Now that The Apprentice is back, (the Track team are a bit obsessed with TA), I found this brilliant (old but still relevant!) article by Charlie Brooker (warning, don't read the full article if you don't like bad language).
Here's a flavour - it's a kind of 'Guide to 360 Degree Feedback' for Extreme Curmudgeons....
"Clearly, no one's ever taken them aside and said, "Er, you sound like a bit of a bell-end here. Perhaps you ought to sit down and be quiet." What they need is a good slagging off.
Being slagged off is good for you. It thickens the skin and strengthens the backbone.
And every week, without fail, various world-weary travellers will stop by to tell me I'm not as good as I used to be, or wasn't any good to start with, or have bored them into the afterlife, or can't write, or can't think, or should stop typing immediately and drown myself in the bath, assuming I can manage that, which I probably can't, what with being so rubbish and all.
Now, when you read stuff like that, your brain does two things at once: on the one hand, it marvels at the haughty self-importance of the failing human sneer who bothered writing it. And on the other, it agrees with every word they say...."
As an L&D professional I believe that feedback (any feedback, including 360 Degree Feedback) should be positive and constructive, and employers need to give their employees lots of support around the feedback process, not use it as a stick to beat them with.
But maybe Charlie does have a point here...sometimes the feedback you hate the most is the one that has a real grain of truth about it. And maybe that's the feedback that's going to make the most difference to your work, and maybe even your life....?