Assess Our Managers or
Management by Assessment?
Copyright 2004
Multi-rater feedback has a long and checkered history - some historians indicate that it may have been a routine process for assessing leaders as far back as the Roman Empire, where their armies used a multi-rater process to choose leaders for the coming battle!
In the 1980's and 1990's, the use of multi-rater feedback blossomed in North American business, and the process acquired another name, 360-degree feedback. Jack Welch of General Electric endorsed the process and the name in the early 90's, giving it even wider popularity.
Unfortunately, even though they share the name, not all 360-degree processes are created equal, and many have not even undergone basic validation and reliability research. It is this wide variability in approach, administration practice, validity and reliability that produces the equally wide variability in results, often giving the entire process a bad name.
360's also embody another challenge: Once you have feedback, what (positive steps) do you take to insure that the manager and performance improve as a result?
While the field is crowded with contenders, it can be narrowed quickly, if the following criteria are applied:
- Does the instrument meet the Department of Labor's basic criteria for selecting an assessment (validity, reliability, non-discriminatory?)
- Is it easy to administer, read, and understand?
- Does it provide for flexibility in the numbers and categories of raters (for example, can 2 "bosses" be reported?)
- Does it measure alignment between critical skills expectations of the boss and the manager?
- Does it guarantee the anonymity of the Direct Report raters?
- Can you easily obtain a report that measures change across time, with two 360 assessments?
- Can you obtain an Executive Summary that shows senior management a top view of the entire organization's management skills?
- Does it provide a guide for effective planning of training and development efforts?
- Does it provide for control of opportunities for free-form comments?
- Does it offer a structured and proven, self-directed tool to help a manager improve each skill set?
- And, if it offers all these things, is it priced within the reach of almost any business that can afford to have a manager-but can't afford to have a bad one?
