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The “F” Word: Feedback In The Legal Department Hanna Hart Executive Coach And Forbes Contributor (E63)
My name is Hanna Hart. I am an executive coach and facilitator. A fun fact about me is that I love to swim in cold water, especially Lake Tahoe.
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I’m thrilled to welcome Hanna Hart, who is an executive coach and frequent contributor to Forbes. She’s also trained hundreds of lawyers and others about our topic, which is the F word Feedback. Hanna, how are you?
I’m great. I’m happy to be here.
I’m thrilled to have you. You are another referral from the lovely Michael Melcher, who I spoke about my other favorite topic, which is network building. He hasn’t steered me wrong and any of the guests he’s referred here, so I know you are going to be great.
He always steers me right too.
Understanding Feedback: What It Really Is
I did call this the F word for a reason. I think that people have strong feelings around the topic of feedback, both as givers and receivers. I hoped we could delve into that. Can you give us a little background or a big zooming out? What is feedback?
At the most basic level, feedback is a communication of data about how your actions or your work product are being received. Some of the most useful data you can get to make decisions about how you want to show up is essential to growing and developing.
A lot of us, especially lawyers who are always trying to be at the top of our game, are conditioned to be somewhat guarded around self-reflection or presenting in a certain way. I think that there’s a lot of apprehension around the topic. I was talking with another GC and we were talking about feedback and she said, “Do I have to? I avoid that.” It’s something that we are not comfortable with.
Feedback is coming your way in one form or another all the time. It’s the little tightening of the lips when someone doesn’t like what you say. It’s someone who stops working with you, and there’s no explanation. That’s a form of feedback. It’s super indirect and hard to interpret. All of us should feel grateful when someone takes the time to say, “There’s this thing you are doing and here’s how it’s landing with me,” or “That work product you turned in did not meet my expectations, but here’s how you can do better next time.” On the one hand, lawyers are trained to be the expert and we want to save face. We want to be trusted and have credibility, but in order to get to that level, it’s like an athlete needs a coach to tell them to change their stance. We need feedback in order to improve.
That’s right, but you have to be in the right mindset to receive it and to give it. As you were giving that example, I was thinking that it takes some level of courage, confidence, and bravery to be the one even to open a feedback conversation.
They have done studies on people’s heart rate and sweating when they are on both sides, the giver and the receiver. It turns out that a giver of feedback feels as much anxiety as the receiver.
I bet. It’s a conversation. I think a lot about it. I do a lot of pre-planning and try to psych myself up for it.
That’s good. We talk about why people avoid giving feedback. A lot of it is that discomfort. Maybe it’s fear that the other person is going to disagree, get defensive, and that the conversation might get nasty. Maybe it’s fear that you’ll hurt their feelings and then they won’t like you anymore. Maybe it’s fear that you’ll do a bad job and at the end of it, you’ll feel like you are wrong. There are lots of reasons why we resist. Most of them come down to some form of fear or hopelessness. Nobody is going to change or lack time. Those are the reasons that typically lawyers give me of why they avoid it.
All of those resonate with me for sure. You framed it in terms of a feedback conversation and I liked that framing because a lot of times, we can feel like we are delivering it or receiving it. Let’s talk about why it is a conversation.
It’s a great question. A lot of people do think of feedback as coming from the top down and one way. Imagine a dump truck pulling up. You jump whatever you have to say, and then you drive away. That’s not going to be the most productive way. Also, claim that the only person who knows what’s true is the giver, but it’s an old saying. “There are two sides to every story.”
It’s important for the person who is the initiator of the feedback conversation, notice how I changed it from giver and receiver to initiator of the feedback conversation, to bring some humility and curiosity to the conversation, which is, “Here’s how this is landing with me,” or “Here’s where my expectations were and where you fell short, but I also want to hear from you, so maybe there’s something I don’t know about your circumstances. Maybe my expectations were unclear.”
It’s not about establishing right or wrong. It’s about, “Let’s both learn from this.” I have heard countless stories of the person on the initiating side having an idea of what’s going on for the other person. You didn’t even try to do this thing. This work is so bad you didn’t even try. Maybe it turns out that the other person had never done this before. It was their first time, and so they needed more guidance.
Maybe something is going on in someone’s personal life that they should have communicated with you. There could be all kinds of things that the other person could improve, but you are feeling about it and the story you make up is often deficient. You need to say, “What was going on for you? What did you think was going on there?” Not in a, “What’s going on for you,” but like, “Help me understand.”
That curiosity mindset seems to be a key to doing this well. I can even think about myself, and sometimes, other than let’s say the annual performance review, where there’s a structure, everyone has an expectation that it’s going to happen. If I get to a point where I need to give somebody feedback, and you are going to tell me this is not the right way, but it’s not like in the moment, like, “Hanna did this and I want to get with her right away.”
The way I do it, acknowledging this isn’t the right way, is that I accumulate a couple of different experiences, then I will bring that to the person. I think about what I do and I want to hear about how to reframe it, is I get annoyed. “Why doesn’t Hanna know that this is what I want? Great, she did it again.” That’s how I psych myself up or work towards that conversation, but maybe you could help me move from being irritable and annoyed to curious and productive.
When giving feedback, focus on specific behaviors rather than making judgments about the person. Share on XThere are many times when I wish I could move from irritated and annoyed to curious. I don’t want to say it’s the wrong way to do it, to let a number of data points accumulate, because sometimes you do want to see, was this a one-time or is this persistence? It’s not like every time something happens, you need to jump right in and give feedback right then.
That said, watching your own emotional temperature is important. You don’t want to get to the point where you are super unskilled in giving your feedback because you have so much emotion. There’s a framework that we use. I’m a facilitator of a course at Stanford at the Graduate School of Business. We talk about giving and receiving feedback. We have this model we call the pinch crunch model. The idea is if you feel a pinch or something rubs you the wrong way, if you can raise that relatively soon and say, “This bothered me a little bit,” I imagine you didn’t mean it or maybe we had a mismatch of expectations, then you can correct relatively quickly.
You are sailing along with a harmonious relationship. “There’s a little pinch.” We name it, we resolve it, and then we go back to sailing on harmoniously. If I don’t, if I wait for another one and another one, then there’s a crunch. The crunch is like, “What the F?” I’m angry, I’m furious. Suddenly, I’m like, “You are always doing this. You are so inconsiderate, or you are so incompetent.” That is a much harder conversation to resolve because my emotional temperature is high and you had no idea. You are that much more shocked.
There is a lesson there, which is if you can nip it in the bud, if you can act on the pinch and not wait for the crunch, you can have a more skillful conversation. It’s protecting you and the other person if you can raise it in a measured way. Let’s say you don’t do that. Let’s say you are annoyed, then you need to prepare for the conversation.
You want to sit down, channel your most positive intention, like, “I’m going to assume this person doesn’t know what they are doing. I own it now somewhat too because I have never said anything. They are ignorant and I’m angry. I need to bridge that gap somehow. What do I care about?” “I want to get back to sailing nicely in our relationship, and there’s a rift here. I might never work with this person again if I can’t fix this, so I’ve got to fix it.” Walk through and write down, and I can talk about the model of the steps of what are the pieces of a skillful feedback opening or initiation, and write them down so that you can go in with a cooler mindset.
The pinch crunch model is something that we should all adopt so that we don’t get to a point where we’re crunching.
It’s helpful in personal relationships too.
Sometimes it’s a little thing. It’s the three reasons that you don’t do it at the moment. I see that it is going to make the stakes higher if you are in a crunch.
Setting Clear Expectations: A Proven Model For Effective Feedback
For sure. The anger and frustration are higher. I said that I have a model. It’s not my model. It’s a well tested model. I want to name what those pieces are if that’s okay. The first thing to remember is that feedback is data. You want to be as clear with the data as possible and not judgmental. Let’s say I say, “You are so inconsiderate,” do you know what to change? No. We want to keep it specific and behavioral. “When you borrow my clothing and you return it, I’m noticing that you haven’t washed it, and then I have to wash it before I can use it, and that’s frustrating to me. It feels like you are not taking into consideration my trouble. I wish you would wash my clothes before you return them.”
It’s very clear.
Feedback is just one conversation in a relationship over time. Share on XIt’s a behavior. “You look great in my clothes. I want you to be able to wear my clothes, but I’m not going to want to share my clothes with you if I don’t get them back the way I gave them to you.” “You borrowed my car, you didn’t fill it back up with gas.” I want to be specific rather than say, “You are so disrespectful and inconsiderate.”
We want to use behaviors rather than judgments. We want to be specific and we want to name what’s the impact on me. Let’s take it to a work context instead of, “Stacy, you need more attention to detail.”
Just a little bit specific or, “You are careless. Stacy, when I get memos from you, they are substantively spot on, but they consistently have errors that you could correct with simple proofreading. I’m noticing typos, I’m noticing weird fonts appearing like you copied and pasted something in and didn’t bother to make sure that it was the same. When I get that, especially if it’s not the last minute, I wind up doing cleanup and I have to work later, and that’s not working for me. What can we do?” I want to say, “This is specific.”
How many times have you heard more senior lawyers say, “These associates are so careless. They don’t care. They don’t bother. They are sloppy.” We want to let someone know. The point here is how can they correct it? If it’s truly about learning and not about me venting my anger. You want to make sure that somebody can learn from it, and that goes back to the mindset.
My mindset needs to be not, “I’m right. You are wrong. I’m good, you are bad. You get the blame.” It’s that, “I want you and me to work better together. I want the client’s work product to be something we can both be proud of.” Those kinds of mindsets, we could both agree on. I don’t have to come in as if I’m opposed to you. What I want to do is come in on your side. “Stacy, I’m on your side, and this is something that is going to get in the way if we don’t correct it.”
As you are talking, what is sticking with me is even before a feedback conversation, a core issue is setting expectations. I’m Gen X, and this may be a generalization, but I feel like it’s going to resonate with people who are in my generation. We are the figure it out generation. We were latchkey kids, parents didn’t helicopter, and get your GAP year all figured out for you and pack your oranges for your soccer game. I think that some of us have challenges in communicating clear expectations.
You are right about that and poor expectation setting is one of the precursors to not getting what you want. I’m Gen X as well and I get that frustration of like, “Nobody held my hand.”
I remember many times, as a first year associate, they would put a file in your office and give you a very high level, “The client has this problem, go figure it out.” You had to be thoughtful about asking questions going into someone’s office. You worked yourself up to be able to do that. That was not good training. It was good training in terms of resourcefulness.
For some people, that works. For some people, the figure it out method maybe is not the best, but it’s good enough. For those of us for whom making a mistake and correcting it was part of how we learned, and for whatever reason, probably because of the confidence that we had that our parents hadn’t done everything for us, we would go and ask the questions.
It is much less true now, and particularly in places where people aren’t even going into the office, there’s this isolation. It’s a bigger barrier to get over to ask questions. The more senior people, like if you don’t want to get to that pinch or crunch, you are well served by setting clear expectations. Very tied to the feedback is the delegation. Do a good job of delegation and the feedback will be much more positive.
It goes back to the three reasons and realizing that taking the time at the front end to do a good delegation saves you time on the backend.
There’s this whole excuse that so many senior people have like, “I don’t want to have to explain it to someone, it’s faster to do it myself,” but we all know that doesn’t scale. You cannot be successful if you don’t get leverage. Investing in associates and juniors is super important. If you don’t give the right delegation, then you are going to have to redo it. Invest time to save time.
Why The ‘Sandwich’ Approach To Feedback Might Not Work
To your point about not delegating, you can’t scale. You can do it. It’s faster to do it one time yourself, but as it repeats and as the tasks build, it’s not. You do have to invest in your team and get them up to speed on doing the things that you’d like them to do the way you’d want them to do it. I like how you described it as an initiator role. It’s what you said, “I want to make sure people know I support them. I want them to like me. This feels like a very charged conversation.”
Personally, I have adopted the sandwich approach. “Hanna, you are a great attorney. I appreciate your work on our team. However, I need you to proofread your documents before you give them to me. The last several I have had typos, which is below the expectation I’d have for somebody in your role, but keep up the good work.” When we talked in prep, you reminded me of why that’s maybe not the best approach. Let’s talk about sandwiching.
The sandwich. Some people love it, some people hate it. What is the key to the problem with the sandwich is that it muddies the waters. The meat of the sandwich, what you want to say gets confused, muddied, and buried in the, “You are so great. Here’s how you suck.” The person walks away, maybe they feel good because they heard the good stuff and they didn’t hear the bad stuff, or maybe they feel confused because they don’t know where they stand.
On the one hand, you want people to know that you see their wholeness, and that this one piece of feedback doesn’t mean that you think they are a bad person or a bad lawyer. We get triggered, we get defensive when someone says something critical. You are trying to soften that, and you are trying to make sure that they know that, “I still like you. You are still good,” but if that’s in this sandwich situation, oftentimes they don’t even feel that. They feel like, “Here it comes. She’s going to say something nice. Then there’s going to be something.” There’s going to be the real story and then there’s going to be something nice. They start to even disregard the bread. It’s the carbs. It doesn’t do much for you. It’s fluffy, it’s a wonder bread, but they don’t understand the core, the meat or the veggies.
It’s important to think about feedback as one conversation in a relationship over time. Ideally, you are not in the situation where someone doesn’t know where they stand with you, and you can raise one thing and say something encouraging. The way to keep the relationship and the way to make the conversation more palatable for them is to make sure they know about your positive intent and your care for them and your desire for them to improve. You don’t have to say, “Here’s how you suck. You are great.” You can say, “Stacy, your memos are always right on substance, and I want you to get to that next level of having strong credibility with the client. We are trying to help you progress in your career. Here’s something you are going to need to work on to make that next level. The substance is right. You need to make sure you proofread your documents before you get to me.”
“There are two reasons for that. 1) I would not want you to hand this to the client with something that diminishes the strength of your work, and it would diminish it. 2) It’s extra work for me, and I would hope you would take consideration for my time, and particularly if we are on a tight deadline, I’d like it to come to me client-ready. I will do a top line read. I may catch something, but you have to get those details right.”
That’s a great conversation. I feel like you are on my side. If I were in my car listening to this, I’d probably replay the way you did it. Let’s talk about that maybe tactically to set the intention for the conversation.
Internally, I need to set my intention, which is I want to be grounded in supporting and encouraging Stacy not leaving her feeling crap, like she’s a terrible lawyer and she’s never going to make it. I want to make sure that I’m trying to keep it constructive and helpful. We want it to be something that’s going to help the other person perform better. On technical matters, it’s a little bit easier than on soft skills matters. There’s a clear right or wrong. You have the right spacing, you have the right fonts, you have the right spelling, you didn’t drop a word or you did drop a word. That’s very black and white. I gave myself the most pleasant scenario.
Giving Feedback On Soft Skills: Navigating The Gray Areas
I do want to talk about those soft skills, less clear or less objective types of feedback. Let’s go there because of that, especially for people who want to advance in their career, you get a lot of feedback that can be imprecise. “You need to demonstrate more executive presence. We need you to own the room or control the conversation.” Especially, and I don’t want to necessarily go down a women’s track, but especially for women that can be read as, “Don’t talk too much,” or, “She’s too forceful,” or something. Let’s talk about what’s the best way to give feedback about soft skills?
It’s a great question and it always remains one of the things that is going to be a tender spot for people. Anything that’s about the how-you-do something is more personal, so you are more likely to trigger defensiveness. We’ll talk about defensiveness in a little bit, but let’s focus on how to message some of these less tangible but important pieces of feedback. Usually, there is a there there when we are talking about presence or client management skills, and we want to drill down to behaviors.
For example, instead of saying, “Stacy, I need you to work on your client presence,” I want to observe you in a client setting and I want to say, “Stacy, we are in an ongoing conversation about your development. I gave you feedback. There’s a context of this that’s helpful. You know I want you to advance. I want you to get more client exposure. You are on the cusp of being able to lead matters on your own, and so developing this client skill is important.”
We set the context like, “I know you want to go there and I want to help you get there, and I want to talk to you about how you are showing up in client meetings.” Let’s say it’s a Zoom call. “On a zoom call, let’s talk about how the client is going to receive you with credibility so that you’ll be their go-to person. A couple of behaviors that I want you to be aware of. One is simple, like I’m noticing in your camera frame, you are off to the side and low. Center yourself and make sure that the client can see you. That will give you more presence.”
“I’m also noticing that when the client asks you a question, you are talking fast. Two things happen when you talk too fast. One is, they are missing some of your points. I’d like you to slow down so your points can land and wait to see whether people are nodding and understanding before you move on to the next thing.”
“People who talk fast are often read as nervousness. I don’t know, Stacy, if you are nervous or not. I know I was nervous in my early conversations with clients, so I’m empathizing. In those moments, what I do is I take a breath, I slow down, maybe I make some notes for myself before I jump in. That can help you to make sure that people hear you, feel your confidence and your credibility, so slow down.”
It goes back to what we were talking about before, which is being specific. It’s what you said before, it’s being specific about what you are observing the data point and then describing the impact. To say “Command the room,” what does that mean? Does that mean hold yourself physically in a certain way? As the person giving the feedback, are you observing somebody slouched in their chair, or do they not make eye contact? If I’m hearing you right, what you are saying is to deliver something specific, not just like, “Stacy, you need to develop executive presence.”
There are some core behaviors that go to that, like, “What’s their posture? How loud is their voice? How fast are they talking? Do they listen?” If someone is an interrupter, you want to nip that in the bud. You need to take the time to observe and not just let yourself have this feeling about what’s going on, but make it behavioral and try not to give too many things at once.
Coming from a place of, “This is part of natural development. I had to develop my client management skills. Here are some things that I do. Before a meeting, I think about who else is in the room and I think about what level of detail they are going to need. If I’m briefing the CEO, I don’t want to go into the legal details. If I’m briefing the GC, they may expect more detail.” Think about who else is there. That’s part of when people say read the room. Pay attention to who’s there and think about what they need from you.
That’s helpful. We spent a lot of time on the initiator. Do you call it the receiver? What’s a nice name for the person who is receiving the feedback? All of us get feedback. Even those of us who are general counsel. The CEO gets feedback. I love getting feedback because I want to fix something. If I’m not doing something right, if I am offending people, if I could be a better whatever, I want to know. I’d rather do that than have everybody whispering behind my back. “Did you see? She has lettuce in her teeth?” Let’s talk about how the receiver puts themselves in a constructive mindset when they get feedback?
I love that you love getting feedback and most people do want to improve. If you can channel that, great. If you can bring that learning mindset, there’s this whole notion of fixed mindset, growth mindset. A fixed mindset says you are the way you are, you can’t grow and change. It interprets any criticism as something inherent to who you are.
The growth mindset takes a piece of critical feedback and says, “I can use that to grow. I can use that to get better.” If you put your growth mindset hat on first, that’s helpful. The second thing is that defensiveness is normal. People feel some shame around getting defensive. “I got defensive.” It happens to all of us. We all get defensive. We feel it. We don’t have to act out on it.
One of the things I hear about in a lot of HR conversations, and one of the things that people take away from a feedback conversation, if they are managing somebody, they don’t like it when the receiver demonstrates defensiveness. That’s important for folks to appreciate that you are going to have emotions that are like, “I’m good. Let me tell you why. Let me explain why that didn’t go how we thought it was going to go.” I want to understand if there are ways that folks can get in, I don’t want to call it a counter punch, but get in what their views of the situation were, without coming off defensive, because that defensiveness does count against you.
People don’t like it. The initiator would do well to remember that feedback is emotional and to give someone time to ride the emotional wave. Part of the problem is that we cut the feedback conversation off too soon, and what we should say is, “Let’s take a break and come back to this,” because usually people do have that initial flare and a fight, flight, flee response. They have that flare and then they reflect on it. I don’t think about this, but my husband will say something and I will be like, “I don’t feel like,” then I think about it and I go and do the thing.
Feedback is about the other person. It is not exclusively about them, but feedback tells you what they expect, need, value, and care about. Share on XHe says, “We got to do something about the basement. It’s such a wreck.” I’m like, “No, it’s fine. Have you seen other people’s basements? Our basement is much better than theirs. It’s organized.” Later on in the day, I am like, “Oh, you know,” and I go and do something. Anyway, people don’t take that first reaction too seriously, but on the receiver side, it’s not a good look. Getting defensive is not a good look.
It’s several things. One is that growth mindset. Two is to notice that probably your heart is beating. Maybe your stomach hurts. Slow yourself down, don’t react too quickly, and take a breath. Here’s an important thing to remember. Feedback is about the other person. It’s not exclusively about the other person, but feedback tells you something about what the other person expects, what they need, what they value, and what they care about.
If you think about it, “Stacy is telling me what her expectations are, rather than Stacy is telling me I suck.” I can take a little bit different view about it, and then I get curious. I say, “Stacy, tell me more.” Let’s give an example. Let’s say you give me super unskilled feedback. It’s not behavioral. It’s judgmental. You say, “Hanna, working with you and your team is unpleasant. You are uncollaborative and it’s making us crazy and we don’t want to work with you.” It’s like, “You are talking about me and my team.” I’m sweating.
Instead, I’m going to realize, “I don’t understand what you are saying and you are telling me something important because you are telling me what your user experience of me is and what your user experience of my team is.” Deep breath. I say, “Stacy, I hear you find my team not collaborative. Tell me what you mean by that.”
I’m slowing it down. I’m giving myself time to take my temperature. I’m giving you back your words, but I’m not agreeing with them. You find my team not collaborative, then you explain some stuff, and then I again pause. I say, “You find it frustrating to work with my team. When we come, we do too much telling you what we are going to do and not enough asking what you need. It sounds like sometimes what we deliver is spot on, but sometimes we start doing stuff you don’t need. It gets in your way. It’s frustrating and you wind up feeling disregarded and disrespected. It’s unpleasant. Have I got that right?” I’m saying that’s how it is for you. I’m not saying anything about I’m agreeing or disagreeing. This buys me some time.
One of the things that people hate when they hear defensiveness is because it’s a denial of your experience. It’s like, “I say you suck.” You say, “I don’t suck.” Instead of rejecting it, I accept and I try to understand. What I’m saying is, “This is true for you.” I may have some explanations. “Let me talk to you. I’m happy to hear about your side. Can I talk to you about what’s going on with my team? I want to get to a place where your needs are being met and my team’s needs are being met, but some pressure is on my team that you are not aware of.” If I can say that calmly instead of, “We have no choice, this is what we have been told to do, we can’t take your requirements because we have been told what to do and we have a tight timetable.” We are not coming to a shared understanding. We want to try to come to that shared understanding.
It’s the curiosity and the openness. Let me ask this, because I think that when you were feeding the feedback back to the person that was the initiator, I was thinking I would want to ask, “Can you give me some examples of when that occurred?” I was also thinking, “If I asked that, it might look like I’m preparing a rebuttal.” I don’t know.
It could. You can’t control how somebody is going to interpret what you say, but if you use a tone and a phrasing that says, “I want to make sure I understand.” If that’s your experience, I want to change it, but I haven’t observed this. More of the “help me understand rather” than, “Give me some examples so I can make you wrong. Prove it.”
There’s a, “Prove it.” I think that there may also be a desire to find out, “Who is talking about me and my team.” Especially the way that the feedback started, it sounds like that person was super frustrated and wasn’t necessarily coming with a constructive mindset. Everybody thinks your team is slow and unresponsive, which can make you paranoid. “Who else is talking about me and or is Hanna being Hanna?” I like the phrasing, “help me understand.”
There may be somebody who’s talking about you behind your back that might not feel great.
Good feedback is essential. It is a conversation involving two participants who learn something in the end. Share on XIt’s probably guaranteed that the person who came to talk to you at least talked to one other person.
If we go back to the growth mindset, which says the only way for us to get better is to hear where we have gaps or where the expectations aren’t being met, then we want to know for the understanding and the learning. If we can remember that the other person is a human being and have an experience that’s true for them, and try to also make space to share our experience. Once someone else has been heard, they are much more able to listen to you.
Following Up After Receiving Feedback
Which is hard, especially lawyers are trained to advocate. It’s hard to put that to the side. Once you have the conversation, what should the receiver do with it? Should you just take it, “I’m going to, go ahead and make sure I proofread all my memos and there’s no typos.” What’s the best way to follow up with that person, or is it needed to follow up?
Let’s talk about the ideal world and the real world. In the ideal world, we are having many feedback conversations in an ongoing way. When I work with you at the end of a project, we do a little bit of reflection. Maybe I initiate it and say, “What did I do well and what could I improve?” Maybe you initiate it, but we have an ongoing conversation about how we can work together more effectively.
If I’m junior to you, we have an ongoing conversation about my development. In that case, you don’t necessarily need a formal follow up, but you stay in conversation. Let’s say this is a hard feedback conversation and my initial reaction isn’t great. I might say, “Stacy, I need time to reflect on this. It’s a lot for me to digest. Let me think about it and let’s meet again and talk about it,” or maybe you observe, “Hanna is emotionally super flooded.”
I’m crying. You’ve said something that goes to my identity as a person. I feel like I’m a terrible lawyer and I’m never going to be successful. Maybe you can tell, I can’t even hear you anymore. Sometimes people get so emotionally flooded that they can’t hear anymore. You might say, “Hanna, I can see this is a lot for you, let’s resume the conversation. I will give you time to think about it.”
You may want to bake that in if you can’t complete the full cycle, but even if you do get through the conversation, it’s useful to say, “Let’s set some intention for what’s going to happen next time.” If this is a repeat thing, you are senior to me, you delegate to me regularly. Maybe we agree. “Next time, let’s take a little more time on the front end of the delegation because one of the things that came out in my non-defensive explanation was that the expectations weren’t that clearly set at the beginning and then you went on vacation, and so I was a little bit stuck trying to figure it out on my own. It would have been helpful if you had delegated more clearly upfront and given me more precedence.”
Maybe there’s something you can do differently. Maybe you say, “Hanna, if you are not clear on my instructions, don’t let me walk away. Ask the question then.” We want to say, how are we going to change going forward? Maybe set it like, “Let’s check in with the next assignment. Let’s do a little feedback after it and make sure we are getting back on course.”
The feedback conversation can be an opportunity for a closer relationship. Not that you need to have a scheduled check-in, but the next time to say, “How did that go? Did I do a better job?” Ask questions in the moment like, “As we talked before, it helps me to get a little more details about what you are wanting in this product.”
It gets to, Stacy, that it’s always good to say thank you when someone gives you feedback. Remember, they are taking a risk and they are saying that they are invested in you. Maybe not in the most skillful way, but they are trying to make you better.
Is Feedback Still Valuable Or Is There A Better Way?
It can be hard, especially if the feedback isn’t delivered in the lovely, thoughtful way that you’ve done it. I’m going to proofread all my documents a lot closer after this conversation. Somebody has taken a risk and they have tried to give you something, which is something that could help you improve your performance. As we are wrapping up here, I mentioned to you that I had a conversation with my coach. He gave me some resources about whether feedback is over, whether we should still be giving feedback. I wanted to circle back with you and see whether feedback is worth it, or is there a better way.
Feedback is worth it. There is a point of view that says feedback doesn’t make a difference. Negative feedback doesn’t make a difference, and that’s true. If it’s unskillful, unspecific, like the way that people give feedback often doesn’t have humility. If you are assuming that you are right and the other person is wrong, that’s not going to work. If you give them global judgmental feedback, that’s not going to work. Bad feedback is counterproductive. Good feedback is essential. It’s a conversation. It has two participants, and both people end up learning.
Finding Your Pump-Up Song: Boost Your Mindset With Music
As I said, I feel like I learned a lot through this conversation, and I could see how it not only benefits both folks technically or substantively, but also could be an opportunity to build a closer relationship. Onto a lighter topic, Hanna. I have used music my whole life, my whole career, to change my mindset and get pumped up. I always ask all my guests, what is your pump up song?
It’s always changing. My current pump up song is Beyonce’s YA YA from Cowboy Carter. It never fails to get me going.
I’m going to make a note. After that Grammy win, I have given that a lot more airtime. Where can people find out more about you? I know you do run sessions for lawyers and in-house departments and law firms. This is great content. I’m sure folks could learn a lot more if they worked with you directly.
Thank you. Yes. I have a website called HannaHartLeadership.com. I’m a contributor on Forbes so they can find me there and on LinkedIn.
Thanks so much for being here.
Thank you. It’s been fun.
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About Hanna Hart
Hanna Hart is an executive coach and former attorney. She has coached hundreds of attorneys and other professionals and facilitates leadership development at law firms, start-ups, foundations and other organizations. Hanna also facilitates a class at the Stanford Graduate School of Business on interpersonal dynamics, including giving and receiving feedback. She is a regular contributor on Forbes and also on the Harvard Business Review.
