Hit Me with Your Best Shot: Performance Management Feedback

Connie is a co-founder of SixFigureStart, a success coaching firm for college students and professionals.

Most Fortune 500 companies agree that 360 degree feedback (feedback from your boss, your peers, and your team) is the best way to identify and then improve your performance on the job. These four basic principles form the logical underpinning of the 360 degree feedback theory:

  • Behavior can be observed and measured.
  • Behavior is a direct reflection of leadership.
  • Leadership is a direct reflection of performance.
  • Performance can be observed and measured.

Metrics such as these have a funny way of creating big arrows that aim at the strong performers and big arrows that aim at the weak performers. How you receive an react to that performance feedback can make or break your career.

Here are some guidelines to follow when receiving 360 degree feedback from your manager:

  1. Schedule plenty of time for the meeting. You don’t want to have to rush off to another meeting afterwards or feel the pressure of being late. In addition, its good to allow time for the feedback to sink in, instead of shifting gears immediately afterwards.
  2. Never get defensive. Allow your manager to complete his or her sentences and thoughts.
  3. Once you LISTEN, make sure you comment upon the stated observations. It’s important to have a balanced discussion where you offer input as well.
  4. Relax. If you’ve had a tough feedback session, it’s not the end of the world. Take in all the feedback and digest it before you make any rash decisions or remarks.
  5. Proactively plan your own career development. Identify actionable steps to improve your areas of weakness and determine a method for updating your boss on your progress.

We all have areas to work on and you are far from the only employee with a to-do list for self-improvement. But if you take action to address these concerns immediately after receiving feedback, you will stand out as a cut above your fellow employees.

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  1. 360 feedback
    360 feedback says:

    I think also that generating a rappor with your manager is key, from the initial questions asked/comments made you should be able to guage your managers style and adjust your style to suit as to avoid conflict / misunderstanding. A bit of research into your manager (what makes them tick) goes a long way…

  2. David Cooper
    David Cooper says:

    This is really good – another guideline for maximising 360 Degree Feedback would be to give equal weight to the ‘positives’ as well as the developmental messages in the report. Leveraging and capitalising on key strengths is an important part of the whole process

  3. 360 degree feedback
    360 degree feedback says:

    I don’t know that 360 degree feedback is “just a buzzword.” It does
    have tangible implications for evaluation patterns in organizations.
    However, telling me that a company regularly follows a “360 degree
    feedback” policy, that just tells me evaluations aren’t solely done on
    the traditional top-down basis, and instead there is often
    feedback/evaluation done between all service providers and stakeholder
    clients in an organization