Performance Appraisal Work

• Granting anonymity to feedback respondents is not consistently getting honest feedback

• Because they want to remain anonymous, respondents refrain from sharing specifics – the very information that participants need to improve or adjust

  • Because of this, respondents tend to generalize ("Eva has trouble with deadlines" instead of "Eva missed three deadlines in a row in February on the X-Com project"). Participants tend to either downplay ("It's just when I don't get good information") or accept ("Yeah, I really do have trouble with deadlines") generalized feedback. In both cases, they miss opportunities for improvement.

• Once participants get their anonymous feedback, they:

  • Question its validity, precisely because no one had to sign their name to it.

  • Want to talk with others directly about what they said and ask for examples. They are often persuaded not to because it's very difficult to do this without compromising anonymity.

  • Tell others that they received the feedback, and will act on it. This either happens or it doesn't. If it does happen, people feel less of a need to share their feedback directly, which impacts their ability to work well together. If it doesn't, people begin to think the participant doesn't "walk their talk" – feedback that they may or may not share, even anonymously!

We offer a solution to these problems. It is a simple idea and implementing it takes a lot of work, but the payoffs are high: specific, honest, verifiable feedback that people can really use to improve their performance and relationships with others, a culture where people share feedback directly and productively, sustained improvements in work performance, and a more satisfied workforce.

Our solution is this: Begin to ask people to be accountable for their own views of others by removing anonymity from your feedback process. Here's a quick story that describes what this looks like. It's from a chapter written by Peg Carlson in The Skilled Facilitator Fieldbook.

"Redesigning 360"

Roger first related Cathy's story in Chapter 16 of The Skilled Facilitator (2nd ed.). The main points in this story reflect Cathy's report of what happened; however, the quotes are approximations of the group conversation and were not directly obtained from group members.

Cathy was excited by what she had learned in the Skilled Facilitator workshop and was intrigued by the potential of integrating the core values into organizational processes that were already in use in her high-tech company. As a manager, she had been receiving 360-degree feedback for a couple of years, and while she felt that she got some valuable information out of the process, she also felt that the feedback was just "scratching the surface" of what she could really learn from the data.

The next time Cathy was scheduled for 360-degree feedback, she proposed some changes to the standard process. First, she requested that raters complete an evaluation of her managerial strengths and weaknesses, just as before. However, instead of then sending the evaluation to a third party who would compile the data and present the aggregate results to Cathy, she asked that the raters bring the completed form with them to a group meeting with her and the other raters. In doing this, Cathy was asking her raters to participate in a process that she believed would create valid information. Instead of trying to guess what a particular comment meant or what the rater was basing his or her evaluation on, Cathy would be able to ask the person directly.

Both Cathy and her raters reported that this was by far the riskiest 360-degree feedback process they had ever participated in. The stakes were high on both sides. Cathy's raters were concerned that they may hurt or embarrass her with some of their comments, and they were making themselves vulnerable to future retaliation from Cathy if she did not accept the feedback well. Cathy was concerned about her ability to respond without defensiveness to whatever she may hear in the session; she was aware that her response to the feedback would greatly affect the others' willingness to participate in anything like this in the future.

Despite their concerns (and because they understood what she was hoping to accomplish), Cathy's raters agreed to complete their forms and discuss them in a group forum. In the meeting, the group went through the questions one by one. Each person gave his or her rating and a brief explanation of the reason behind the rating, usually including an example. Several things happened as a result of this group conversation about Cathy's strengths and weaknesses as a manager:

1. As Cathy's raters shared the examples that led them to their evaluations, they found that they sometimes remembered things differently or had different perspectives about Cathy's actions. In some cases, this led people to change their original ratings.

2. Because everyone was able to hear everyone else's ratings and examples, the group was able to help Cathy identify patterns in her behavior. For example, one person said, "I see you get really directive sometimes, even though you seem to prefer a collaborative style most of the time." Another chimed in, "Yes, I've noticed that, too, and tried to figure out when it happens. I think it's when we're nearing a deadline—when we get to a certain stage in the project, it seems like you don't want to hear any more input. Have we read you correctly on that?" If Cathy had just received ratings and comments from each person through the standard aggregated responses, it would have been much more difficult to identify these kinds of patterns.

3. By having everyone hear and discuss her feedback together, Cathy created a professional development support group for herself. Since all the raters—her direct reports, peers, and boss—now knew the areas she was working on, they were able to give her specific feedback in future interactions. For example, after a meeting about an upcoming project deadline, one of her employees said, "You just did a really nice job of listening when we talked about how the production delays may affect our deadline. I know that's one of the things you've been working on, and it shows."

When they had completed the discussion, Cathy and her raters agreed that this was not only the riskiest 360-degree feedback session they had ever had—it was also the most valuable. By discussing her co-workers' perceptions of her in a forum where she could hear their specific examples, inquire into their reasoning, and add her own perspective, Cathy gained much greater insight into her own strengths and weaknesses as a manager than she ever could have learned from a sheet of ratings and unattributed comments. Her raters learned some valuable lessons as well: the importance of being accountable for the feedback you give to another person, being open to the possibility that people can interpret the same situation quite differently, and seeing the power of a group network to support and individual's change efforts.

If you are interested in similar results, please contact us.