General Counsel and Chief Legal Officers today face relentless pressure. It can feel easier to borrow the language of others—or even lose your voice altogether, retreating inward when the pressure mounts. Yet clarity, connection, and resilience in leadership begin with that voice. The “vowels of leadership” offer a practical framework to rediscover it: five mindsets that help legal leaders move beyond survival mode, find the confidence to lead, and the openness to draw strength from their teams.

How would you describe the work of a lawyer? Meticulous, ethical, analytical, adaptive, pragmatic? But ask a roomful of lawyers and another set of words might surface just as quickly: overworked, stretched, reactive, isolated. To unlock the strengths, and minimise the pressure points I want to propose borrowing a mindset from another discipline entirely: design.