Performance feedback, sometimes known as “counseling,” is always a hot topic across the joint force, and each service has taken a different approach to how feedback is conducted and tied into the performance evaluation system. Each service views personnel upward movements as a meritocracy, and a good counseling system is critical to identifying and perpetuating high performance. Recently, several services have solicited multi-source feedback to be used in parallel or integrated with current counseling systems.
The Army introduced the Multi-Source Assessment and Feedback (MSAF) system in the late 2000s, with mandatory ratee use and seemingly voluntary feedback requirements, though the service terminated the program in 2018.[1] The Navy has identified a need for better mid-term counseling for sailors and is introducing a similar, but simpler, MSAF tool in 2019.[2] The Marine Corps has orders in place that outline the expectations of counseling and how it should integrate with the evaluation process, but implements no forcing function to ensure that counseling takes place. The Corps is testing an MSAF system, but has not yet embraced one for the total force. The Air Force uses a ratee self-assessment combined with a rater assessment as part of its formal counseling program documentation, which are key components to an MSAF system.[3]
While each service has approached the problem differently, there are three common threads. First, service members desire and deserve feedback during the performance evaluation cycle. Second, MSAF systems should be seriously but carefully considered by all branches. Third, any new counseling system must be simple and mandatory to be effective. To ensure career-oriented service members receive an appropriate level of professional feedback, I propose the implementation of an improved performance feedback system that ensures counseling between formal evaluations and incorporates a hybrid MSAF process providing comprehensive and appropriate feedback to service members and their superiors.
The Need for and Purpose of an MSAF System
An MSAF system is not a new concept to the military, and the corporate sector has many examples of similar systems. In their article “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of 360° Evaluations,” Tirona and Gislason write that “we live in a feedback desert.”[4] Across most of the services, counseling is limited to what I term “informal” methods, which tend to be verbal spot corrections rather than in-depth reviews of ways to holistically improve performance. An effective MSAF system should not be used as a direct input into the evaluation of a service member’s performance. Wike highlights the conclusions of a Rand study suggesting that, “The services collectively do not believe the [MSAF] should be a factor in a leader’s evaluations. They do believe the [MSAF is] a good tool for personal development.”[5]
It is impossible to separate counseling from evaluation, since performance counseling is generally done by a rater who will evaluate the ratee in the future. Any information provided by an MSAF system to a superior is inherently considered in an evaluation. Therefore, the services must take steps to create some levels of separation between the MSAF report and the final performance evaluation. The goal of the MSAF system must be to bring the rater and ratee together for a productive, informative counseling session.
A Hybrid MSAF System
The services need a hybrid MSAF system that both solicits qualitative and quantitative data and compiles separate reports for the rater and ratee. A number of considerations emerge from current research and service trends that are critical to creating an MSAF system that is both functional for counseling and that will gain buy-in from the personnel expected to use it. These are accountability, targeting the correct audience while ensuring a level of anonymity, correct evaluation criteria, an optimized feedback medium, and overall system simplicity.
Accountability is achieved through an effective forcing function that holds raters responsible for conducting counseling that utilizes the MSAF system and, equally as important, holds MSAF responders accountable to submit responses. This must be done via an electronic system. A reasonable amount of anonymity is achieved by providing feedback that cannot be broken down into feedback groups and that only provides compiled quantitative feedback to the rater with optional qualitative feedback that only goes to the ratee. Evaluation criteria must closely align with the actual metrics on the ratee’s performance evaluation.
The feedback medium must be easy to set up, easy to access by responders, and relatively quick to fill out. The output must be simple enough to be easily translated to a form for discussion in a standard counseling session. Output in the form of complicated tables and formulas that must be reviewed by an outside coaching “expert” are not practical or cost effective, nor do they promote the spirt of improving the rater-ratee counseling relationship. Similar to current Air Force and future Navy counseling policy, information of a quantitative nature should be sent to the rater to aid them in best counseling their ratee on current performance and how to improve in the future. However, certain qualitative feedback provided by an MSAF system should remain solely the possession of the service member, and that service member should be under no obligation to share the complete results of their personalized MSAF report with anyone.
The Goal of Improved Counseling
As a company commander, I had my executive officer compile a single counseling report on my performance based on inputs from my subordinate leaders using the same form that I used to counsel them. In turn, I chose to provide this prototype MSAF “counseling” to my reporting senior for consideration during our next mentoring session. He found it insightful, and it helped him provide even better feedback to me on how to improve as a commander. That said, having qualitative information on the form did seem to bias some of his own feedback. As the full MSAF report is purely for service member use, the completion of a MSAF report does not absolve the superior from preparing for and conducting a counseling session, though it may serve as a reminder.
After reviewing the efforts of each branch, there is a driving desire to provide appropriate performance feedback to our service members. With the electronic medium defining how our coaching, counseling, and evaluations are input and memorialized, the sensibility of aligning the services’ efforts of the past few decades can result in a truly effective performance feedback concept. From junior to senior, in- person feedback is paramount to fostering positive growth and outcomes. Honest attempts to improve performance counseling tools are important, but miss the greater issue: leaders across the services are not executing performance counseling regularly. Incorporating MSAF into the counseling process is a means, not an end, to achieving improved counseling. Mandating accountability with performance feedback well ahead of evaluation ensures a common understanding and expectation toward improving or sustaining performance. The ideal system would have a forcing function to provide oversight and documentation to ensure the conduct of initial and mid-term counseling sessions, as well as a means to execute, process, and provide MSAF as part of the mid-term counseling process. The performance feedback system should complement existing or future performance evaluation systems by closely tying feedback to the specific traits being evaluated.
The MSAF concept has merit and provides a much-needed component to leadership development programs. Tweaking the MSAF process can enable it to be executed in a simple, time efficient, and meaningful way to provide a significant benefit to all career-minded service members. It is time to harmonize the many ideas into singular concept that enables growth. The end state is a closer ratee-rater relationship, facilitating improved performance feedback during the reporting period, which will lead to a more capable, lethal force. We have the tools, we need to use them.
Endnotes
[1] Nathan Wike, “It’s Time to Rethink 360 Degree Reviews,” The Military Leader, https://www.themilitaryleader.com/rethink-360-degree-reviews-guest-post/; and Mark Esper, “Memorandum for Prioritizing Efforts-Readiness and Lethality (Update 8)” (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 2018), https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN9642_AD2018_07_8_Final.pdf.
[2] “Performance Evaluation Transformation,” Navy Personnel Command, https://www.public.navy.mil/bupers-npc/career/performanceevaluation/Pages/transformation.aspx.
[3] “Performance Feedback,” Air Force’s Personnel Center, https://www.afpc.af.mil/Evaluations/.
[4] Marissa Tirona and Michelle Gislason, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of 360° Evaluations,’ Nonprofit Quarterly, 26 July 2011, https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2011/07/26/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-of-360d-evaluations/.
[5] Wike, “It’s Time to Rethink 360 Degree Reviews,” 1.
