To Improve Your Firm, Look in the Mirror
I attended a managing partner roundtable recently. In the course of the discussion I asked how many had ever used 360 degree feedback in their law firm. A couple of hands went up. One brave soul said, “What is 360 degree feedback?” Several nodded their heads or murmured that they were wondering that, too.
What Is 360 Degree Feedback?
360 degree feedback is a skills development tool which involves surveying the people above, below and around you to get their perceptions about your behavior and the impact of your behavior. The process may also be called multi-rater assessment, multi-source feedback or full circle appraisal.
It usually involves the supervising attorneys, practice group leader, and team or project leader, as well as colleagues, partners or peers within the firm who work with you or otherwise have ample opportunity to observe your behavior and your work product. The associates and staff who report to you or otherwise work with you also rate your behaviors and competencies, and feedback from clients might also be sought. The process usually seeks feedback on a confidential, anonymous basis.
The Purpose of Feedback
Several of you may be feeling a chill run down your spine just reading about this. You may be thinking, “Ask my clients what they think of me? Give associates a chance to mouth off about me? Set myself up for potshots from my partners? Let my staff give me a performance review? Are you crazy?” Most of us, however, secretly wish to know how others see us. This is a development tool that will help you become more proficient at the behaviors that lead to the results you want. Stated another way, this process can help you learn how to get out of your own way, while providing encouragement to continue doing what really works.
The corporate world has been using 360 degree feedback for decades. Jack Welch, the legendary former CEO of General Electric Company, was quoted as saying, “Any company that’s going to make it …has got to find a way to engage the mind of every single employee. If you’re not thinking all the time about making every person more valuable, you don’t have a chance. What’s the alternative? Wasted minds? Uninvolved people? A labor force that’s angry or bored? That doesn’t make sense.” Making any lawyer or staff member more valuable requires feedback to them. Giving them the opportunity to provide feedback to others (especially upwards) helps to keep the workforce engaged.
Research on the Critical Role of Managers
Many law firms now suffer from costly attrition among their young attorneys and staff, as well as partners. “People leave managers, not companies,” say Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, authors of First, Break all the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently. Their conclusion is based on research studies conducted by the Gallup Organization involving over a million employees and eighty thousand managers in a broad range of industries. “How long that employee stays and how productive he is while he is there is determined by his relationship with his immediate supervisor,” assert Buckingham and Coffman. They discovered that managers, not pay, benefits or perks, are the critical factor in building a strong workplace.
If you give work assignments to anyone, you are a manager to that person. Are you willing to consider the possibility that you may be contributing to the problems your law firm experiences? Are you getting the results you want, including the retention of talented lawyers and staff? If not, how can you make the right shifts, if you are unclear about the impact of your current choices and behaviors? Candid feedback can provide the guidance you need.
Benefits to the Law Firm
The firm as a whole will benefit from a properly conducted 360 degree feedback program. Some of the benefits reported include:
1. provides individuals a broader perspective on how they are perceived by others and how they positively and negatively impact others
2. reinforces the desired competencies in the law firm
3. increases awareness by senior management that they also have areas for development and improvement
4. identifies key development areas for individuals, practice groups, support arenas and the firm as a whole
5. multiple raters enhance the recipient’s perception that feedback is valid and objective, leading to more willingness to accept and act upon the feedback
6. fosters a climate of continual improvement in management and other skills
7. identifies strengths in individuals for optimal benefit to the firm
8. highlights the responsibility of an individual for his/her own career development
9. reveals training needs in the organization
10. may reduce discrimination risk by getting feedback from multiple raters in varied job functions
Ultimately, the long term benefits of feedback from multiple sources can be increased productivity, improved talent retention, reduced conflict, more effective management, and progress towards the law firm’s larger goals. The success of the feedback program depends on what the firm and the recipients do with that feedback, however. If poorly implemented, a feedback program can produce negative results.
In a future article we’ll go into more detail about what a 360 degree feedback program looks like, and discuss tips on implementing such a program. In the meantime, you can still employ the old-fashioned way. Consider asking those around you, including peers, direct reports and supervisors, questions like “What suggestions do you have for me?” and “How can I help you be your most effective?”
© Debra Bruce 2008
Post Date: July 15, 2008
Implementing a 360 Degree Feedback Program
Recently two different clients came to their coaching calls upset. They worked for very different organizations, but both had received the results of feedback surveys without any support or private debriefing session. Both were discouraged. They shared their reports with me and asked for help.
A Client That Saw the Glass Half Empty
One client’s report actually indicated a lot of improvement and some very good results in developing teamwork in his group. However, he focused in on the responses to questions that called for negative information, such as frustrations on the job.
He seemed to disregard the responses to the question “What is working well in your group?” He also failed to notice that when asked the neutral question “Is there anything else you would like to share?” quite a few respondents volunteered comments like “I love my job,” “This is a wonderful place to work,” and “They are doing a great job and it’s appreciated.”
With that client, I simply read out loud about half of the positive comments in the survey. As he listened, he began to relax, and realized that perhaps he should review the responses again, with a different focus.
A Client Who Didn’t Know What to Do
The other client received some pretty consistent feedback indicating that she had some issues to work on. She knew she had challenges with a couple of “difficult” employees, but the consistency of responses gave her a wake up call. She began to consider that she might play a larger role in the problems than she realized.
This client felt discouraged because she just didn’t know how to improve the situation, especially in so many different areas. As a very conscientious employee, she had already been doing the best she knew how.
I pointed out to her three skills that we could work on together. I shared my reasoned opinion that, as she mastered those three skills, most of the other areas for improvement would naturally resolve themselves because they were related. The work ahead still daunts her, but she regained hope as we discussed a plan.
These two stories illustrate some of the risks involved in conducting a feedback survey without adequate advance preparation or post-results support for the participants.
Guidelines for Successful 360 Degree Feedback
Here are some guidelines for instituting a successful feedback program.
1. Explain the purpose of the survey in advance, and provide opportunities for questions and reassurances. A couple of appropriate purposes might be (i) to identify individual strengths to capitalize on and individual areas for further development, and (ii) to identify subject areas that warrant additional firm training.
2. To minimize participant anxiety and maximize cooperation, avoid administering the survey near performance review or bonus time or during predictable periods of high workload.
3. Design the survey to measure the important competencies and behaviors that lead to the achievement of the firm’s goals. Research-based surveys are already commercially available to measure certain competencies, such as the behaviors that result in effective leadership. Multiple choice questions are easiest to score, but include a few open-ended questions, as well. They allow raters to give specific examples or raise issues not otherwise addressed.
4. Tying survey results directly to compensation or other rewards can “put teeth into” the firm’s initiative on improving leadership, management, mentorship, communication or other “soft skills.” Such efforts can backfire in the highly competitive environment of a law firm, however. Supervisors may subtly (or not so subtly) pressure subordinates to give good reviews, or friends may collude to rate each other highly. When the firm frames the process as a self-development tool only, it may encourage more candid feedback.
5. Implement mechanisms to assure that the feedback benefits the participants as a professional development tool. Give careful thought to who should have access to the results. Widespread results sharing could cause embarrassment and defensiveness, which would hinder development efforts. For maximum safety for participants, the responses could be gathered confidentially by an external provider, with each participant seeing only his own report. For mid-level security, the responses might be shared only with the human resources professional or practice group leader, and the respective individual recipient.
6. Help the participant recognize and understand differences between his self-perception (based on his self-rating in the survey) and the perceptions of others. Also provide benchmarking data, such as the average score for all other participants in the survey, or national averages for this industry.
7. Repeat the process (perhaps six months or one year later) after implementing training or other development programs. This gives the participants the opportunity to demonstrate progress. This is especially important for those who were disappointed by their first round results.
8. Don’t just focus on negative results. Capitalize on the strengths revealed in the survey by assigning important duties to those who exhibit capability in that arena, rather than on the basis of seniority, revenues produced, or other measures not specifically tied to the necessary competencies.
Examples of Survey Questions
If you have never participated in a 360 degree feedback survey, you may be wondering what kind of questions are involved. Typically the survey will describe a behavior or competency (or group of competencies), then allow the rater to rate how frequently the subject engages in the described behavior (never, seldom, frequently, always) or how accurately the trait describes the subject (strongly disagree, slightly disagree, slightly agree, strongly agree).
Here are a few sample measurement questions gleaned from different surveys:
1. Keeps focus on fixing problems rather than finding someone to blame
2. Places a premium on collaboration, cooperation, and contributing to other’s success
3. Considers the impact of actions and decisions on others before implementing
4. Actions and behaviors are consistent with words
5. Deals on a timely basis with issues that need to be addressed
6. Encourages open and candid expression of ideas and opinions
7. Is flexible in dealing with changing or new circumstances
8. Effectively uses available technology to increase efficiency
9. Analyzes data to determine the root causes of work process and procedure problems
10. Clearly communicates critical job task expectations and measurement standards
Would 360 Degree Feedback Benefit Your Firm?
Do the above rating statements describe behaviors that would improve the productivity and morale of your firm? Would it be valuable for people in your firm to see how their behavior is perceived by others on such standards? If so, a 360 degree feedback survey may be useful for your firm. If, however, members of management and other leaders do not acknowledge the feedback they receive, and take some public steps to improve on any poor scores, the survey may cause more problems than it solves. Don’t ask unless you are prepared to listen!
© 2008 Debra Bruce
Post Date: July 7, 2008
Learning from Our Mistakes
A wise person said, “A mistake is not a mistake unless you fail to learn from it.” I made my share of mistakes in my legal career, and here are a few I learned from. I thought I would offer you the chance to learn from some of mine, instead of making them all yourself.
1. Viewing speaking and writing as non-billable time. It is true that we usually can’t bill anyone for those activities or the preparation time required. When I looked at it that way, however, I tended to de-value the activity, and put it behind everything else. Of course, that means I didn’t get around to developing talks or writing articles that would showcase my expertise and expose me to new contacts. The wiser course would have been to view those efforts as important business development activities, so that I would give them the appropriate emphasis.
2. Focusing on prospective clients and not on prospective referral sources. As a corollary to the first law practice management mistake described above, I didn’t take advantage of opportunities to speak to audiences full of referral sources. At a time when I represented small businesses, the managing partner of the regional office of a large national insurance company asked me to give a talk to their sales stars about shareholder agreements in closely held organizations. I never got around to it. I saw it as a favor to them and I didn’t recognize that they would be highly motivated to act like my free sales force convincing business owners that they needed shareholder agreements backed by key-leader life insurance. I didn’t recognize the opportunity, even though I had seen how an initial small project could develop into a significant long-term client. When those life insurance clients didn’t like their existing counsel, or needed a referral for other reasons, I would have been the corporate lawyer all those sales people knew to recommend.
3. Not networking enough with lawyers in other practice groups. As an associate in a large law firm, I billed a lot of hours. Although I liked getting to know the other attorneys, I had my nose to the grindstone so much that I rarely ventured to the other floors. As a partner, even in a smaller firm, I had many additional duties and tended to focus my networking outward. In those years I got a myopic view of firm politics, and missed a lot of opportunities to build or strengthen valuable alliances. Life in a law firm can have striking similarities to the reality television show Survivor, where alliances play a crucial role.
4. Training one subordinate after another on the same thing. The work in a law office requires smart people at all levels, so lawyers tend to develop people-dependent practices. People smart enough to be good lawyers or good legal support staff have multiple employment opportunities, however. As a result, many law firms today experience a lot of turnover. Illness, life changes, or even advancement within the firm can trigger the need to train replacements. After suffering through temporary employees and new trainees a few times, I learned to ask the people I supervised to develop a desk manual respecting their responsibilities. For any redundant work, the manual set out detailed explanations of the procedures involved and the location of the useful or necessary resources. I also established indexed form banks that I could point people to. That made my practice more system-dependent and less people-dependent. I got higher quality product from my direct reports, I spent less of my own time in the delegation process, and I didn’t get crippled when the inevitable turnover occurred.
5. Working myself into poor health. The ranks of lawyers include a lot of workaholics, and I’ve been one of them. When the law firm culture rewards martyrdom in the name of client service or higher revenues, lawyers may fail to recognize the true price they pay. Until I learned to establish some boundaries and engage in self-care, I went into the hospital twice during one pregnancy due to overwork; I allowed a cold to develop into bronchitis and then pneumonia; I experienced a period of excessive weight loss; I missed out on a great vacation that I regretted for years; and once I fell asleep at a stop light while driving home from work. I have not even mentioned the impact on my most important relationships. Looking back on those days from the maturity of my years and the vantage point of experience, what I gained was not worth what I lost.
6. Telling an experienced assistant how I liked things done without asking her how she liked to do things. When I joined a new law firm, I blew it on the very first day. As a result of that faux pas, we got off to a bad start and I experienced a lot of passive-aggressive foot-dragging and low quality work product from a very competent staff member. If I had started out by asking her how she suggested doing things, I might have learned a few new ideas. There would be plenty of time later to develop a working methodology that satisfied us both. I would have had a more willing guide through my initiation at the new firm, and I definitely would have saved myself a lot of frustration over the next few months.
These are just a few of the mistakes I made over the years. I invite you to share with me some of your experiences of “learning the hard way.” I suspect that together we could have enough fodder for quite a few more columns.
© 2008 Debra Bruce
Originally appeared in The Practice Manager published by the State Bar of Texas in March 2008.
Post Date: March 14, 2008
NY Times Article re Associate Retention Efforts
It will be no news to you that big law firms are struggling to retain associates. Almost all of them suffer from an enlarging associate vacuum after the 3rd year. The national attrition average at the 5 year point is around 80%! It really hurts firms to lose associates during what would be their most profitable years, not to mention the impact on firm morale when so many jump ship.
Some law firms are finally getting the message and starting to develop new associate programs aimed at keeping their talent. Although the programs may feel revolutionary inside the firm, in reality, many firms are just dipping their toes in the water. It’s hard to be forward-thinking and innovative when your whole culture is based on looking backwards and following precedent.
To get a peek at what some firms are doing, read the excellent New York Times article “Who’s Cuddly Now? Law Firms?” published yesterday. Most are trying to create more flexibility. Their plans purportedly allow lawyers to decide for themselves whether they want to be hard chargers racing to the holy grail of partnership, or whether they are willing to accept a later partnership entry in exchange for healthier working hours. It will be interesting to see whether the firm cultures really do reward either path.
Post Date: January 25, 2008