360 Degree Feedback

You ought to have expected this subject crop up at this time of the year.

So what really is 360 degree feedback?

Its a form of multi layer feedback or round the circle feedback , where the feedback receiver is in the centre and all his peers, superiors , and subordinates provide feedback about the individual in question. This is being used in variety of organization to performance manage senior staff .

Is this a good thing? Yes, without doubt, this is a very good thing only if you understand how it works.

Lets take this example, if i were to provide feedback to six people although i would like to be unbiased and provide genuine feedback , it so happens that per human psychology the feedback is largely driven by what others say about the person for whom am about to provide the review i.e. what i have heard about him/her and also what were the latest actions by the individual concerned.

One of my colleague recently told me the untold truth of human mind. The human mind forgets and forgives things in the past , only recent actions are in the mind. This is called as recency effect in psychology, where recent actions/ phenomenon have greater impact on an output than events in the past.

This is true and is reflected in general across the 360 degree feedback that an individual receives.

Reading a 360 degree feedback can be nerve wracking. At least for me it has always been. There would be elements that would be surprises. Some of them positives, some negatives.

In general , when we read a report , it is clear that most of the strengths match to what others see , very rarely does the strength go unnoticed.

Having said that , the problem is when you compare the weakness , as an individual we could have rated our self as average in an area while others might rate as below par.

This is where the problem becomes acute in the report. As is often the case , the weakness gets magnified by the views and perception of various people.

We have to bear in mind that the feedback is an opinion and strictly not the truth. However it does give an element of direction on where things are going wrong , at a much magnified scale due to thoughts and perceptions of all individuals who have provided feedback

Some times reading the report can make one sweat, as it could be a nasty reading and vilification of the individual.

Couple of my mentors have always educated me to treat the 360 degree feedback report objectively and treat it as a tool to better oneself rather than to consider it as a finger pointing exercise .

Its a tool which can provide orientation to what actions that an individual need to carry out in order to perform better.

To be honest i have had extremely successful reviews and not so great reviews, how we turn this around is a matter of how we treat the report.

Should this report be exclusive in treating an individuals performance, its any body's guess . Am not a big fan of using it solely for performance management.

If we treat it as a report which is critical in nature and allow the confidence to be dented, things go from bad to worse, on the other hand if we treat it as a tool to provide direction to our efforts, results are always going to be better.

One of my strongest supporter ,mentor and probably can call coach because he identified me early on in my carrier, recently said - As one grows in the organization, he/she needs to become an enabler rather than the doer.

How true. So use the 360 degree feedback as an enabler/catalyst for you to perform better in future and don't take it to heart. After all you are what you are, no one is a perfect individual and people always have an opinion about you, whether good or bad. Take the good things, work on the not so good things. Items which you think are actually irrelevant and said on a personal bias , you aren't too bothered about anyway.

Good Luck.