the starter's guide to 360 degree feedback
TRANSCRIPT
The Starter's Guide to 360Degree Feedbackblog.impraise.com /thestartersguideto360degreefeedback/
What was your thought when you first heard the phrase “360degree feedback”? Thorough?Complicated? Puzzling? Well, 360degree feedback is not a nobrainer but it does not have to be hardto master. As long as you know the basics.
And here are the basics.
360degree feedback is the feedback that comes from multiple sources. The sources are normally anemployee’s immediate work circle. It includes direct reports, colleagues and line managers. In mostcases, 360degree feedback involves a selfevaluation. Some companies choose to include externalparties, like clients and suppliers, but it is not always the case.
A 360 review is an evaluation process carried out by a team in order to get each of the teammembers to improve. It should not be a performance review, even though some use the word performance in the title. The feedback in a 360 review is about spotting strengths, and possiblyweaknesses, which are used to plan personal growth and map specific paths for development.
Why should a team use 360degree feedback?
There are several pros that make 360degree feedback well worth spending time on.
1. Improved Feedback
Feedback is more wellrounded because it comes from multiple sources, from peers to supervisors.For example, you want to know better about your ability to get along with people. It would be morehelpful to hear answers from all members in your team, including your managers, the colleagues thathave worked with you for a long time and the new ones.
Moreover, you can look for patterns and tendencies in 360degree feedback. For instance, you haveconsciously spent more time explaining the motives of your decisions to your colleagues. When mostteam members responds to it with positive feedback, you know it is the right direction to move forward.
2. Team Development
A 360 review helps team members learn about the impact of their behaviors on other members. Theycan then make wellinformed adjustments in order to work more effectively together.
As an example, one learns that her act of interrupting affects her colleagues’ flow of thinking. She islikely to change her behavior and be more patient in future’s team discussions. When each and everyteam member adjust their behavior in order to bring positive impact, it will definitely benefit the team’scollaboration.
3. Personal Growth
This is the main purpose of 360degree feedback. Each individual comes to understand the need togrow and which areas to grow into. Managers and employees can then sit together and make stepbystep plans to improve.
For example, an admin assistant receives feedback on her ability to prioritize tasks. Most people saidthat she took on more and more tasks. However, she occasionally failed to finish a task as previouslycommitted, and became a bottleneck in the process. Having read the feedback, she now knows thatprioritising tasks is a skill that she should focus on so that she can grow and take on moreresponsibilities.
The admin assistant can sit down with her line manager to work out a growth plan. Her manager cangive her advice on how to avoid overloading: “Before deciding to take on a new task, you should spendsome time going through the status of the current tasks and think about how to allocate time for the new
one”.
Improved feedback, team development and personal growth will benefit the growth of the wholecompany, even though it is not the main purpose of a 360 review.
[If you want to download this blog post in pdf, click here]
But there are also limitations of 360degree feedback
It is not that 360degree feedback is flawed. It is that way too many companies make mistakes whileimplementing 360 reviews. Be aware of the limitations to avoid the failure trap.
1. Impact lies outside the process
360degree feedback processes can only have positive impact if everyone works on the feedback yougive them afterwards. They need to know:
How to deal with the whole lot of feedback they receive, and
What are the next steps to take?
Some people do not have this knowledge naturally. They need coaching, which many companiesforget to include in the process. We are going to share with you a way to solve this problem in afollowing post.
2. The need and the will to followup
Because 360degree feedback is for personal development, there is no mandatory followup.
Combined with a busy work schedule of some, no followup mandate can lead to neglect. It means thatsome employees do not do anything about the result of a 360 review. A solution for this is to assign thefollowup task to a responsible person, most commonly a line manager. We will discuss more aboutthis in a later post.
3. Focus on the wrong end
There is a tendency to focus on weaknesses rather than strengths when giving 360degree feedback.Many people think of growth as correcting your mistakes and improving your weaknesses. However,you can reap much sweeter fruits with maximising your strengths and using them in the rightplace. Feedback should be about building strengths rather than correcting weaknesses.
4. The possibility to integrate
It is difficult to integrate a 360 review into a company’s culture of giving feedback. People tend toconsider it as a one time event, pursuing very little to no followup. How to position a onetime 360review into a culture of continuous feedback is not an easy question to answer. But it is what companiesneed to find out if they want to build a culture of feedback that benefits their people.
The success of a 360degree feedback process depends mainly on the people involved in it. Namely,the one in charge of arranging for 360degree feedback to be given and received. And the feedbackrecipients who need to work on the results. Never to forget the givers who kindly (and bravely) offertheir insight. There is also the line managers, whose roles are not so obvious but very significant. (Hint:you can find out more about these roles in a followup post).
Basically, each individual needs to play her role right. Running a 360 review is like a skill that ateam needs to master. We would like to help your team improve this skill with a series of followingposts that address the responsibilities of each role and the tips to do it right.