360 Feedback Blog

In this great article, the writer explains the physiology behind how we listen and how we interpret what we hear.  It’s certainly hard to stand back and listen objectively, and we can be very selective with what we hear, and what we do about it.

People can made immediate assumptions about what they think you’re telling them, and respond less than positively.

Good listening skills are a critical skill set that successful leaders, managers and influencers all demonstrate frequently or almost  all the time.They’re also one of the key skills that, with a bit of work, can complement and enhance someone who’s already got a broad range of good management or leadership skills.  A good way to become a better listener is to ask your colleagues to tell you each time they catch you not listening for what they’re trying to tell you, or ignoring their messages.  Becoming aware of this habit through feedback can help you to change and improve those critical skills.

In this article, the writer thinks teams could give fun feedback to each other as a way of starting conversations and improving relationships.

Whilst we think it’s a fun idea, we think it would be even better if the team were able to give some written thoughts, in a structured way, about what it’s like to work in that team - not specifying any individuals, but how it feels, if it’s generally a positive experience, how the team deals with problems, conflicts and team members who don’t pull their weight.

An added dimension would be to include external feedback from the team’s colleagues and clients - it would be very useful for the team to understand how it’s viewed from the outside.

 Team Works from Track Surveys is a pre-designed 360 Degree Feedback that can be delivered online and customised for each team or organisation’s profile.

Following on from my last blog, Lloyds Bank have announced that the CEO, António Horta-Osório, has taken leave of absence due to overwork.  Consequently Lloyds shares have fallen by 10% in value.

You can vote here on whether you support him or not: Do you feel sympathetic towards António Horta-Osório?

When I voted an hour ago, the vote was split almost equally between sympathy and ‘he gets paid enough to take it’.

Whether you do feel sympathy for him or not, it’s a good illustration how overwork and stress can take their toll on people at any level in an organisation.  Arguably the higher you are, the more stressful your job will be.  Other circumstances can of course also have an influence on how bad the effect of a stressful job will be.  Things like health problems and domestic and family issues can all create the situation where a challenging and healthy job can turn into a stressful and unmanageable nightmare.

Companies in every sector need to address the issue as a matter of urgency.  The starting point is knowing what the general stress points in the organisation are likely to be (they can be different in different organisations), what the overall levels of (negative) stress are, and then being able to identify stress at an individual level and offer help and support before it becomes a problem.

For more information on measuring stress levels in your organisation, contact us on +44 20 7206 7279.

Go to Climate Check to find out how we can help you measure stress and other critical factors in your organisation.

In this recent article from Personnel Today, the results of a survey on the causes of employee sickness absence are eye-opening.

33% of companies who responded said that stress was the most common cause of absence for non-manual workers.

This represents 1 in 3 employees and is something that no organisation can afford right now.

The first step in dealing with work-place stress is to understand what the stress points are for people in the organisation - every organisation is different and its staff will be subject to particular stress points.  An anonymous survey can be a very useful first step in measuring how people are feeling, and where the stress points may be worst.

Training for managers in spotting signs of stress is very important too, as they have the most influence over individual employees’ day to day working conditions. 

A personal stress indicator tool that an employee can access online to test their own levels of stress can be added as part of the stress ‘awareness’ toolkit for the organisation.  It can also provides anonymised but critical data on stress levels and can allow the organisation to monitor this very important area on an ongoing basis.

Find out more about Track’s Climate Check tool to support stress management in your organistion.

In this article from US Website Above the Law, the writer makes the case for using 360 Degree Feedback in legal firms.

He lists the common concerns in law firms and the reasons why they might be reluctant to use 360 Degree Feedback, such as concerns about anonymity, and how a partner might react negatively to less than glowing feedback.

We have designed and delivered 360 Degree Feedback in a number of leading law firms here in the UK, and our clients can testify to the benefits of 360 Degree Feedback - even for partners!

The keys to success in using 360 in legal firms are:

• Buy-in from the partners: this means gaining real commitment to the 360 by demonstrating that it is a useful tool for them, not just another HR tick-box exercise
• Incoporate their 360 feedback into their development plans, which in turn feed into the partner’s performance appraisal.  This makes a clear connection with something that is critical for them
• Managing Partner sponsorship: we have found that unless the MP is i) willing to provide some feedback to the partners and ii) visibly interested in the outcomes, partners will tend to be lukewarm about the whole thing
• Providing partners or associates with some specific coaching that relates to their 360 Degree Feedback.  Initially the coaching discussion covers the feedback and the interpretation of the key messages that it’s delivering.
  A further coaching discussion two or three weeks down the line helps the partner or associate to be able to have assimilated the messages and then incorporated these into their action and/or development plan.

In our experience, careful design and planning can make 360 Degree Feedbackjust as valuable in a legal environment as in a corporate one.

For more information, visit Empower Legal 360.

This article sets out the benefits of coaching for executives and managers.

Coaching is a critical learning experience because it incorporates a large element of self-evaluation and reflection.

Many executives and managers are generally too busy and under pressure to take the time out themselves to reflect on their performance,strengths and areas they need to change.

360 Degree Feedback is a highly complementary tool to coaching, as it adds the observations and perceptions of the individual’s colleagues to the process of reflection and discussion with the coach.

Many of our client organisations use 360 Degree Feedback both to inform coaching discussions, and also, as described here, to evaluate the results of coaching by running 360 before and after the coaching sessions.

 Setting goals and monitoring employees performance is a necessary part of making sure people are judged fairly on their work and that they have clear instructions on what is required of them. However, when we get too entrenched in numbers and figures we can begin to breed a workplace of disgruntled automatons who feel they are either incapable or not trusted enough to use their common sense and best judgement to make decisions. A case in point is described in the Harvard Business Review  where two US soldiers returning from Afghanistan were refused boarding on their flight because they had too many bags, and the airline employees were unable to take the decision to waive the fees and allow them to board. Cases like this are not only detrimental to the reputation of the company, but are also incredibly degrading for the staff who know what the right course of action would be but feel unable to take it for fear of reprisal.  

Whilst it is important to allow employees the structure of metrics to keep them clear on the achievements they need to make, it is also important to be clear on how they go about reaching those goals. As well as targets and performance indicators, employees should be given clear guidance on the behaviours, values and principles they need to adopt along the way, what is acceptable and what is not.  With that in place, employees can be given a degree of autonomy to make their own choices which will keep them happy and engaged and avoid the descent into robotic response.

For more inforamation on performance management and metrics, go to our 360 Degree Feedback, and download our free guides, Performance Management in Talent Centric Organisations, the Pros and Cons of 360 in performance appraisal, and more.

Last week ACAS released a useful and insightful document all about improving employee engagement. Called The People Factor,   the guide details how important good employee relations are in building a successful team and gives an insight into the actions employers can take to creating a positive environment at work.  Focusing on the four main drivers of Engagement (identified in the Macleod Review, 2009): visionary leadership, giving employees a voice, empowering line managers and creating trust, the paper suggests ways to identify where you are now in terms of engagement, things you can do to improve it and also details real life case studies where these techniques have worked.  ACAS’s view is that most important factors which drive engagement are: 

• employee trust in management
• satisfaction with the work itself
• satisfaction with involvement in decision-making at the workplace
• quality of relationships between management and employees
• satisfaction with the amount of pay received
• job challenge
• satisfaction with sense of achievement from work

If you are assessing the levels of employee engagement in your organisation, make sure you include these factors in your assessment.  For more information about creating your engagement survey, go to Resources on www.tracksurveys.co.uk and download our guide, What makes a good engagement survey?

There’s a new film out that looks great - Horrible Bosses - where one boss in particular seems to thoroughly enjoy tormenting his employees!

The writer of the article explains how, when he’s running a training course for managers, he sometimes has to …”tell them frankly how they come across to their employees. It can be a real turning point: I’ve seen aggressive bosses, confronted by this information, decide to change their ways completely”.

360 Degree Feedback can be a critical tool for helping managers who are unaware of how their behaviour is seen by their employees and their colleagues.  360 Degree Feedback gives them an opportunity to get some honest feedback, and to act on that feedback and make some changes in what they do. 

The learning from 360 Degree Feedback can be substantially increased by providing a coach or mentor to a manager, who can help him/her understand the feedback and how they can use it to improve.

This article in Personnel Today reports the results of a recent survey showing how poor management skills can affect employee morale and have a direct effect on peformance.

It’s critical to have a system in place to understand the skills gaps in your manager group.  Using 360 Degree Feedback and evaluation, and a robust system for collating individual and group data, you can measure how effective managers are in:

• Helping people to make decisions
• Dealing reasonably with people when they make a mistake, and helping them to learn from a mistake
• Offering training and support to people to help them do a better job