Military Review English Edition July-August 2015 | Page 68

leadership experimentation and behavior change,
let alone risk taking and innovation.54 Furthermore,
London emphasizes that the organization must
provide those being rated with the resources needed for change, third-party (outside of the chain of
command) coaches for development, and organizational education for performance evaluations.55
All of these requirements are expensive to develop,
implement, and maintain. Without serious momentum, the parts of a multirater feedback system would
be an easy budget-cut target. Canceling third-party
coaches would cripple its use for leader development
because the obvious, and already proposed, low-cost
solution would be to have supervisors conduct leader
development activities with the multirater feedback,
immediately converting development into performance
appraisal.56 W. Warner Burke also states a high level
of psychological safety is required of the organization
to allow leadership experimentation and to build trust
among its employees.57 Using multirater feedback as
a performance measure is very hazardous if done improperly and has the potential to erode organizational
trust, arguably the most important component of leadership both in and out of the military.58 Future reduced
budgets could impact leader development or even the
expansion of multirater feedback into the force.

Multirater Feedback Potential
There is a place for multirater feedback in the
Army, with the clear choice being a system used only
for leader development. If used in the performance
evaluation and promotion systems, the multirater
feedback instrument would require a completely different survey and considerable educating of the selection boards, raters, and administrative personnel prior
to implementation and evaluation. The education of
the selection boards and raters would be difficult to
sustain since trained coaches, who make meaning of
multirater feedback, are expensive and have their own
biases. It would be very difficult to take biases and
emotive data from respondents and make an objective

measure of performance for evaluations or selection
for command. The Army created the CSL system
under the Officer Professional Management System
in 1971 to remove subjective bias from commanders
and to create an objective and fair promotion and selection system.59 By instituting multirater feedback as
a direct part of performance evaluations, promotion
bo