Taking a self-report assessment (such as the DISC or MBTI or many others out there) can be great for self-awareness but the report can also be biased because it is only based on your own evaluation. Similarly, your annual performance review that is usually done by your boss can be biased because he or she only knows you in one context—the professional workplace as your superior. Multi-rater feedback, often called 360-degree feedback, is a style of assessment that combines data from several sources that know an employee from multiple dimensions, thereby eliminating the risk of bias that can come with a report that is based on only a single source.
In a 360-degree assessment, you’ll answer a few questions about yourself, as will your boss, your boss’s boss, your direct reports, your customers, your colleagues, your friends, and even your family members. The questions can be multiple-choice or open-ended, or most likely, a combination of both. The data is then combined and presented anonymously to paint a full and supposedly more accurate picture of your behavior and the impact you have on others.
If you have several direct reports and more than a handful of colleagues, the data may be grouped together so you when you receive your report, you know what impressions came from your direct reports versus what your colleagues think of you versus how your superiors view you. The reliability of the result of the assessment goes up with more raters. The trick to this assessment style is in finding consistent themes, and carefully dismissing outlying data points. When many people who you know in various contexts agree, you can be sure that they are on to something.
As an example, in a blog post over at the Intuit Small Business Blog, author Lorna Collier highlights a feature on Scott Cook, co-founder of Intuit and his experiences with coaching and 360-degree feedback: “Boy, did I learn a lot,” he says. “I could see through the 360 review that there were a lot of things I needed to change — things where I had bad impacts on people in the company. Founders can do that. If you’re the founder, you can wreak havoc on people’s ability to focus and get their job done.”
Multi-rater assessments are perhaps the most helpful for new managers and new leaders. When we are part of a team in an individual contributor role, arguably how others view us and the impact we have on others is minimal. But when we step up to a team leader role, we may find that our intentions as a leader are not in line with our impact as a leader. There is a learning curve when you start with a new team, and one of the more effective ways to attain alignment is to get timely and honest feedback. Since 360-degree feedback is anonymous, it is a good way to bring that honesty to the surface.
The same features that make 360-degree feedback attractive can also be seen as pitfalls. The anonymity of the feedback can certainly be a disadvantage. When provided with the safety blanket of anonymity, some people will let loose with the criticism, sometimes unfairly so. Receiving negative feedback in this way (especially if this is the first time you are hearing about it) can damage the morale of your team. The number of people providing feedback can often result in conflicting opinions, leading to the question of which one is accurate and more importantly, what should be done about it.