first is personal mindset – something within one’s own control. Legal professionals who adopt a proactive attitude, a problem-solving mindset, and a sense of ownership tend to engage with business operations at an early stage. By maintaining regular communication with business teams, they gain deeper insights and the opportunity to shape initiatives before they are fully set in stone. They can help devise strategies and alternatives, such as designing business models that stay compliant while sidestepping approaches that would otherwise draw heavy regulatory scrutiny. The impact and value of such early intervention far exceed the advice offered after a plan is finalised or a crisis has already emerged.
The second is the level of trust and engagement. This is only partially within one’s control. On one hand, legal professionals must actively build trust during collaboration by demonstrating professionalism and reliability in cross-departmental initiatives. On the other hand, it depends on whether the other parties are willing to delegate authority. The more trust a legal professional earns, the more involved they become in business matters, creating opportunities to deepen their understanding of the business and build rapport, which, in turn, fosters further trust, creating a virtuous cycle.
I recall several complex or innovative cross-departmental projects I executed whose success was inextricably linked to the trust management placed in me, a work environment focused on problem-solving, and project teams willing to allow me to take the lead in internal and external coordination and negotiation. Ultimately, this trust was forged through the experience of working together on these challenges.
Looking back over the past 12 months, what has been your biggest professional lesson?
You must stay close enough to the underlying facts to avoid relying solely on information that has already been filtered.
While a team helps scale, I believe it is crucial for a leader to get “hands-on” and immerse yourself directly in the work. This is especially important when dealing with expanded responsibilities, novel issues without precedent, or areas where no established system or methodology yet exists. You should step in and handle the matter as if you were the lead counsel, grounding your judgment in the original evidence. That first-hand exposure helps avoid being led astray by inaccurate or filtered information. After all, you cannot make high-quality decisions based on inaccurate data.
In a particularly sensitive investigation, for example, if you rely on a summary from someone else rather than examining the raw evidence yourself, you risk missing further leads or being completely misled. Go deep enough to establish the right model and methodology first, then scale through the team. This also sets an example for those executing the work. Of course, it does mean being deliberate about how you spend your time and attention as a manager, but it is likely to save time and effort in the long run.
