Sample Board Member Self-Evaluation: Fill & Download for Free

I doubt whether crowd wisdom is wisdom as usually defined and suspect that there is little that can be gained from it by individuals who are outside the contexts in which it is normally used. When crowd wisdom is used for market research it provides a picture of consumer choice that informs a manufacturer or sales outlet. When it is used to assess audience opinion in a TV quiz show it reveals an average judgment on the right answer to a multi-choice question. From the perspective of the quiz contestant or company sponsoring research they are being offered some sort of 'wisdom' but what this consists of is knowledge, preference or guess work. The contestant or company needs to exercise their own judgment as to whether they should accept it.For crowd wisdom to work it is important that the people involved are not influencing each other. If they talked to each other about what they thought before making a choice some would copy the answers of others and so introduce bias to the results. The individuals in the crowd are likely to hold a spectrum of views from those who might almost be considered experts to those who have no idea about the matter at all. Any 'wisdom' relies on a collective judgement in which those with some knowledge converge on the right solution while averaging out those who are simply guessing. The result can be surprisingly accurate or it can be totally wrong!I find it difficult to see how this process is likely to be of much use in everyday situations. If we have a problem of some sort we could gather a sample of opinions from friends, acquaintances and family members, perhaps ensuring diversity of opinion by asking people of different ages and circumstances. The time taken to do this would limit the number of people who could be asked. While doing it through social media might speed up the gathering of opinion the results would still need to be analysed. This wouldn't be exactly 'crowd wisdom' but the process might approximate to it. In the end, however, no amount of opinion from others can be a substitute for developing a wisdom of our own that enables us to make good decisions for the particular situations we face.Many boards of directors or management groups are now expected to carry out some kind of self evaluation on a regular basis. The results of the exercise help to provide an action plan to tackle flaws in group practice and improve performance. Those who complete an evaluation form may have been in the group for a long time or be relatively new to it. As they answer the questions independently they may have perceptions that do not match the reality of group practice or they may have axes to grind which bias their answers. A good action plan will not simply take everything that is said as of equal worth. The group carrying out the evaluation needs to discuss the results, prioritise suggestions and exercise a corporate wisdom as to what needs to be done.

This question asks specifically about community college. I can speak to my experience as a newly tenured faculty member at a California community college. It is just my experience but a lot of it is typical for California.The TL:DR is the hard part is getting the tenure track job. The word “tenure” has scary connotations at the research university level. But this is not the case in the community colleges. Tenure is not a foregone conclusion but it is very rare that a tenure track faculty member does not earn tenure as long as they stick through the process. Part of the reason for this is that the jobs are highly competitive. It is unlikely for an unqualified candidate to make it through the hiring process.As far as my background, I have a bachelors degree in mathematics and a masters degree in pure mathematics. After graduate school I spent about a year working as an Actuary and another two years working in market research (doing a lot of data analysis). I started teaching as an adjunct and a community college in January of 2010 for the Spring semester. I took a second adjunct position in another district for the Fall semester (August 2010). By the time that semester ended I had decided this was the career I wanted. I started looking for full time work.One thing that was in my favor was that I was teaching mathematics. The largest departments in California community colleges are Math and English (ESL is usually up there). This meant that in the San Francisco Bay area there tended to be between 10 and 15 job openings a year. In many other fields there may not be any positions opening. One year I went to the area meeting of the Mathematical Association of America (I go most years). One of the talks was given by a sculptor who had developed a 3D marble maze game with some mathematics involved in the design. He was an adjunct sculpture instructor at a large Bay Area. He said that in 25 years of teaching there had never been a tenure track position open in his field.Tenure track positions open up on a yearly cycle. Hiring season is between about November and May. My second year of teaching I started to take applying to jobs seriously. But I didn’t get interviews. I got an interview at one of the schools where I was teaching and one in Portland (yes Oregon). The same thing happened the following year. My third year teaching I must have crossed a threshold where the screeners could check the “experienced” box. I got 8 interviews that year.The hiring process for a tenure track mathematics position goes as follows. Your application starts at HR. They have negotiated screening procedures with the math department. Typically the application requires you to submit a detailed work and education history, transcripts, a resume and cover letter, and then you usually have answer somewhere between 2 and 10 essay questions about your background, experience, teaching philosophy and your experience or intent regarding the role of faculty in the governance of the college. Some schools would ask me to explain a specific mathematical concept in writing or submit an exam covering specific material. Some schools asked me to submit one of my syllabi. Just submitting the application could easily be 20 hours of work. This was the case for a while until I had done enough applications that I could borrow from writing I had previously done.If you got past the HR screening your application would be sent to the math department’s hiring committee. Their job was to wittle the list down to no more than 20 candidates. Then those candidates would be invited for a first round interview.The first round interview typically consisted of a teaching demonstration and more teaching philosophy questions. Sometimes there would be math questions (aimed at answering sample student questions). Candidates would be informed ahead of time of a topic or topics and told to prepare a 10, 15 or 20 minute lesson on that topic. The interview would also include questions about teaching background, role of tenure track instructor, how to spot math anxiety. Every one of these interviews would ask how we acommodate teaching students with a wide variety of backgrounds. These interviews typically took about an hour. I would usually spend about 20 - 30 hours preparing for each teaching demonstration.From 2010 to 2015 I was invited to 30 tenure track first round interviews.After the department level interview the department would rank the candidates and cut the list down to 3 - 5 candidates. Those candidates were sent forward to the Presidential round interviews. I have been to four of these. These interviews usual were given for the president of the college and at leaset one of the Vice Presidents. Most also included representatives from the District management (the Chancelor’s office). They were primarily interested in the candidates background and how they would serve the institution. I was even asked what I saw the role of the faculty member in reaching out to the community. The job of this committee is to choose which candidate(s) to fill the open position(s). Technically those candidates have to be approved by the board of trustees but the only reason why those recommendations would not be rubber stamped is if the district had experienced serious financial hardships. I have only been given one job offerOk, now the tenure process. There might be some variation but most California community colleges have similar processes. For me it was a four year process. A tenure committee was formed. It consisted of two faculty from my department (thanks to math being a large department) and a Dean. My committee happened to include my Dean, who was technically my supervisor but it didn’t have to be that way. When I was hired I was hired for a one year contract. The first year the committee had to decide whether to recommend me for a second one year contract. The second year they were decided whether I deserved a two year contract. Then they got two years to decide whether to grant me tenure which comes with a “continuing contract”. The first two years I was evaluated in both Fall and Spring semester. The last two years I was only evaluated in the Fall. At the end of Fall of my fourth year my team recommended me for tenure. The Vice President of Instruction and the President of the college reviewed my tenure file and approved it. In April of 2019 the Board of Trustees (an elected body) approved my tenure as well as 8 other faculty at my college.Evaluation meant that each member of my committee had to observe two of my class sessions (usually for about an hour). Each class, the students would have to fill out surveys to give me and my team feedback on my effectiveness as an instructor. I also had to write a self-evaluation report describing what I was doing to stay current in the field. How I was planning on improving my teaching, and what I was doing to serve my responsibilities to the college. At the end of every semester my team would meet with me to report on what they saw and give me advice on what to work on for the next evaluation. Documents of those reports were put in my tenure file. The biggest take-away was that my committee was impressed with my skills creating a safe learning environment where my students felt comfortable speaking up when they needed help. That I had creative and effective ways of using technology as part of the learning process. They were particularly impressed with the way that I would immediately take feedback from them or from my students and seek out ways to improve my teaching in those areas.Ultimately the goal of a well designed tenure process should just that. To ensure that the tenure candidate is motivated to improve themselves as an instructor. That they have the tools to do so. And that they will do their part to serve the institution. Teaching is a constant job of improvement. A teacher is never 100% effective but the best ones are always striving to get there.A community college is similarly never 100% effective but should always be striving for that goal. Faculty play a crucial role in that struggle for improvement of the institution. Tenure track faculty must find areas of college governance where they are passionate in working to improve how the college is run.Gaining tenure was technically a four year process. But that ignores the hard part. Spring of 2019 I was awarded tenure. That was my 19th semester teaching. When I was adjunct I taught summer classes too. Even before I realized I wanted this career my life experience was contributing to the success of that ambition. My three years of industry work allow me to tell my college students what working in an office is going to be like for them. And how statistics can be applied in the real world. My graduate work gave me intuitive understanding of mathematics so that I know how the math I teach works behind the scenes. I also taught classes for 3 years in graduate school. I came to my undergraduate institution knowing I wanted to teach eventually. I got experience tutoring and assisting instructors. I took math education courses an participated in a program designed for students wanting to become high school teachers. My first teaching job was at age 16, teaching swimming. I did that from age 16 to age 20.So you can decide. Getting tenure at a community college was a fairly enlightening 4 year experience. But it was a culmination of 9.5 years of teaching experience. I had been developing as a teacher for 24 years.

Here’s a detailed step-wise process on how to set up a 360 Degree Feedback system:Step 1: Configure the 360 Feedback Process– Decide the Period: Define the period of the Review. Here you decide what the Review will be denoting the performance for which timeline.Understand that this is not the Review frequency, i.e. how many times you would like the 360° Review to happen.– The frequency of 360 Degree Feedback: Decide, how frequently you would like to have a 360° Feedback process. You may just look at it as a one-time process, but then it’s a bad idea! How you will process how the employee has improved over the past feedback and implementation.The frequency of 360 Feedback can be Monthly, Quarterly, Half-Yearly or Annually. We would recommend to have Quarterly 360 Feedbacks or at Max Half Yearly.– Decide the coverage of the 360 Feedback, i.e. who all in your organization will be covered in the 360 Feedback. Do you want all the departments to go at once, will there be separate reviews going for C-Level executives and Mid-level ones?No matter how much we say it, putting down things and documenting has a different effect and helps to separate the sound from the noise. This will the first step to formalize and document your entire process.Step 2: Define the number of Feedback givers– You have to decide the type and the total number of Feedback givers. Decide the highest upper limit of feedback givers for any employee.For example, a person can get up to 4 senior feedbacks, 7 peer feedback, and 3 junior feedback at max.– Make sure the number you select for feedback providers is an adequate representative sample so that the feedback is representative.– Do you want the employee also to also give Self-Assessment? A vital part of 360° Feedback and is recommended to have a Self-Evaluation. Employees may perceive themselves as one thing, but it’s important to understand how people are thinking about your approach. This also helps to find out blind spot and hidden strength (discussed later) in the report analysis.– Note you do not decide here, who will be the 360° Feedback providers here. It’s just the number we are giving.Step 3: Set Feedback AttributesFoundation of 360° Feedback is the types of questions asked and their relevance. You have to ask either Work-related Behavioral attributes or Performance Attributes or a combination.– If you selecting Work Related Performance Attributes you can put in points likea) Gets things doneb) Listens Carefullyc) Gives Feedback and direction.d) Expresses Information and priorities clearly.– For rating scale, you can use a Likert Scale. The format of a typical Likert Scale can is defined hereA) Strongly disagreeB) DisagreeC) Neither agree nor disagreeD) AgreeE) Strongly agreeYou can link the values of the scale above to numerical values, to help you asses and get a quantified result.– Work-Related Behavioral Attributes are the other type of questions you can ask. Examples of these Attributes are :A) Thought LeadershipB) Personal ConnectC) Problem SolvingD) Effective GovernanceHere you can rate employees differently. You can ask Feedback providers to indicate the Top 5 Strengths and Top 5 Improvements.– Work-Related Performance Attributes, as well as Behavioral Attributes, can be segregated into different perspectives like Internal Process, Customer, and Execution Focus. This will help the feedback owner a better understanding. Apart from a quantitative rating, make sure there is qualitative data also provided by the feedback owner.– Apart from Attributes to be rated upon, you can free text boxes for subjective questions for various commentsSome of the questions that you can ask feedback providers:A) 2 Work traits you should start withB) 2 Work traits you should immediately stopC) Any Behavioral SuggestionsD) Work Traits to continueOnce you have designed the Questionnaire/360° Feedback form, edit the form for different access. You may want the senior to answer a different feedback attribute about the employee, the junior something else and customer something else. The segregation of questions for various feedback givers should be based upon adequate familiarity with employee’s work behavior, otherwise, the feedback can be moot, destructive and invalid.Step 4: Setting Feedback ProvidersEither you as an admin can select the feedback providers for all the employees. You can decide who will be the senior, junior, peer providing the feedback. If external customers are allowed then decide the Board Members for you CEO/COO, Customers for your Sales and Account Management teams, Vendor or Partners for vendor related roles.To make the feedback representative, select Reviewers (internal/external customers) make sure that feedback is representative.What if Employees want to select their 360° Feedback Reviewers?This is a good practice where you allowing employers to select 360° Feedback Reivers. Define a timeline within which they can select their 360° Feedback Reviewers. Once the selection is done by them, make sure that you can edit the list. This will make sure that a fair size and names of employees are selected to give the Review.Step 5: Define the timeline and set up monitoringSticking to a review schedule is important and will help you to complete the process within a certain time in a disciplined manner.Monitoring allows you to see if everyone has provided feedback, constant reminders are sent out to employees so that they complete the form in time.Step 6: AnalysisThe above 5 steps are only 50 % of the work done. Analysis and follow up to that with development plans is the crucial part.Just remember that 360° Feedback needs to be anonymous to the employees. They have the in-depth analysis but cannot know at a macro level the feedback provider.List the greatest strength of the employee:Identify the greatest strengths and show them to the employees. If you have selected Work-related Performance attributes or a Likert Type Rating scale, display strengths in descending order of the highest overall scores from each respondent group.If you had selected Work Related Behavioral attribute and asked the employee to mark the top strengths, rank the Attributes as per the highest percentage responded by the group.For your reference, have attached a possible calculation:List the development opportunities:We are typically not trained well to take negative feedback. So how do you perceive the weakness and those attributes where the employee did not get a good rating?Name them as development opportunitiesLike Greatest strength for Work Behavior, identify the attributes which received the lowest overall scores from the respondent group.If you had selected Work-Related Behavior Attributes and asked the employee to show weakness, showcase the Attributes rated the most in Improvement.Hidden Strengths:Hidden Strengths are typically those Work attributes (behavioral/performance) where others gave the person a higher ranking than what the person gave him/her. This is to showcase and bring in picture those traits which you don’t realize but others see in you.Blind Spots:Areas for specific improvement. This is where the employee has rated themselves/marked as strength and others (in the majority) have rated lower or marked it as a weakness. This helps to understand employee what is obvious that they cannot see and others can.Question and Competency Detail (Optional):You can have a bar chart depicting the gap in feedback ratings between Self and External as well as Internal Stakeholders.Or you can do mapping for different Attributes and what every feedback group had to say about it. (What % of peer group thinks the Attribute as strength or an area of improvement?)Remember, the idea here is to use the data obtained in a manner where employees understand the entire feedback process. A graphical representation like bar charts helps to map quickly the feedback and analyze the gap. Make the charts as such that it helps you and employee to plan employee development programs as necessary.Comments by stakeholders on Start and Stop behavior for improved performance:In the above steps, if you made sure that you allowing comments, like mention the behaviors to start and stop, make sure you represent that in the detailed feedback analysis.You can categorize the comments based on Feedback groups. Make sure the comments are anonymous. It can be a task to slice and dice between comments if there are many, you may only wish to indicate those which can be used in a better manner.Planning Development:You did the hard work by setting up a comprehensive 360 Feedback process. Not only you involved all the possible stakeholders for the all the employees, but you also ensured the process was conducted was time bound, detailed and specific, data gathered for analysis and created detailed reports with insights to behavior and performance at the workplace. Now the important part comes in of following up on the analysis and plan development.Development plans should be made to overcome the deficits. Earlier we made a section called Development opportunities which pointed out to the attributes which got the lowest overall score from each respondent group.For example, Bob always thought that Customer Focus was his strength and was going to take a course in Project Management. His colleagues who loved Bob’s work ethic and attitude thought a little different about Bob’s attitude to Customer Focus and thought it can be improved. On hearing this, Bob is relieved and may have training related to customer focus. This also helped him tremendously to select the right development plan and move ahead in the career, as he may have selected a development plan for a skill/attribute which was already his strength, for example, may be functional and technical skills.How you can connect 360 Degree Feedback and Performance Appraisals?Though it’s not a common practice to use 360 Degree Feedback with Performance Appraisals, as it is only looked like a passport to development plans and gauge skills.If you are still insistent, make it a part of the Performance Review with maybe a 70 % -30 % rating distribution between Performance Reviews and 360° Feedback.Since you may plan promotion and even compensation increment based, make sure the feedback givers have substantial opportunities to observe work performance of the employee, the feedback givers are informed that it will be for appraisal, have detailed weights(%-ages) for different components.The above process was a very elaborative way how you can do 360° Feedback. One of the key challenges that a facilitator faces is managing the forms, calculations and the analysis to be done.If a 360° Process is done well, it can be one those rare activities that someone’s life is transformed in a positive way, and does truly influence career and changes lives.Have a quick demo with our team and we will help you understand how GroSum will make 360 Degree Feedback easy and insightful for you.P.S: I work with GroSum. GroSum offers automated and seamless 360 Degree Feedback Tool. For a FREE demo, sign up here.If you are looking to set up a 360 Degree Feedback System for your organization, let’s connect.I can be reached at [email protected]