Minds at Work

Exploring the psychological forces at play while you work.

Ben Dattner is a workplace consultant, an industrial and organizational psychologist, and an adjunct professor at New York University. See full bio

March 23, 2009, Work

Comments on "Valid and invalid concerns about the validity of 360's"

Valid and invalid concerns about the validity of 360's

By Ben Dattner on March 23, 2009 in Minds at Work

360 degree feedback is an increasingly popular tool for executive coaching and leadership development. An individual evaluates him or herself along some predetermined quantitative and qualitative dimensions, providing numerical ratings for the quantitative items and comments for the qualitative ones. Read More

360's

Submitted by John V. on March 24, 2009 - 7:29am.

The greatest contributors to humankind in arts, science, politics, philosophy and so forth appear NOT to have been "team players" but rather individuals working in solitude.

All the tests i've seen, read about and/or participated in are tools that categorize individuals into pre-defined boxes and identify what must change to make a clone of a pre-defined "perfect team member".

Employee categorizations seem to be one of the dying acts of failing organizations along with publishing new policy manuals and mission statements.

In the fast-paced global community how will we unleash the creativity of the individual if we clone personalities into perfect "team players" and reward them accordingly? I suppose if you must have committees, you'd want them to sit together for long periods and still lunch together. 360's could be helpful in that regard.