I thought of this phrase again recently after another of our one-day 360 degree feedback debrief training sessions.

In this instance I was delivering the training to a number of managers who were going to conduct the debriefs with their own team members; as their 'Line Manager', they had contributed to the 360 degree feedback report itself, and so their ratings and comments were on show accordingly.

What I noticed this time and before, is the way 'Line Managers' can find it more difficult to do a debrief more so than say a HR person, or a Coach, or any independent person who doesn't have a direct supervisory relationship with the 360 feedback recipient.

The challenge they often face is that they want to 'solve the problem' for the recipient (and themselves in the process); in doing so, they will often move very quickly from exploring the feedback to simply asking 'So what are you going to do about this issue?'.

Whilst this may be a vaild question when the recipient comes to put an action plan together, it is far too early to move to solution mode before understanding the feedback in greater depth.

For much of the debrief, in fact pretty much all of it we would advocate, the focus should be on raising the self-awareness of the recipient and having them accept there is something to be done.

Perhaps the title should read, 'Line Managers are from Mars, Skilled debriefers are from Venus'...comments on a postcard please....

John