The Vampire Defense

When you need to deliver critical feedback to a colleague or member of your team, do you have some strategies that have worked out quite well? Or and maybe some strategies that haven’t worked well that you could share with us?

Yes, both, I have both. I think I mentioned previously that I’ve been lucky enough to have the benefit of a number of executive coaches. And one of my companies, I had a very close relationship with the CEO, we had worked together for a very, very long time, and I think we just had similar approaches to how we operated. And as the coach put it, that we both spoke Swahili, but we’re not very good at communicating to people who only spoke French.
And so, I would try to help others have a better relationship with the CEO by giving them feedback, saying, “I think it would be great if you did this and this, “and it was not very well received at all. And the coach gave me two specific examples, she would speak to me in terms that I can understand, which is like at that time I had young children, so it was always about childbirth.
So, she said, “okay, you Jan are at the kindergarten table, and you’ve got two kindergarteners next to you, and Ms. Sally comes by and says, Jan, your art is so beautiful, I’ve never seen anything so wonderful, and she walks away without saying a word to the other two children. And if I turn to them and say, well, if you use the crinkly scissors, Ms. Sally will like your art too.” And who are they going to be mad at? So, that to me was like, oh yes, of course they’re going to be mad at me, and not Ms. Sally. And so, that was eye opening to me, and she taught me the vampire defense, and…

What is that?

Which is like, vampires have to be invited into a house in order to cross the threshold. And she said, if you ask people, do you mind if I give you some unsolicited feedback? People are not going to say no, I don’t talk to them, right? But it also prepares them mentally for listening and hearing what you happen to say. It may not always be easy, but they’re more open to that.
So, I’ve tried that, and it does work for me. I also think telling people why you’re giving them the feedback, and how it connects into the larger picture is more effective too. It was always important for my team, for me, whenever I was leading the legal team, to tell people that it was to be responsive to the clients, and also be very focused on what the business was trying to achieve. Our goal is not to provide the best legal, and the most academic legal answer, it’s to give them the information that’s necessary to help progress the business.