Providing feedback is a powerful development tool. But to be effective, your feedback, especially when it’s critical, must be heard and acted upon. This requires the right delivery and content.

In our experience, too many lawyers save all their feedback to annual performance evaluations, but that gives their associates and staff no time to do anything about it. Or they only provide negative feedback and fail to highlight anything positive about the person’s work. Neither approach will motivate your associates to do their best work. 

One of the biggest fears of a feedback giver is the fear of repercussions – “they won’t want to work for me again,” “I won’t get as much out of them,” “I don’t know what they’ll say about me,” etc. Or that it’s never going to change – “They won’t change.” Or that “I don’t have time,” “I’m working at warp speed – I don’t have time to deal with it.”

There is a better way!