Teaching Not Grading

“The work they gave me wasn’t up to standard.”
“Have you told them?”
“No.”
“Why?”

The answers vary but two consistent responses are: “I am so busy, it’s hard to find the time” and some version of “I don’t like giving people bad news.”

Partners are busy, so I am sympathetic to the first response. But also, not - because feedback doesn’t have to be time-consuming to be effective. Often though, the “I’m busy” response is really an easy way of saying giving feedback feels hard. What’s stopping them is an underlying belief that giving feedback will make them the “baddie” when they really want to be seen as “nice” or supportive (though as I point out to them, not telling an associate things they need to know isn’t supportive at all!) or they worry that the associate will react badly (and – thinking catastrophically – won’t work for them any longer). Partners often say: the associates who work for us are high achievers and are used to great grades: I don’t want to be the one giving them a bad grade.

Framing feedback as grading is pervasive among the partners with whom I work.  But feedback isn’t—and shouldn’t be viewed as—grading. The point of feedback isn’t to “score” the work, but to make sure you get better work product from the associate next time. Feedback, I tell partners, should be seen as teaching not grading.  And since it’s teaching, the language they use should reflect that: It should be forward focused, about what would make the work product better next time not about all the mistakes made this time. I suggest partners say, “Next time, I would do X”. Not “You shouldn’t have done X this way”.

When I suggested this all to a partner recently, he said he felt like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. Reframing the activity and giving him language to express himself in a way that sounded helpful made an activity he dreaded not only seem easier but actually something he wanted to do. And so, he did – lots. And the experience he created for the associates was completely different as a result. Relatedly, when I discuss this approach with associates, they point out that it makes it much easier to hear feedback. They worry less about the impact of their past performance and focus more on improvement.