New York Lawyer
August 22, 2002

Editor's Note: Holly English is on vacation this week.

Q:
I am a partner and need to do better at giving feedback.

I like to get along well with people, and value good relationships. Most of the time it works out, but when it doesn't, especially with someone I like very much, it's very awkward.

I frequently find myself in the position of redoing other people's work because I don't think it's good enough, but I don't feel great about confronting the person. Increasingly I feel resentful about it, but I can't seem to get myself out of this jam.

I want to be direct but don't know how to do it without disrupting the relationship.

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A:

This is a very frequent problem in legal workplaces, I think more so than in corporations and other businesses, where there have been lots of efforts made to improve difficult communications. There's no question that improving your skills at giving feedback will make you and anyone who works with you more effective for the firm.

Just think: instead of you spending the time redoing the brief, the person who drafted it would do it, resulting in greater efficiency and appropriate billing rates for work performed.

You of course have to differentiate between people whose work you supervise who just don't have the ability or motivation to do things right, even after repeated interventions, versus those who can develop and learn. The former you need to shift to practice areas they are more suited to, or ease them out the door. The second group is where you can practice sharpening up your feedback skills.

It's great that you want to preserve your relationships with people. Keep in mind that the pivotal divide between a social context and a work context is that there's a greater goal than just serenely getting along together, and that is providing a superior work product for your clients. When there are problems with the work product, it's necessary to at least mildly disrupt the personal relationship in favor of that greater goal.

So - how to do it? I think one of the main problems in this area is that people not normally keen to give negative feedback (read: most lawyers) visualize such a session as confrontational, argumentative, a big fight, that sort of thing. I would get a different image in my head. Visualize you and your associate or paralegal or whoever it is as a team, sitting together looking at the future. Your aim is to produce a great product for your client, together. You need to establish in your own mind that you are on this person's side, not angrily opposing him or her.

Then, you need to convince the other person that you're on his or her side, by establishing trust. The way to do this is to conduct productive, nonjudgmental, factually-based discussions that always focus on specific ways to improve a document or research process or whatever it is - not on generalizations about the person's shortcomings.

So, a helpful observation would be, "Providing a concluding paragraph that draws together your points at the end of each section will help the judge see where your argument is going," rather than, "You writing really needs work! Your brief isn't convincing, and the judge will get lost while reading it." That's the kind of thing that makes people go off. Your job is to help the other person keep their eye on the ball - doing better work for the client, not defending himself or herself to preserve personal dignity.

Remember, too, that positive feedback needs to be factual and specific as well, so that others believe it and to keep the scales balanced. Airy, on-the-fly remarks like, "Looks fine!" provide precious little of the positive reinforcement that human beings need to feel like their life has a little meaning and purpose. Also, if you enumerate the specifics of what's gone right, people can build up a checklist of individual techniques and approaches that have proven worth.

The hardest part about getting into productive feedback work is actually plunging in the first time and doing it. The way to establish solid trust with someone else is to go through a cycle of feedback - they produce the work, you review it and give productive comments, they revise it and it's actually improved, and your relationship is preserved - so that others see that feedback is not a threatening and divisive process but in fact is an opportunity to get better at what you do.

Redoing someone else's work is actually not doing the person a favor. (And it's certainly no favor to you). It's preventing them from growing and developing. So square your shoulders and step up to the plate. The vital character ingredient needed at this time is courage.

Sincerely,
Holly English
Principal Consultant, Values at Work