People are notoriously inaccurate raters of other humans, which is the first issue with feedback. In research after study over the past four decades, psychometricians have demonstrated that humans lack the impartiality necessary to maintain a stable description of an abstract trait like business acumen or assertiveness and then properly judge someone based on that quality. Instead, the rater's natural and unconscious prejudices and knowledge of what constitutes "good" for a particular ability inform how severely or leniently they assess the ratee. The idiosyncratic rater effect is a broad and persistent phenomenon in which your qualities strongly influence how you rate others (no training can lessen it). The studies demonstrate that feedback leads to more distortion than truth.

This is why, despite the abundance of resources for learning to process criticism, it may be challenging: The recipients must exert considerable effort to find something familiar in all this distorted noise.

Moreover, considering evaluations as a whole might amplify systematic inaccuracy caused by the fact that your feedback to others is always more about you than theirs. Random error, which may be mitigated by averaging many measurements, and systematic error, which cannot be mitigated, are the only two types of measurement error. It would appear that all of us have forgotten the latter and only remembered the former from our math classes. Although we know that assessment errors are not random, we have designed our performance and leadership feedback systems accordingly. It's all methodical.

Think about those who can't tell colors apart. We wouldn't take a color-blind person's opinion seriously if we asked him to assess the intensity of a rose's redness since we know he can't even see the color red, let alone "rate" it. The source of his inaccuracy may be traced back to a fundamental defect in his measuring procedure, making it anything but a random occurrence. Even if we ask seven additional color-blind persons to assess the rose's redness, their mistakes will be just as systematic, and we won't learn anything from the average of their evaluations. It's far worse than this. We can't know anything useful about how different people experienced the rose if we average out the erroneous redness assessments (e.g., "gray," "pretty gray," "whitish gray," "muddy brown,") and then use that average to determine how red our rose is.

When it comes to more intangible qualities like strategic thinking, potential, and political acumen, we're all color-blind.

We have a systematic, predictable, and explainable incapacity to judge others on these criteria. Including more data inputs and averaging them does not help eliminate the inaccuracy but may increase it.

Worse yet, even though scientific research has established beyond a reasonable doubt that humans are color-blind, we continue to act as though we have 20/20 vision in the professional sphere. The truth is, we don't believe we make many mistakes. Most of us think that we provide fair assessments of others. We consider ourselves to be an honest news outlet. No, we're not doing that. We're an erroneous source.

A score of 3.79 on a feedback instrument that polls eight coworkers on your business acumen is much more skewed than a score of 4.0 would be if only one person were interviewed about you. You should be concerned about how fundamentally flawed this kind of data-based feedback is because (a) it is becoming increasingly common, (b) your employer will likely keep this information about you for a long time, and (c) it will be used to determine your salary, promotion prospects, training opportunities, assignment locations, and termination.

Individuals may be trusted as reliable sources of information solely concerning their emotions and experiences. All along, medical professionals have understood this to be true. A common post-op question is, "How would you rate your discomfort from one to ten, with ten being high?" The doctor may recommend a wide variety of therapies after you say "five," but she's not going to question your "five." It doesn't make sense to tell you that your "five" is erroneous and that the agony you're experiencing this morning is a "three," no matter how many procedures she's performed. Trying to figure out what you mean by "five" and whether or not cultural variations suggest that your "five" is not an actual "five" is a waste of time. Having corrective sessions with other physicians to make sure your "five" is the same as other "fives" in the rooms down the hall is unnecessary. Instead, she may rest assured that you, and only you, are the best judge of your pain and that she can only know that you will be feeling better after you give your pain a lower rating. It is your judgment and not hers how you rated her.

We don't know the truth about our coworkers, at least not objectively, any more than your doctor knows the truth about your pain. It has been said that modern employees, particularly Millennials, need clarity about their prospects. People on your team may occasionally look to you for an unbiased assessment of where they stand. You might feel obligated to make an effort to find solutions to these problems. But you can't; in fact, nobody can. We can talk about how we've felt and what we've experienced, as well as how we've reacted. In this way, we may express to the speaker whether or not we find his tone irritating, whether or not his arguments convince us, and whether or not we find his presentation interesting. Even if we can't tell him where he stands, we can tell him where he stands with us. That's how we see things, not how he does. While this is a more modest assertion, it is nevertheless true.

About Jim Woods:

Jim has a passion for accelerating talent across organizations. While this passion has fueled his work in leadership assessment and development, it has crystallized in the area of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. 

Jim's experience spans many industries, including public, finance, consumer, retail, pharma, industrials, and technology. 'Organizational & people agility,' 'design thinking,' and 'digital transformation' are some critical themes Jim works with clients on across the globe.