By Nickie Freedman
In Part I of this series, we discussed creating a high performing staff and what it entails – building an atmosphere of employee empowerment. And what constitutes employee empowerment? I believe it comes down to three basic principles:
Encourage an Ownership Attitude(featured in Part I)
Coaching Management Style (featured in Part II)
Freedom to Fail
Part II talked about the coaching management style and included an idea for kickstarting it in the attorney/assistant relationship.
Freedom to Fail
Many people believe that failure is “not an option” or that only losers fail. I believe very differently.
How can you fail if you never tried something new and a little beyond your reach? From what I understand, trying new ideas and going a little beyond your normal effort (even just 10%) is how great things get accomplished. Is failure possible if everything is done “ the way we’ve always done it”? Of course not.
What happens if someone on the staff tries something new and it fails? Is staff punished, looked down upon, marked as a ‘loser’, the subject of gossip, made to feel intimidated? Wow, that’s certainly incentive to have an ownership attitude and to follow the coaching manager’s advice, isn’t it? I think not.
If a firm wants a proactive, forward-thinking, innovative staff, they must allow the staff to fail without long-term negative consequences. Everyone should be given a chance to grow beyond their limit. Other staff will be aware of the trust engendered in that action, and the firm will be respected for that trust. If a pattern emerges that the person is over their head, then certainly they should be reined in and re-evaluated. However, one failure is not a pattern.
But what if it’s a spectacular failure and the firm loses a client or revenue due to the failure? If that happens, the staff person was probably not coached or supervised properly. As Shakespeare wrote, “…The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves…” (Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene II). Proper supervision and knowledge of the proposed innovation should prevent that dreaded result.
How do we give permission to fail? A few ideas:
Separate staff evaluations from salary review by 6 months.
Staff evaluations are an excellent tool for performance issues and should be used as such. However, many times, staff is not aware of issues until that time and don’t consider it fair that their salary is affected by it. Give them a chance for improvement AND failure without their potential raise being on the line. Keep staff evaluation and salary review times separate.
Let them know that failure is an option.
Being allowed to fail is paramount on knowing that it’s okay to do so. Let them know that trying to stretch beyond their normal limit is the key to personal and professional growth.
Explain your thought process.
We all need a guide to try something new – that also applies to innovation. Let staff know the path that true effort, forethought, research, and a focused plan is the correct path.
Remove negative consequences for failure resulting from proper effort.
If the correct path is followed and failure still results, it should be used as a lesson and not as punishment. Ask that person for their analysis, thought process, and steps taken. Go over it with them at every step and help them realize why the failure happened. Taking a little time on these steps results in well-trained staff thinking analytically and a few steps ahead of the game.
What type of proactive, innovative thinking should be allowed? That’s up to each individual or firm. However, I want to share an email I received after a presentation:
“I wanted to thank you and Ms. Bradley for your efforts to deliver useful information and, more importantly, to inspire us to new heights. It is working! We are currently updating our computer file systems, are about halfway through creating a new client file with an emphasis on getting all of the necessary information up front and I am continuing my efforts to get things standardized around here with new gusto. Thank you both so much for the kick start.”
Is this the type of productive staff that everyone dreams of for their firm? I’d bet yes on that one. She became a productive staff person because she was kickstarted by the new attitudes and ideas, understood and started practicing the ownership attitude, and took coaching from others in management to make sure her ideas were put into practice. But most of all, she stretched beyond what she had done for years because she was given the freedom to fail.
I encourage everyone to embrace her innovation by empowering their employees using the basic three steps we’ve talked about in this series.
Nickie Freedman, PHR, owns Legally Large, a training and consulting firm specializing in the BUSINESS of practicing law. To receive her “Work Smarter” tips, contact her via www.LegallyLarge.com, Nickie@LegallyLarge.com or directly at 512.791.9644.
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