A colleague recently wrote a post about 360 evaluations, asking if it really helps to become a better employee.
A traditional 360 evaluation often works as follow: you (the good employee) ask a few colleagues to fill out some questionnaire rating different skills from 1-5. Let’s get real: everyone loves you and you get all 4 and 5, which make it very hard to find your strengths and weaknesses. The questionnaire can also has a few random questions about whether you are a generic good employee. You then have the pleasure of reading generic comments about your good behaviour as a corporate drone.
My colleague is right. That’s garbage.
However there is another way.
For the past six months, I asked colleagues to give me feedback in a face-to-face meeting. There was an enormous difference.
I feel that they were trying harder to come up with strengths and weaknesses. But most importantly, it’s a conversation – I could ask for clarification and specific examples. I could also ask questions, specific points that have been bothering me.
And let’s face it – I’m not going to improve much if all I hear is that I’m the best. I exposed some of my perceived weaknesses to see if others have the same perception. And sometimes, they didn’t.
It takes humility to handle the feedback. But in my case, there was no big surprise – I already knew (or guessed) about most of the feedbacks I received. I really appreciated that the aspects the feedback covered was very different from written 360 evaluation and I felt more compelled to act after a conversation than I did after reading impersonal comments on paper.
I believe that face-to-face feedback will make me a better person so I’ll continue to bug colleagues from time to time.
PS: another colleague tried a group therapy 360 evaluation. I hope he’ll post about his experience (Luc, take the hint 
)
we are in the business of 360 feedback evaluations and we couldnt agree more. the report is only part of the picture. a one on one development and review with your manager is also helpful.