Doing a 360

I mentioned recently that I'm taking a class on "Practicing the Focused Life." One of our key assignments was to go through a "360 Evaluation." Basically, a group of 5-8 people comprised of your supervisor, peers, and those you supervise respond anonymously evaluating how your are doing with respect to a set of competencies that are important to your organization and your your own development. In this case we did a self-evaluation on ourselves, answering the same questions as the reviewers. It was also something we self-evaluated a few years go, which allows the students to see progress. The 360 Evaluation can be a bit intimidating, and this was the first time I've done something like this. What if those you work closely with in ministry have a very different (lower!?) opinion of your competencies than you do? Well that would signal a major growth opportunity, but it would also be depressing.

In this case I was pretty relieved to see that my peers and colaborers in ministry had a very similar assessment as my own for a dozen competencies that had been targeted for development through classes and projects. The comparison to the earlier self-evaluation was also encouraging. Change has been so slow it has seemed insignificant, but over the course of two and a half-years I've made significant progress in a number of areas.

Have you ever been part of a 360 evaluation? How did it go?
What growth have you seen in your own character or competences in the past year or two?