360 degree appraisals and the Russian judge

It’s a 5.6 from the Russian judge

The benefit of averaging in 360s has been likened to the removal of rogue scores from ice dancing competitions. Take 9 scores, remove the two extremes and average the rest and noone can deny Torville and Dean the gold. But is this valid for a 360? Aren’t we interested in why two people scored at the extreme? Wouldn’t we be better reflecting back the detail of the feedback rather than averaging out the variety?

It seems that people like numbers - it gives clarity. Bosses like to feel it is getting to the nitty gritty of someone's performance. I'm not so sure.

First - you lose something. If three people say I am poor and three people say I am fantastic then being told that overall I am average simply isn't correct and, worse, is misleading.

Second - the average isn't correct. It assumes that people evenly score on the range. But, particularly us Brits, people don't like scoring at the extremes....so, when they do, it needs to carry more weight.

Third - 360 degree feedback is meant to give you a rounded opinion, a range of feedback. Leave the detail in, is what I say.

And finally, the conversations from the 360 are often painful. They start with "I'm 3.7 on Leadership and 3.6 on Customer Service, so I need to work on Customer Service". The precision of numbers is misleading.

Together with colleagues, I set up a company concentrating on 360 degree appraisal to give companies a chance to handle 360s effectively and efficiently. Our recommendation is always that the feedback report should give a simple representation of what has been said and keep numbers away. If there is a craven need for a score - then use something like a spidergraph to show an overall picture but don't create scores for each behaviour.

Brendan

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