I was recently working with a client who is considering how to gain feedback on the leadership team against a new set of leadership behaviours.  As we discussed the best routes open to us, unsurprisingly, 360 degree feedback was looked at.  A bunch of assumptions then flowed through - not just for the people at the meeting, but for the people who would be participants in the process.

Your perception of 360 degree feedback is, for the majority of people, going to be driven by experience.  Those of us who work in the field will have experienced many different ways of getting feedback from a range of sources in many ways but for most people 360 feedback will be driven by how it was recently done "to" them.

The most common perception is of measurement and that measurement leading to a score - with charts, graphs, means, etc.  That score is often then benchmarked in some way.  But that doesn't have to be the way - indeed scoring in 360 at an individual level is difficult at best.  

I started to reflect on what 360 feedback really is.  At its essence, it is a route to collecting feedback from a range of sources (I guess to strictly be 360, then it has to be from direct reports, managers, self, and a peer group).  There is no requirement for that to be ratings based - it just typically is.  

It is quite possible that a group of people do not need or can not make use of a rating based 360.  But seeking narrative feedback from a range of people may be exactly what would help them to reflect on their impact on others. 

Before we make the leap from "it would be good to get observations from a range of people" to "and so we will get an average score from a range of people" we should at least pause and challenge that assumption.  It doesn't have to be so.

Brendan