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Law Firm Leadership: Giving Feedback
When many of us hear the words, “May I give you some feedback?” we get a pit in our stomach and brace for the worst. We fear feedback, afraid that someone might have caught us not being perfect. We're afraid that our cover has been blown. We're scared that we're being judged or unfairly criticized. This is especially true in law firms. Lawyers are generally uncomfortable giving constructive feedback and the potential conflict that often comes with it. In many firms, feedback comes in the form of an annual review for staff and attorneys, which has limited effectiveness in identifying and correcting behavior, and often leads to resentment on the part of the receiver of the feedback (i.e., “If I screwed up that bad, why didn't you tell me last January instead of waiting to tell me now?)
That's too bad, because constructive, intentional and structured feedback is a powerful tool to improve individual and team performance. When I was the Director of Marketing for an Amlaw 200 firm, I hired a consultant to work with our marketing team on improving team performance. When we met, we discussed dozens of training topics and team exercises that we could do at our retreat. When I asked him what skill would have the greatest impact on our performance as a team, he replied, “without a doubt, the ability to give and receive feedback from each other.” He led our retreat on the theme, giving us many opportunities to practice performance-enhancing feedback. At the end of the retreat, we discussed the power of giving feedback and what would happen if we gave each other permission to engage in feedback conversations. As a group, we agreed to adopt this as a core value, realizing that while it is hard to give and receive feedback, we all gain from helping each other improve our performance. We decided that feedback is a gift that we'll give to each other.
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