Sue, I would agree.  I think the only thing that made my original 
360-degree evaluation palatable (and useful) is that the employees gave me 
copies of what they'd given Council.  I very much appreciated their 
trusting *me*.  But I treat the whole evaluation process as one of *mutual* 
improvement.  (The Council may not.)

I always give everybody a work list; I have told 'em no matter how good 
they are, they will always be given something to work on--and I want that 
in their self-evaluations, too.  It is really helpful (and sometimes 
eye-opening) to see what *they* think they should work on.

Union (FRNA) Joe

At 02:01 PM 9/25/06, you wrote:
>Steven -- The Dayton City Council did a modified 360 for me this year. I
>don't really think it made everyone completely happy, including me.  I also
>don't believe the feedback was particularly helpful to me because it was
>filtered through Paul Koch and his associate. In order to keep staff
>anonymous, it was pretty ambiguous -- i.e., "lack of trust," "employee
>relations issues" that were never really defined and in fact, were
>acknowledged by Koch to probably have no basis in actual fact, but Council
>didn't hear that part and ran with it.
>
>I'm going to be perfectly honest here because I trust all of you, but the
>biggest thing that came out of this for me was that I no longer trust my
>Council. That saddens me because I've been here for 13 years and this is the
>first time I have felt that way. I think that lack of trust goes back to the
>360 -- nobody has to be specific, so you don't have anything you can really
>sink your teeth into and change, but they get to make all sorts of innuendos
>about you and your work. Why is it that one of the comments always is "don't
>take this personally??????"
>
>The only part of the 360 evaluation that I think was useful was the part
>that David Galati did on focusing Council to come up with what they called
>"Strategies for Improvement" that were put in a work plan format. These I
>can get a handle on and focus my own energies. The 360 didn't do that for me
>at all. I know he did this same thing for Frank Sheridan in Sheridan. You
>might ask him how he felt about it as well.
>
>Good luck, Steven --
>
>Sue Hollis
>City Manager