I explicitly asked colleagues, customers, and friends for anonymous feedback about myself – a self-administered 360° review. Here’s how I did so (twice in 5 years), and how anyone with 30 minutes can do so for free.

Why I did this

I thought that my role could make it less likely I’d receive unsolicited negative feedback, and that those negative comments were disproportionately valuable (compared to, say, compliments). Specifically:

What I wanted to learn

In product management, asking users for non-specific comments (“Do you like our product?”) usually leads to less actionable feedback than providing a bit of focus, or even a lot of focus.

I wanted this survey to take less than 10 minutes, and if a recipient didn’t have much to say, less than 5. That meant I couldn’t ask many questions. I asked open-ended questions for recipients who wanted them, but also tried to save time with short answer form fields and some pre-populated choices.

I was most interested in things which don’t come up on their own in daily conversation, so here’s what I asked:

  1. When you think of Troy, do any word(s) come to mind?
  2. What is Troy best at?
  3. What is Troy worst at?
  4. When I interact with Troy, it’s (choose one): Painful; Tolerable; Unremarkable; Enjoyable; Great; Describe it yourself
  5. Complete the sentence: “My own work with Troy would be more gratifying if he…”
  6. Tell me anything - things I suck at, life advice, whatever.

If you do this, adapt the questions and answers to your personality and situation. I’ve this twice, so the questions above

How I asked

A Wufoo form

I chose Wufoo because its form URLs are so simple: anyone can see they don’t contain personally-identifiable information like a UUID, so it’s relatively anonymous. I also stated that in the preface. Also, Wufoo’s standard themes feel very approachable.

Here’s the form exactly as reviewers saw it:

An email request

I emailed myself and BCC’ed about 20:

Here’s the email, exactly as sent:

Hi,

I'm conducting an anonymous 360-degree review of myself.  You're
receiving this because we've worked or interacted a lot, over a long
period of time, or in a unique situation, and I value your feedback.

I'd really appreciate 5-10 minutes of your time, preferably by Sunday,
April 14. Head over here:

    http://example.wufoo.com/my-form

The URL has more. Again, it's completely anonymous and should only
take a few minutes. If you have questions, just reply.

Thank you!

Troy

Results

I received the same number of form submissions as received my email, so in as much as I can measure, 100% responded. None of the comments were totally surprising (not a bad thing!) and they actually skewed more positive than I expected. There’s no substitute for seeing people’s assessments in their own words, though. The return for the time - mine and others’ - was very high. I did this twice over 3 years and I’ll do it again if I’m in a similar working situation.