An attorney’s alienating qualities are often better understood by assuming the best and searching for a solution.
Margo, the group leader I was coaching, was livid. Colin, a member of her team, had dropped the ball yet again – on something critical. To make matters worse, he was, according to Margo, an annoying know-it-all, cavalier about details, and dismissive of required administrative tasks like timekeeping and status reports. These qualities had not just alienated Margo, but troubled others on her team. Margo decided to give Colin a Hail Mary chance to improve but predicted there was no way he would work out.
What might be possible if Margo got curious instead of furious? What might happen if she assumed positive intent?
Yes, Colin might be kind of a bad apple, a lazy worker or have a lousy attitude. But what if there’s something else going on – a different problem that could be solved with relative ease? The firm has already invested a lot in training and integrating this person. What if that investment could be salvaged?
I see this frequently: Someone is behaving badly or underperforming, and a supervisor ascribes motivations or attributes to that individual that go well beyond the known facts. Sometimes it is accurate. Usually it is not.
What if the “problem person” is afraid of his team discovering that he has never done this kind of work before, especially if he made a lateral move to this firm and didn’t volunteer that fact during the interview process? To mask the fear of being found out, he might bluster and act like a know-it-all. Or maybe the problem person has ADHD, which (among other things) makes timekeeping more challenging, because it is hard to track time in a linear way when your brain doesn’t work in a linear way. Or maybe the person has absolutely no idea how they come off to other people. So he speaks in an annoying way that he mistakenly thinks make him sound authoritative, because no one has ever given him the gift of candid feedback to let him know he is putting people off.
What if the supervisor decided to be curious, not furious, and just focus on the performance and its impact – as opposed to assuming bad intentions?
That is what Margo did. Instead of delivering a lecture or a final warning to Colin, she applied coaching techniques. She said, “Hey, I wanted to talk to you about this project. This work product isn’t what I need. We know you want to be the best associate you can be and make the maximum contribution that you can. If you can tell me what’s really going on, we can brainstorm solutions together.”
When Margo expressed curiosity and a genuine desire to help, Colin felt psychologically safe enough to confess that he was afraid of getting fired. He was extremely relieved to hear that Margo wanted to be in a problem-solving mode instead of purely evaluative mode. Together, they identified some of the problems: Colin was afraid of being found out. He was a lateral hire who came in with a healthy salary and no expertise in the area he was assigned. He was afraid to reveal his lack of knowledge, so he blustered around instead and spent his free time reaching out to headhunters.
After his conversation with Margo, Colin, feeling more understood, backed off the cocky attitude that was alienating other people and started asking questions that he had assumed were “too dumb” to ask. That is when his work began to improve.
Colin became more engaged in his assigned cases. He asked for help when he was confused. He stopped sounding like a know-it-all because he no longer needed to overcompensate for what he did not know. Gradually, with supervision and regular feedback, his written work improved. He eventually became the go-to person on an obscure but important SEC regulation.
Colin is now on partner track. He is well-liked and admired as someone who accepts feedback without letting ego get in the way. As he relaxed, he garnered more respect among his colleagues.
What would have happened had Margo been furious, instead of curious? Colin would have remained scared and would have turned in subpar work. He would not have learned how to improve and would have tried even harder to conceal his lack of knowledge, annoying colleagues and making daily life at the firm unpleasant. Eventually, he would have quit or been fired, and he likely would have gone on to bad-mouth the firm to recruiters and friends.
If Margo had been furious, the firm would have been paying Colin’s substantial compensation while receiving substandard work. And Margo would have been wasting her own or other people’s time to redo Colin’s work, rather than holding him accountable. Margo and her team would have been resentful of carrying Colin’s responsibilities, leading to stress and burnout for the group.
By being curious instead of furious, Margo not only helped Colin get on track, but she created an atmosphere of psychological safety where honesty and transparency became part of the culture. She leveraged the investment the firm had made and discovered that Colin had an expertise in a recent SEC regulation, which brought the firm business.
I see this often when I coach lawyers. Rather than getting angry at bad work or behavior, if you can get at the root of why someone is underperforming, there can be untold benefits to the organization as a whole.
Assume positive intent and dig to discover if there is an underlying problem. While you might learn that this person in fact is not cut out for the job, you might also learn something surprising that lets you convert a negative into a positive.
By asking questions before casting blame, not only can you solve problems, but you can often fix ones you did not even know you had.
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Reprinted with permission from The American Lawyer. © 2022 ALM Media Properties, LLC.
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