Military Review English Edition July-August 2015 | Page 64

increases the organization’s effectiveness.23
According to Manuel London and James W.
Smither, by valuing feedback for improving performance, the organization allows the target individual
to associate feedback with critical events, make
meaning, and assimilate the feedback into developmental goals.24 According to Mark D. Cannon and
Robert Witherspoon, without a conducive and safe
environment, the multirater feedback has the potential to negatively affect performance by reducing
morale, increasing suspicion, increasing negative
competitiveness, and reducing organizational citizenship behaviors.25
The most heralded benefit of multirater feedback comes from the analysis of the difference between the self-ratings and the ratings from the other
respondents. Allan H. Church defines self-awareness as the congruence between how managers view
themselves and how others view them.26 This delta
reflects the level of self-awareness that the target
individual possesses; it is a crucial element in leader
development and leadership. Research shows that
the more self-aware individuals are about their
actions and their effect on others, the more leadership potential they have, and self-aware leaders tend
to outperform others.27 There is much argument
over how to measure self-awareness statistically and
track its change over time in a longitudinal study.
Caroline Bailey and Clive Fletcher assert that a
theory relating the effects of multirater feedback on
self-awareness and performance is needed to establish the validity of the instrument.28
It is important to use multirater feedback for
developmental purposes, rather than for summative
appraisals. Making employees more aware of the
behavior competencies the organization rewards
will enable managers to align an individual’s “performance schema and the performance criteria of
the organization.”29 When employees’ behaviors
move closer to the organization’s values through
self-awareness, their job performance improves. In
addition, Facteau et al. report that “leaders reacted
more favorably to evaluations from subordinates
if those evaluations were used for developmental and not for administrative purposes.”30 This is
because the leaders felt psychologically safe from
results that could have caused poor performance
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evaluations—shielding their income and promotion potential. Even if the target individual believes
the feedback is inaccurate, a coach or counselor
can use the results to help increase the individual’s
perception of his or her performance.31 Leaders do
not necessarily have to change their behaviors to
please any respondent group (except, possibly, the
superiors that rate them administratively). Instead,
when they understand that others rate some of
their behaviors as needing improvement, they can
set personal goals for better performance in those
areas. For an organization to be effective at fostering
individual development, management should hold
individuals accountable for creating development
plans and provide the resources people need for
improvement.32
Additionally, research shows that ratings by
subordinates, peers, supervisors, self, and others
overlap only modestly; self-ratings correlate weakly
with other rater perspectives, with greater convergence between peer and supervisor ratings.33 This
leaves the coach or mentor with varying perspectives on the person rated that must be interpreted
for development. The divergence of the perspectives
can make it difficult to evaluate behavior for performance assessment. This evidence reinforces the use
of multirater feedback for development only—for
individuals to improve their behaviors—but not for
performance incentives.

Inappropriate Uses of Multirater
Feedback
Much multirater feedback research cautions
against using it as part of the appraisal process because
it may lead to the target individual becoming too focused on pleasing others, especially subordinates, and
not performing leader or managerial behaviors necessary for the job. Theron and Roodt state, “ratings used
to determine employee reward and promotability are
more prone to leniency bias,” meaning that others will
rate the target individual higher than the person truly
performs in order to enable that person to be rewarded.34 In 2003, IBM (International Business Machines
Corporation) used multirater feedback as part of employee annual performance reviews, but the practice
was halted due to the reviews becoming politically
charged and thus unreliable.35
July-August 2015  MILITARY REVIEW