Feedback Culture?

Before engaging in a feedback process like 360 degree feedback, it is important to know whether your organization is ready to engage in this kind of activity. Do you have a feedback culture? Are you prepared to foster one?

Maybe you've been looking and asking around. Maybe you've heard your competitors use feedback tools to improve performance and development. Yet, if you're thinking of engaging in a feedback process like 360 degree feedback just because your competitors use it, think twice. Organizations may choose to do a 360 degree feedback just because their competitors do. Or maybe to give the impression of openness and participation to employees, clients or recruits when, in fact, this is not a part of the organization's culture. Regardless, this amounts to using a tool or procedure for political purposes and is ultimately counter-productive.

If, on the other hand, your organization has a growing commitment to openness and feedback, then perhaps it's time. Just be sure you're going in for the right reasons.

Fear at 360 Degrees…

To unlock the power of the 360 degree feedback process a manager must either be well prepared to navigate through gap analysis and a host of comparative data or should be flanked by a coach throughout the debriefing period.

It is easy for a manager who feels untrained when it comes to giving feedback to fall into some of the common traps that have given the 360 degree feedback a bad reputation in the past.  Feedback that mentions “who said what” or focuses solely on the weaknesses of an employee without being careful to offer a balanced feedback may do more harm than good and be easily overwhelmed by the quantitative measurements. If the desired result of a 360 degree feedback process is to improve the behavior of employees or leaders, then it is vital that the feedback be as accurate, balanced and relevant as possible.

While all this sounds like common sense, are you able to distill the meaning of the results of a 360 degree feedback in a professional and constructive manner? Or do you find it to be a personal affair?

Questions to ponder:

• Have you ever struggled with giving a balanced feedback?
• Do you have an anecdotal vignette to share?

Suggestions:

• Partnering with coaches can provide long term benefits in the professional development of your employees, leaders and ultimately your organization.
• Using 360 Degree Feedback tools that have been custom build for your organization can make all the difference.

How do you conduct 360 Feedback Follow-up? (Part 2 of 2)

As we pointed out earlier, a 360 Degree Feedback project that lacks a consistent and structured follow-up is going to lack any real and meaningful value not only for the employees who participate in it but for the company as a whole. In short, failure to properly follow-up on a 360 Degree Feedback project results in lost opportunity and wasted money.

So, as promised, we're going to point out a few steps that absolutely must be taken as a follow through or follow-up to a 360 Degree Feedback project.

Step 1) Every focus person must sit down with his or her manager to discuss the outcome of the project. During this discussion, the focus person and his or her manager need to come to agreement on a number of areas that that need to be improved upon. These areas should be easily identifiable if the 360 report is any good.

Step 2) The focus person and his or her manager must work out a "to-do-list". This should be a list of things the focus person can start to concentrate on on a daily basis that will result in improvement in those broader areas worked out in Step 1. This is the step that is almost always ignored which results in negligible improvement for the focus person.

Step 3) The employer need to work out a system to help each focus person track his or her completion of the "to-do-list". If you are a manager, this could mean routinely e-mailing the focus person to let them know that you have noticed that the focus person has been doing a great job on some items of their to-do-list and a poor job on others. Or, the employer could use a tool like HR-Meter's advanced "performance tracker system" which allows a focus person's rater group to continue to comment on his or her progress between 360 Degree Feedback projects. Step 3 keeps each focus person engaged and on top of their own improvement between 360's. This allows you to spread out the time between 360 Degree Feedback projects, save money and improve efficiency.

Step 4) Knowing that between 360 Degree Feedback projects steps have been taken to capitalize on the information gathered in the previous project, each subsequent 360 Degree Feedback project should be adapted to reflect each stage in the company's performance evolution. You should not be doing identical 360's time and time again.

If you implement these 4 simple steps after your next 360 Degree Feedback project, you will have added considerable value and meaning to your project and will have saved yourself and your company time and money.

360 Degree Feedback Month

For the month of February, we will be running a series of articles on the topic of 360 Degree Feedback. We're kicking the series off today with the introduction to a Research Study that we recently conducted into the soundness and reliability of 360 Degree Feedback projects.

It only seems natural to start at the beginning: To define what a 360 Degree Feedback process is.

Best practice in 360 degree feedback

Results and experiences from practice

“The concept of 360 Feedback makes a lot of sense and, if used well, should have a great deal to offer. It seems to suit the move towards the less hierarchical, more flexibly structured an knowledge based organizations of the future” – Dr. Clive Fletcher 

Companies are shaped by the goals they have, the people they work with and the contemporary texture in which they are embedded. Several decades ago, organizations were modeled upon hierarchical frameworks which, inevitably, rendered a very clear and precise organizational model. With the wave of lean management came the toppling of organizational hierarchies and the installation of more interlaced, dynamic organizational settings focused upon cross functional and project based corporations. These new organizational settings have proven to be more conducive to a setting in which projects and goals arise and are tackled by team based structures rather than hierarchical ones. Within these new frameworks, team oriented goal setting flourished, in part, because of the dynamic relationship between managers and subordinates. These structures create a broader span of control for leaders making it indispensable for them to use more systematic leadership instruments like MBO processes and performance feedbacks. Besides the evaluation of productivity and the reaching of certain goals, the so called “social and networking skills” of employees gained a once unnoticeable relevance. It has been found that these, “social skills”, can be measured through 360 degree feedbacks. Behind this assertion lies the assumption that both personal and operative competencies contribute to the success of a manager and that these competencies are vibrant enough for assess

ment.

In the meantime there are a wide array of studies and experience reports proving the effectiveness of 360 degree feedbacks for both individuals and companies alike.

I: Definition: “What a 360 Degree Feedback really is”.

A 360 degree feedback is based on several opinions about the contributions and behavior of an employee as well as his or her own assessment through a structured procedure. A proper 360 demands that third party evaluations come from groups with a variety of relationships to the focus person: i.e. peers, managers, subordinates external suppliers and customers. The various viewpoints of the different feedback groups within 360 degree feedbacks contribute to comprehensive and authoritative results based on average values.

360 degree feedbacks are methodologically diverse and can, according to what is ultimately sought after, point to an equally diverse range of goals. Nevertheless, there is one guiding principal involved: good feedback should be precise and behavior focused and that focus should be value neutral. Assessments should yield positive change and depict relevant behavioral alternatives that the focus person can implement. Besides the goals deducted for the company setting, a good multi-perspective feedback instrument is especially instructive for the personal development of employees.

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In February, we will be putting up many more posts on this topic as part of our "360 Degree Feedback Month".

PLEASE NOTE: On February 20th 2009, the President and CEO of HR-Meter International, Christina Dietzsch-Kley, will be hosting an informative Webinar on the topic of 360 Degree Feedback implementation and follow-through. 

To attend this event or to request a copy of our 360 Degree Feedback study: