A spouse can’t do much to influence their service member’s career. Unless, say, you commit a blazing Bonnie and Clyde-style felony. Then the military might notice that you are, in fact, a problem.
But what if we could be a force for good in our service member’s lives? What if we could help by giving good 360?
Take this new policy that the Navy is implementing. In light of the 49 (!!!) firings of commanding officers since 2010, Big Navy has decided to implement 360-degree assessments for commanding officers and executive officers as part of the screening process. (Read here how the Army is already using the 360.)
If you haven’t had to do this at work yet, the 360-degree evaluation is when your peers, coworkers and subordinates as well as your bosses rate you on your work performance. When I had to do a 360 with a business coach, she made me ask my husband and kids to assess me, too. Scary. Really, really scary.
But it makes me wonder: Will the military ask spouses to contribute to the 360, too? I don’t know if I could be trusted. On one hand, I am the kind of woman who thinks my guy should have been made King of the Sea pretty much on his first day in the Navy. Then again, I have had my days….well, weeks…..OK, months at a time I might not have been the most trustworthy report. I’ve had my times when I hated the deployment so much that I would have been prepared to swear that my husband wears kitty cat ears under his little hat if it meant we could quit. Quit. QUIT.
Geez, I hope everyone else who is going to contribute to these 360-degree assessments have purer motives than my own. If they don’t, then the 360 used as a screening tool is going to give questionable results at best.
Yet as a mid-career self-assessment tool, the 360 can’t be beat. That’s why I think it would be so helpful for spouses to be included in the process even unofficially. Because a 360 makes a person stop seeing their career from the limits of their own point of view. Instead the individual must confront what it is like to work with them and work for them. It makes a person confront how their personal habits rub off on their work self and their family self.
That is the kind of feedback a spouse is best positioned to give. We spouses see what the military can’t see and has no right to see. But in the context of a personal assessment, home is part of the 360 of a leader’s life. An accurate, objective assessment of how things are really going might help someone to make personal changes that contribute to real success—inside and outside the military.
About Jacey Eckhart
Comments
I've never heard of this way of eval. I think it's great and wish the AF would implement this. As far as us spouses being part of it, I agree it would be a good thing for us. It could be voluntary and unofficial. I wonder though if we became part of it , and if someone did not do it, the leadership might wonder what was going on at home. While perhaps not entirely true, for some it would niggle in the back of their mind.
I don't see how getting imput from the spouse about the servicemember's work performance would be an accurate representation. I do not know about every aspect of his work personality and how he deals with our family differs from how he deals with his fellow Marines. Considering that I frequently remind him that we are not Marines and I can challenge him in a way that his Marines can't, I don't think that I would do him a great service by revealing the dynamics of our home life. The way I see it, as long as his off time activities do not interfere with his work hours then those activities aren't any one elses business. I know the basic characteristics of his personality that contribute to his success at work, but those characteristics are easily observed by his coworkers. When his coworkers do get glimpses of how he is with his family they are often surprised that our family is not run like a group of recruits at boot camp. It's better to preserve his work persona by leaving his family persona private.
Regardless of how the spouses respond they have to know up front that their life will make their service man miserable to a point that he cant perform his duties, spouses should be behind their mate 100% or they should get out of either their life or both get out of the military. I watched a man that got drafted right after he was married, he married a girl he had dated all his life, the letters stopped coming and he got a letter from the AG that he was to go on emergency leave for 2 weeks, he got home to a divorce papers being served on him. He got killed while grieving about that divorce, he fell apart in his duties and we, his friends should have talked to the CO and got him relieved but we didnt so we felt a part of his death. This is only an example of what happend to the service member if he is problemed at home so understand my friends, THIS PERSON NEEDS ALL OF YOUR SUPPORT.
Spouses also need support. Sure some gals are the trashy kind who run around on their service member the second their back is turned and use up all of his resources, but that does not account for the decent and good among us. Us true spouses who really care about our sailor/soldier put up with major crap coming from all sources. I am not 100% behind uprooting my family for the needs of the navy every time someone else says so, but I do it in support of the man I love. I am not 100% behind the lack of family time we get to spend even when he is on shore duty because the navy slaves him 18hrs a day, but I stand by him. Supporting a person doesn't men keeping your mouth shut or walking two steps behind him carrying a basket of muffins. Life is challenging you fall in love with a person not a profession . Contrary to popular belief not all of us "Know what we were getting into." I had not ever met a member of the US Armed Forces before my husband. There is a learning curve and things get tough occasionally. No one in the military can with complete honesty say that they have given their spouse 100%. Do a 360 evaluation of that. Sorry for your friends experience but you sound bitter. Not all women are scheming conniving dirt bags, and you often get back what you give out. If someone is making your life miserable chances are they feel the same way about you.
What would u suggest a military wife do if he's mistreating her? I'm related, but not giving out any personal info.Just wished I knew who to contact to report his actions. Any help would be appreciated.
i honestly dont think this would be a good idea. the eval would really depend on the type of day we were having lol coming home early good eval coming home at 2am bad eval.
Spouses do not get the credit they deserve "most of the time" It is nice to have a spouse that a soldier knows will take care of business at home, so they can keep a clear head and stay safe when they are in harms way. Any Spouse who has provided that type of security for their Soldier needs to be appreciated for it.
My eval may not stack up according to what the unit perceives. Truth is the family gets the "real" person, the military gets the soldier they have created and the majority of the time this is a successful process. The unit forms it's own opinion about itself and it is up to the soldier what type of eval their family would be willing to give.