Winning yet another popularity contest at work
Election are won on emotions, not facts.
It’s 2020 and many companies are catching up on this 360 feedback. Legend has it that this democratises performance review and everyone on the team has an equal opportunity to voice their opinion. Yay!
During the ratings cycle, you find yourself transforming into a demigod holding excessive powers over your colleague. Snap your fingers and poof, there goes the career path that your colleague was looking forward to.
A feedback is a friendly suggestion- I think you should do A, where as a rating is a fault finding exercise- I think you should have done A, so I’m going to give you an X.
Humans opinionated creatures and have a perception of how things should be, including your colleagues. And like all opinions, it’s a personal preference. The 360 process in most companies allows you to pass judgements to your colleagues anonymously, based on the preconceived notions
As a social animal, it’s absolutely vital for us to gauge a sense of how we’re accepted within the group, and feedback’s a great tool to get that.
Listen to the feedback, synthesise it and then take what’s relevant for you.
It’s important to check in with our work group at regular intervals. However, we’ve to take this with a pinch of salt. It’s not uncommon to receive contradicting opinions from different people(sometimes even the same person). The trick is in identifying what’s relevant for you.
Linking the annual performance cycle with the feedback cycle can quickly turn the atmosphere toxic.
In a work setting where money and career progression is at stake, it’s unfair to expect people to remain objective. It brings out petty jealousy, vendetta out. Even a small opinion diff that you had 6 months ago can and will be used against you.
It’s impossible for the team to know everyone’s objectives that they had with their manager and all the projects that they’ve contributed to. At best you have a partial picture and construct a version what they are trying to achieve. There’s no incentive to give out a good review for anyone, especially to a potential competitor.
Managers have the option to ask for clarification if something doesn’t align with their view, but in reality they hardly do. Expecting them to read 100s of feedback from their team, objectively evaluate it and then asking for clarification with a week or 2 is a bit much.
360 ratings is a microcosm of the real life political elections. It’s a popularity contest and it’s won on emotions, not performance. And like in any elections, you can game this by creating a cargo cult around you, carefully nurture your voter base and exclude the nay sayers from the voting list. Sadly creating an impact for the org isn’t one of them.
It’s that time of the year to enter yet another popularity contest. Do you have the appetite to win?
