Quote:
Originally Posted by Adder
To say it more explicitly (and in agreement with you), the written review is for the personnel file, not for giving constructive feedback. The audience is the rest of the partnership and future litigation, not the person "being reviewed."
You need continuous communication for constructive criticism.
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The worst possible way to bring along associates is to worry about "future litigation" in personnel decisions. Reviews should be key moments for intervening in and improving careers. The worry about future litigation is especially damaging to minorities, since white men will go overboard on the CYA if given a chance rather than focusing on helping them out.
There is always a need to coordinate messaging about what associates need to do and need to focus on among the many people with whom a good associate may work. Delivering contradictory messages doesn't help anyone.
A lot of advice happens in the trenches on small things and individual matters, but you also have to step back periodically and think about the overall direction of a career. You have to help people realize when they're going down career dead ends or how they can develop skills needed long term instead of just mastering the stuff they're thrown. When we give a truly bad review it often comes with a special coach or mentor being hired for them or assigned to them. And it's very easy for a good associate to become a profitable workaholic without a future by spending too much time serving partners and too little worried about building their own business, and a review is a chance to intervene when your partners are doing that to someone.
If I can't give a bad review to some mentees that will restrict the support available to them to improve and make partner.
