I had an email from a Grapevine reader a while back asking what she could do about some very unpleasant feedback she had had.
Roughly, it suggested that she did a poor job, was bad at prioritising and often missed important things.
In the past, all the feedback she had had was about how well she was doing. She had never had any feedback like this before and was completely distraught. Worst of all, it was anonymous and there was no way of finding out what the individual meant, who they were or what they were referring to.
The feedback had come through a 360 Degree Feedback process that her company had introduced.
360 Degree Feedback
Just to clarify, 360 Degree Feedback refers to getting feedback on your performance from all levels of people you work with; managers, peers and those working for you.
Another Example
I worked with a client that had called me in because they had introduced a 360 feedback system and it had caused some serious problems. The MD had decided to ‘have a go’ first himself to show that it would be fine.
Unfortunately he got some feedback indicating all was not well. He then went on to ’share’ the information he had been given, but omitted to mention any of the less favourable comments.
Unfortunately, for those who had written those comments, this immediately destroyed the credibility of the whole system.
The Problem
In this case one of the main problems was the design of the system and the poor quality of the questions. They were really a licence for anyone to launch a rant about whatever they liked, instead of a way of getting useful, factual information that would help people to develop.
Training and Guidance
In my view people should not be asked to give this kind of information without, at the very least, some kind of guidance on how to do it. I have trained enough people on giving feedback to know that many people need some help in this area.
This is particularly true when they are looking for improvement or have problems with an individual. Any fool can moan and complain, but it takes a little skill to be clear about what is required in a helpful way.
The system (or ’solution’ as it’s often called) also needs to be very carefully designed, especially the questions. If not, it can cause many problems.
A Question For You: What Are Your Experiences of 360 Degree Feedback?
I’m asking this question because it came up in our Appraisals Teleseminar last week. Rachel, who works for the Alzheimer’s Society, and was taking part in the Teleseminar, wondered if anyone had got experience of this they were willing to share.
I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who have had both good and bad experiences in this area. So, please let me know, on the blog so we can all share this, what those experiences are and what you would recommend/not recommend.
I’m sure many of you have opinions on this topic. You probably also have your own questions. Please add them here.
Tags: 360 Degree Feedback
I feel that there is a big issue with regard to feedback under it’s many guises 360 degree or otherwise. It’s such an important part of the corporate machine because communication is vital. If feedback is to to be managed well, then surely it should be dealt with in a specific way with a right to an appeal and then issues which need clarifying can be discussed and brought to a resolution. There is also an issue of percepttion, how managers view situations through their own filters. Often they themselves are under stress to perform well so rather that viewing the ‘whole picture’ the feedback becomes polarised.
I also have been subject to a 360 appraisal at the whim of a Group HR Director – who should have known better!
I received my report which contained my feedback and found it was very difficult to make head or tail of. In some cases I seemed to have a low opinion of myself and in others I appeared arrogant with a high opinion of myself. I did not receive any coaching on what to do with the information or help on how to change things. I was confused – did I have self esteem issues or was I ignorant of my own behaviour and work standard !!
I do believe that 360 has a place in performance management and I am about to introduce it in my company at exec level only to compliment the management competencies, but I will learn from past mistakes and will be very careful about the questions asked and guidance given when the results are in.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Nancy Slessenger, Yancey Thomas. Yancey Thomas said: Does 360 Degree Feedback Work? What Do You Think? « Grapevine … http://bit.ly/7OX4yj [...]
I worked for a company that had a 360 degree feedback. They said it was anonymous if you were in a group of 4 or more. Well, guess what. I heard comments from the management that “we could tell which comments were yours. You’re funny”. I didn’t feel funny and I certainly didn’t participate in any anonymous feedback opportunities any more at that company! I LOVE the concept of 360, but it really only works if the comments are anonymous. Also, the receiver needs to accept the feedback and not discount the data they receive.
We should always remember the origins of 360 degree feedback. As with many such terms this one originated in the US military when officers were shot in the back by their own troops during WW1.
Do not be surprised, if occasionally, the employees turn nasty………
The very large company I work for utilizes 360 feedback as a tool for measuring performance. 95%+ of the feedback I received was overwhelmingly positive. However, one person definitely had an axe to grind. My manager decided to focus on the one negative person out of the 15 or more people who provided feedback. The only discussion we had was that I needed to work on making things better from that person’s perspective. My manager did not provide specific steps to remedy the so-called “situation”. When asked for what I thought I might do to rectify the situation, I merely stated that it seemed to me that this one person might have been having a bad day, and that I would instead focus on the positive feedback and make it my goal to make certain everyone felt positive about my performance. Frankly, none of the comments were very helpful, and I think this type of non-structured feedback is a waste of valuable resources (time and money). Presumably, if feedback was structured, 360s might be more valuable to managers and employees.
We did a 360 review for our department one year and it ended up being a way for individuals to blast others in the department and unload personal grievences. It destroyed moral in the department and created rifts amongst coworkers. Our department is small which didn’t help. The whole thing was a disaster and we never did it again. Our feedback was supposed to be anonymous, but I was diretly retaliated against for negative feedback towards my boss.
I think it’s good to solicit feedback from the whole group for a review, but to have the whole group do a review is a very dangerous thing. People focus on their personal issues and not all people in the department are in a position to judge work performance since they may only see one part of what someone does.
It’s not something I would ever institute in an organization.
Hi Bea
Yes, I think there is a big issue too. There is too much poor quality feedback and not enough good quality feedback. I suspect we all view situations through our own filters.
Hi Lindsey
Yes, I think great care is needed. The phrasing of the questions is really important, but I also feel people need some training and to understand what is appropriate and what is not appropriate.
Hi Larry
I think one of the problems is that it is very hard to ensure it is anonymous but, paradoxically, once it is truly anonymous some people feel it is then OK to be quite rude and destructive.
Hi Richard
Thanks for that insight! I didn’t know that.
Hi Kan
This is indeed one of the problems with these systems. Not only does the information have to be of high quality, but the managers also need to use it effectively. It’s very hard working with comments that have been made in isolation with no context.
Hi Tiffany
I am quite concerned that we don’t seem to have a single person saying that they have had a good experience and it is been useful or valuable. It may well be that those people were not motivated to reply. I know many of us are more motivated to point out problems that give examples of excellence.
But these examples, including yours, are worrying.
Probably one of the biggest reasons for negative feedback is that it accumulates over a period of time as employees do not have an option of providing IMMEDIATE feedback to their colleagues. They have to wait for a cycle which obviously results in such feedback.
Here are my observations on 360:
Hey, Just want to make sure does your 360 covers the below:
1. I have observed that most of the organizations do not have a provision of providing anonymous feedback to their colleagues.
2. And for organizations who follow 360 tools do not have the provision of providing continuous feedback to their colleagues. They have to wait for the yearly cycle to complete.
I am looking for an option wherein individuals can initiate 360 on their own and are not dependent on the company to run it. Colleagues are free to rate anyone any time and obviously it has to be anonymous. It should be cutting across organizations i.e. if i have worked in 4 companies, i should be able to see the feedback from colleagues of all the four companies. This requires a separate application accessible to all the users.
In fact, recently i have observed a trend wherein individuals can use few websites (orcoli – http://www.orcoli.com ) and take the benefit of above mentioned ones.
Hi Pallav
I agree completely that leaving feedback for nearly a year is extremely unsatisfactory. By then much of it can be irrelevant. Also the individual is in the unenviable position of finding out that he/she has been doing things badly for 11 months, but, had someone mentioned it, could have been doing much better for 10 of those 11 months.
I have looked at the site you mention. I’m afraid I didn’t find the feedback given there very useful. It is not specific and would be hard to use to take action on:
‘Continue doing
hello pankaj, you should continue and more sharpen your HR Skills and building relation ship skills. The respect you earn is too much precious for you. your dedication for work is much much higher. of course continue your effort to change other thinking strategy…
Start doing
more survey related activity for employee and analysis data so fact come out and reveal to everyone. do not hesitate to do what you think is right. also spend sometime your yourself and family.
Continue doing
Continue being creative, following your instincts and carefully constructed logic for performing your tasks. You rely a lot on logic, whether or not it supports what you want to instinctively do, which is a very good thing and probably one of the critical factors for your success. Keep at it.
Start doing
You are very jovial and humorous at work, with an intention of probably lightening up the atmosphere and making your team relaxed towards doing their job. However, this might at situations go against you when you would be misunderstood to be not serious about your responsibilities. ‘
Which brings me to my key point. People need to have the skills to do this properly. Once they have those skills, they can give feedback whenever it is required, with no need for 360 Degree feedback or annual systems.
Lastly, it is much more effective to set up systems so that people get their own feedback than to wait and hope that people will get useful feedback at some stage in some random way.