Military Review English Edition July-August 2015 | Page 63

MULTIRATER FEEDBACK

Subjects receiving multirater feedback generally
egocentric biases are common in perceptions of
consider the reliability more accurate, fairer, and
ratings—people may inflate or deflate them as a deless biased than traditional assessments due to the
fensive measure, or they may attribute good perfornumerous sources of the feedback. Statistically, this
mance to their own behavior and poor performance
may not be true because halo effects can skew the
to environmental factors.21 The target may reject
data, with raters sometimes scoring the individthe results as invalid and seek external sources to
ual as all good or all bad. Increasing reliability in
blame for perceived failures. Avoiding this kind of
multirater feedback requires reducing rater errors
situation depends on integrating third-party coachand improving rater agreement. This can be done by ing and a longitudinal development plan.
clearly defining the rated behaviors with examples
in order to establish a common frame of reference
Appropriate Uses of Multirater
for all raters, enabling the comparison of scores
Feedback
across raters. This reduces the ambiguity in the
Before any multirater feedback assessment inframe of reference and minimizes halo effects.17
strument can be used, the organization must create
According to Fiona Dent and Judy Curd, the
a psychologically safe learning environment that
“360[-degree assessment] is completely dependent
values individual development and feedback for
on collecting data from others about an individual
development.22 This environment leads to managand therefore a highly emotive process that must
ers and employees accepting the feedback as valid
be handled both in a professional manner and with
and using it to improve their behaviors—which
care.”18 Some typical emotional
reactions by employees receiving
feedback are denial, shock, anger,
and rejection. Some raters use
anonymity or working relationRater
ships to score the target employee
too high or too low, to prove a
point.19 Again, the emotional aspect of the instrument for raters
and target employees can affect
its accuracy and reliability, calling into the question the validity
of the results. In order to preserve the face validity of the data,
Customers
Peers
organizations should educate,
coach, and counsel target individuals before they receive feedback. This is important because
as overall ratings became less
positive (further from the best),
leaders become less lik