Narrative 5 "i Know How I'm Doing and How to Get Even Better"

• Library: Positive Professionals: Creating High-Performing Profitable Firms Through Engagement (ABA) (2017 Ed.)

"Feedback is the breakfast of champions," according to management expert and author Ken Blanchard. In fact, feedback is a key contributor to work engagement and is important to everything we've discussed so far (Bakker et al., 2013; Oldham, 2011). It enhances work-related meaningfulness by affirming that our work matters—that our work is not just a shredder-bound word puzzle or a Lego robot destined for disassembly. Feedback also helps communicate that we matter. When conveyed respectfully, feedback signals that we're valued and valuable. We're worth investing in and developing. It also helps fuel the growth cycle that builds confidence and mastery. Proper feedback fosters learning, which increases our sense of competence (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007). On the other hand, lack of feedback is consistently tied to burnout (Maslach et al., 2001).

Feedback: The breakfast of champions.

It turns out that the old adage that "no news is good news" is a horrible motivation tactic. The psychological experience of "I know how I'm doing and how to get even better" is critical to lawyers' work engagement. To help develop this experience, we'll focus on two strategies:

1. Give Regular Feedback Using the 80-20 Rule: Follow negative feedback with a pile of genuine, positive feedback to circumvent lawyers' psychological immune systems to criticism.
2. Give Plenty of Positive Recognition: Regularly use informal recognition to direct lawyers' attention to what they're doing well and to positively reinforce it.

1. Give Regular Feedback Using the 80-20 Rule

Some type of feedback—positive or negative—is necessary to identify what good things followers should continue doing, identify what needs correction, and to communicate that the work was not a futile waste of time. But, while it's easy to give positive feedback, it can be a major challenge to effectively deliver negative feedback—which most often is ignored and can actually harm motivation. Below, I offer research-based strategies to help cultivate the benefits of feedback while limiting many of the pitfalls.

The Negative Impact of Typical Performance Evaluations

A common form of feedback in law firms is the annual performance review. If you listen closely every fall, you'll hear the collective groan of lawyers all over the country as performance review season descends upon them. The aversion to this annual ritual is understandable. The review process often is a time-guzzler for partners and anxiety-inducing for associates. And whether there's a positive return on the investment is in serious question. For example, a national survey found that 87 percent of employees and managers believed that performance reviews are useless and ineffective (Williams, 2012). A scientific review of studies of over 600 feedback processes found that many were ineffective while 30 percent were destructive to performance (Kluger & DeNisi, 1996).

The problems with the traditional appraisal process are no secret—if you Google the phrase "performance reviews harm performance," you'll get over 11 million hits. But most firms still stick with it. A growing number of organizations, such as Lear, Deloitt, Disney, Atlassian, and Accenture, however, are scrapping their annual performance appraisal processes in favor of a more individualized coaching approach. That's unlikely to happen at most law firms soon, making it more practical to focus on ways to tweak the current systems to minimize negative effects of performance evaluations.

Our Immunity to Negative Feedback

Most lawyers want to improve and, to do so, want honest feedback. But we also have a powerful competing impulse to defend our self-worth against threats (Neville & Roulin, 2016). This may be especially true for lawyers, many of whom, according to personality research, are highly sensitive to criticism (Richard, 2002; MacEwan, 2013). Additionally, it's even more likely for egos to get wrapped up in the intellectually complex and creative work that lawyers do.

These competing motives of self-improvement and self-protection can be viewed as part of a "psychological immune system" that...