Opinion
It’s not always kind to be nice
5th Apr 2023
A boss once told me that my colleague was the ‘smart one’ and I was the ‘nice one’. She is, so I wasn’t offended, but I didn’t take it as a compliment either.
My agreeableness has, at times, felt like a barrier to my professional development – particularly my avoidance of difficult conversations and potential conflict. Fortunately, I have worked with the same trusted core team for a very long time, and I have become comfortable with more direct communication. In fact, we now enjoy challenging each other regularly, and I think we are the better for it (although my feedback on fashion choices seems to have fallen on deaf ears).
In my years working in the legal industry, I have come to realise that I am certainly not alone in avoiding difficult conversations. This continues to surprise me, mostly because we are in a profession filled with confident communicators and advocates who themselves crave constant feedback on their own performance. I had assumed that delivering feedback would be an innate skill for many legal professionals, but perhaps the longstanding hierarchies, competitive nature of the profession and focus on individual over team success of the past has led to this reluctance.
In his podcast, No Bullsh!t Leadership, Martin G. Moore lists five ways to view feedback to overcome your fear. As I continue my trial-and-error journey to overcome conflict avoidance, I have compiled a list of tips for delivering feedback:
- Ask if the person wants the feedback and let them opt in. If they agree, they are less likely to be defensive.
- Give context and explain why you think they would benefit from the feedback. It needs to be purposeful and solutions-focused – not just a list of complaints.
- Give thought to the receiver (their cultural background, personality, prior professional and individual experiences) and communicate with this in mind.
- Avoid the feedback sandwich of sneaking negative feedback between two slices of praise – either the positives will drown out the message or they will sound insincere.
- Be humble and admit to your own mistakes. Ego has no place here.
- Encourage open conversation, be curious and openminded, but stay on track. Listen and you might learn something helpful and see a situation from another perspective, leading to better decisions and outcomes.
- Be open to receiving feedback about yourself and foster a culture of constructive feedback. It should not only be delivered top down, but side to side and bottom up, and actively pursued on a regular basis (don’t wait for the yearly performance reviews to come around).
Rather than seeing the interaction as a potential relationship destroyer, any difficult conversation can be an opportunity to build a relationship based on trust and mutual respect if the feedback is delivered with compassion and kindness – so maybe it’s not so scary after all?
At the end of the day, a trusting culture will enable these growth conversations to be undertaken in the spirit intended – to aid in our quest for constant improvement.
This is an edited version of an article first published by Travis Schultz & Partners.
The ALA thanks Kelly Phelps for this contribution.
Kelly Phelps is CEO at Travis Schultz and Partners. If Travis Schultz and his lawyers are the bricks of Travis Schultz & Partners, then Kelly Phelps (and her brilliant operational team) can only be described as the mortar.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are the authors’ and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the Australian Lawyers Alliance (ALA).
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