Giving Performance Feedback in the Firm
| Publication year | 1988 |
| Pages | 865 |
| Citation | Vol. 17 No. 5 Pg. 865 |
1988, May, Pg. 865. Giving Performance Feedback in the Firm
A good deal of attention is now being focused on the high level of stress attendant with the practice of law. Numerous undesirable results have been attributed to this stress, including not only professional costs such as reduced efficiency but also damaging effects in attorneys' personal lives.
Stress reduction usually requires a multi-faceted approach to be successful. A recent article in the March 1988 issue of The Colorado Lawyer(fn1) suggested that increased communication within the firm can be beneficial, and it described an internal daily memo designed to keep firm members apprised of personnel changes and other important information. This article presents an approach to a specific type of communication within the firm---providing performance feedback.
Early in this century, psychologist Charles Horton Cooley described the notion of the "looking glass self," or reflected appraisal, which indicates that people develop a self-concept through the reactions and evaluations of others who are important to them. The concept of one's work self depends on this reflected appraisal just as much as one's personal self-concept depends on it. In the absence of feedback, an employee cannot tell for sure how effective his or her work self is, resulting in increased stress brought about by that uncertainty.
Regular performance feedback may be particularly important for professionals. Members of a profession tend to consider its practice as providing more than a paycheck. At the least, the chosen profession provides an identity; for many practitioners, it also reflects a philosophy and expresses a value system central to the individual. For these reasons, members of a profession tend to be highly ego-involved in their work; that is, in the ego sense, many "are" their work.
These psychological facts of the looking glass self and high ego-investment make accurate awareness of professional effectiveness essential to job satisfaction and high performance. Abundant evidence exists in management literature that people who work for long periods without appropriate performance feedback become discouraged, frustrated and demoralized by attempts to guess accurately how they are doing.(fn2) They wonder what should they do more of, or less of, or maintain at the same level. These frustrations, as well as the costs of learning by trial and error, can be alleviated substantially by giving effective performance feedback through appropriate managerial communication.
Routinely providing informal feedback outside of the formal review process leads to a number of positive results. When people know how they are doing they tend to perform better, stay on the job longer, be more motivated to excel and experience generally improved morale. Unsatisfactory performance can be corrected before it becomes highly problematic, and unpleasant surprises are avoided in the annual review. When effective feedback routinely is provided, the organization as a whole is...
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