There is a third tier that is rarely addressed in a 360-Degree feedback process. This third tier concerns assessment of the context or culture in which the employee operates and in which the ratings are being solicited. Much as a fish can’t tell you much about the water in which she swims, so an employee and her colleagues can rarely tell you much about the setting in which they work. This setting, however, has an impact on their performance and their perceptions of one another. While many 360-Degree advocates suggest that multi-source feedback can influence organizational culture, most fail to recognize that influence can also flow in the opposite direction: organizational culture can influence the ratings being given to individual employees engaged in a 360-Degree feedback process.
Multiple Roles and Multiple Perspectives
The role taken by organizational culture in the lives and performance of contemporary employees is actually growing even larger, given the current shift in job structures and responsibilities. As Tornow, London and their associates at the Center for Creative Leadership have recently noted:
. . . “jobs” and “positions” are giving way to “assignments” as the basic unit of work. . . Different assignments will, of course, have different constituencies, whose performance expectations and feedback will define success according to their particular needs. Consequently, organizations need more flexible and dynamics systems for communicating performance expectations and feedback. By design, 360-Degree feedback systems, with their multiple assignments, roles, and constituencies, are better in tune with the new realities of work.
I agree that Tier Two assessments help to address the challenges associated with these multiple roles and assignments. However, I also believe that Tier Three assessments are just as important, given that fluid job assignments require an adjustment to new constituencies and colleagues, and an adjustment to new work conditions and organizational subcultures. Data about these conditions and cultural characteristics can help an employee more fully appreciate the frame of reference being used by those doing a Tier Two assessment.
