Most churches conduct staff evaluations at some level. In some congregations it's as simple as the board reviewing the senior pastor annually. In other churches, specific performance goals are set for every staff member, and they are then evaluated against those. At whatever level of feedback you do, is it what's known as 360°? According to Wikipedia it's also known as "'multi-rater feedback', 'multisource feedback', or 'multisource assessment', as employee development feedback that comes from all around the employee. "360" refers to the 360° in a circle. The feedback would come from subordinates, peers, and managers in the organizational hierarchy, as well as self-assessment, and in some cases external sources such as customers and suppliers or other interested stakeholders. It may be contrasted with upward feedback, where managers are given feedback by their direct reports, or a traditional performance appraisal, where the employees are most often reviewed only by their manager."
If your church does 360° feedback, how? What software or program do you use, if any? Would you recommend it for others?
Warren Bird, Ph.D., is Research Director at Leadership Network, and co-author of 19 books on various aspects of church health and innovation.
We do 360 evaluations at Resurrection and I have found them to among the most helpful parts of the review. At my last annual review, these comments were the most critical and accurately named perceptions from others which were true but which I had not recognized.
We use a Word document that is forwarded to evaluators and then returned electronically to the supervisor. The supervisor compiles the results, makes sure that they are anonymous and then shares with the staff member as part of the review.
Posted by: Andrew Conard | June 16, 2008 at 11:51 AM
We have had many churchs in the US perform 360 feedback often using our free 360 tool quick 360 over at reactive360.com
Posted by: 360 feedback | June 17, 2008 at 10:42 AM