360 Feedback Blog

How to use 360 Degree Feedback

The 360 Degree Feedback process and resulting Report is primarily a tool to support discussion with the individual’s line manager, team-mates, mentor, or others involved in their development.  It should not be used as a stand-alone measure of behaviour or effectiveness, and care needs to be taken both in giving feedback and in understanding and interpreting the results of that feedback.

When to use 360 Degree Feedback

When considering whether to use 360 Degree Feedback for your team, group or department, there must be a clear business or learning objective for the 360 Degree Feedback; this makes it easier to decide what questions you need to ask, what you are going to do with the results, and how you are going to communicate and position the 360 exercise to participating people, their reviewers and the rest of the organisation. 360 Degree Feedback provides observations and feedback to individuals on specifically stated behaviours or actions, allowing them to increase their level of self-awareness about how their behaviours are perceived by their colleagues or others. 360 Degree Feedback is therefore a tool for allowing individuals (or teams) to:

• Reflect on their own behaviours
• Understand where their colleagues’ perceptions of their behaviours agree or differ from their own, and
• Understand how they are perceived by different sets of colleagues, for example their peers and their direct reports.

Bearing in mind that 360 Degree Feedback is a subjective tool that gathers perceptions and observations in a structured way, and that it helps to create discussions around not just what gets done, but also how it gets done, 360 Degree is a great tool for:

• Providing a basis for a discussion about an individual’s strengths and development needs
• Creating a development plan
• Taking to a coaching session
• Sharing with team members
• Reviewing a project
• Obtaining customer views on individuals or teams
• Assessing the impact of specific learning and development activities (by measuring before and after the activity
• Providing evidence for changes in individuals and the organisation’s behaviour, again by measuring over time
• Training needs analysis

Used correctly, 360 Degree Feedback can:

• Be motivational

• Encourage people to focus on their development

• Give people an ongoing measurement of how their skills and behaviours are changing and improving

• Help to communicate the organisation’s priorities including values and behaviours
  
• Be empowering
  
• Link to job specifications, interview criteria and critical success skills for the organisation

Stop press 1st September 2008!  Track are delighted to announce that we have been selected as a finalist for this year’s UK National Training Awards, which are designed to celebrate organisations and individuals that demonstrate outstanding business and personal success through investment in training.