360.

A friend of mine was recently told that he was having his first ever 360 review.

The 360, a massive investment, time consuming, and something as one who is chosen to provide feedback, you want to make sure you enter into with thought, objectivity and professionalism

The 360 for those of you just joining us, tend to be far and few between, and of course are completed based on a company culture and the HR vision for handling performance appraisals and managing the feedback process.

As the 360-er, what do you do? What is the protocol? (A different protocol here than Juniors stay where you’re lost)

Well from those who have been through the process before, 360 feedback will only be valuable if you let it be just that, true feedback.

I had a manager once after he digested all of his own 360 feedback, send a BCC email to everyone who had taken part, outlining the areas of development he would be committed to working on, to keep him accountable. To step up and own areas of self development is the ultimate in managerial courage.

And in yoga the other night, second set of eagle, the owner of the studio was practicing with us in class, and the teacher came over to correct her form. Now as the owner of the studio she is of course as close to perfection as you can get, but even in that state, when you are the expert, you can still absorb feedback, and you should. Why stop improving? And if it isn’t necessarily about improvement, maybe it is about trying something new, doing things differently, evolving rather than striving for perfection.

What if we adopted the 360 process into our lives, especially into our relationships. Like ‘so am I really that big a bitch?, or am I completely ignorant to other people’s feelings, should I stop being such an ass?’ Get the 360 reviews, not only from your other half but from a handpicked, non bias selection of your people.

Or even going so far as after each relationship, no matter how brief, a quick survey for the contestant to complete. On a scale of 1-10 how likely are you to recommend me to a future dating partner? Net promoter score, love it or hate it.

Now of course, its crazy to think you can please all people and receiving glowing reviews across the board, but, the more you know about yourself the better you’ll do.

take the last bridge to goalville.

Goalville. You know the place, or rather the never never land you have entertained. And with that, you’ve stood on the edge, looking at the the bridge to Goalville. The bridge, well this is scary, because this is potentially how you might in fact cross to the place where you will be bigger and better. This in itself should raise discomfort, and quite frankly terrify you. Both the destination and the journey. The how you end up crossing may become irrelevant, the point is that you, yes you, you orchestrated this, you did it, you crossed the bridge to Goalville. The sometimes rocky, potentially against code bridge, you were brave enough to cross the bridge.

I struggled after I completed by MBA, with what was next? What was my next achievement? What would feed my soul, my need to make a difference as much as what I had felt coming out of my MBA?  So what did I do, I got married.

Nice one.

it was not until a flight (yes most of my epiphany’s occur in the air) that I realized, 8 years onward, post divorce, that what I really needed to give myself was was a swift kick, a shift in goal setting.

Changing up your goal setting, is a challenge, as a perpetual academic, and also scary, when you think about what you are used to.  Thinking about how we have until this point measured achievement, academic ones specifically, it is very cut and dry. You either do well, or you do not.

In the real world, benchmarks are more fluid and subjective. This is frightening.

So, for over achieving academics, options you reach a point where your options are to pursue more academia (I can literally feel my dad grimacing), take a random course, which likely won’t do much to get you excited, or finally to shake the snow globe, see where it all would land.

I say  shake the snowglobe, because we all deserve to do more than just exist.