Transparency in Coaching: The (non)value of Anonymous Feedback

In coaching the primary goal is the effecting an end change in behavior. The Wikipedia entry linked above starts out with:

Coaching is a method of directing, instructing and training a person or group of people, with the aim to achieve some goal or develop specific skills. There are many ways to coach, types of coaching and methods to coaching. Direction may include motivational speaking. Training may include seminars, workshops, and supervised practice.

Feedback (and by extension feedback loops) are a key component of coaching. In education there are five common subclasses:

Confirmation

Corrective

Explanatory

Diagnostic

Elaborative

In management, all five are employed. Today we're going to focus on the Diagnostic case, as it is the primary mode by which performance reviews are conducted.

The solicitation of feedback by peers is a time-honored method for managers to gain some insight into how effective an employee is in performing the duties of their job. It helps to validate internal models of competency that the manager has with regard to their relationship with an employee, especially positive feedback. (of course negative feedback can also validate any models of incompetency the manager may have) -- there is a whole field of "Survey Theory" that works to obtain meaningful and more importantly unbiased data.

But humans are (thankfully) not robots. We have all sorts of motivation and moods, many of which can change from day to day, depending on the distractions around us (work, life, play). And that variability exists on both sides of relationships.

In recent years, organizations large and small have been using (at least in name) the concept of 360-degree feedback (I say in name only, as I've been involved in a number of companies that use this term and terms like "full-circle" -- but honestly don't understand the method).

Bacal & Associates have a pretty decent resource called the Performance Management & Appraisal Help Center with an excellent summary of the problems of providing anonymous feedback in an entry titled Is there a problem if we use "anonymous feedback" in 360?.

It echos a fair number of concerns I've had with it for some time. In thinking about the inter-human relationships between you, the manager (proxy), and feedback provider, it raises some serious questions of validity that is likely to have some unintended consequences.

Anonymous feedback has a double toxic affect of:

a. not allowing the employee the ability to evaluate who said what, so you can figure out where its coming from, and what agenda/purpose/context and potential credibility they might have
b. breeding ill-will potentially towards everyone else, since you constantly have to wonder who said what

For the relationship between the proxy and the subject (your manager and you) it can raises questions of whether the person performing the review concurs with the feedback (which when you think about it, they probably do, otherwise, why would they be providing it?) Or in the extreme cases, potentially the manager wrote the feedback but is hiding behind the anonymous wall. Either way, it can create a re-evaluation point where the strength of the relationship between manager and employee is significantly diminished.

In other words, if you don't respect the feedback provider, you will not likely agree with their assessment, which in turn will have little impact on outcome and can lead to Disengaged Employees

Your manager in effect becomes an amplifier -- and without the overall context of time, place, and situation, you are left without any means of qualitatively evaluating its relevance.

Which brings me to today's Big Idea: The elimination of anonymous feedback in coaching.

What do you think? Have you found that anonymous feedback to be meaningful? How would it change the feedback you provide if you knew it was not anonymous?