360 Feedback Blog

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.

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

This article from Personnel Today talks about a dilemma we’re seeing with many of our clients: they want to be able to have a clear picture of the skills and capabilities of their people so that they can make sure the right people are in the right job, at the right time.  To analyse the skills gaps in your organisation, you need to ask the following questions:

1. What current and future skills do we need to achieve our goals?
2. Who’s got those skills, and where are they in the organisation?
3. Who’s not got those skills, and where are they?
4. What are the training and development gaps, and where
   are they?
5. Where are the areas of strength, and where do they
   lie?

As described in the article, this is such a critical area now because it’s vital to be able to keep the people
with the key skills we need, train and fill the gaps, and deal with underperformance clearly and
unambiguously.

We recommend the use of online tools such as 360 Degree Feedback and Performance Appraisal as a very effective and efficient way of measuring the skills gaps in your organisation.  Ensuring that the 360 Degree Feedback and Appraisal are aligned with the organisation’s capabilities, you should be able to easily measure and report on training needs at individual, group and organisation level.

I’ve been following the current Apprentice series on BBC TV, and last night’s episode was a corker - here’s the Guardian blog, which gives you the sequence of events plus some witty commentary.  Of particular interest to me was how Jim, who escaped being fired, suddenly plummeted in popularity with the candidates and Lord Sugar. I was intrigued as to how someone who had been universally popular with the team and with Lord Sugar, could fall so quickly from grace.  It has clearly been a case of Halo Effect.

The Halo Effect happens when someone does one or more high-visibility, successful actions or tasks.  They may be very specific, in Jim’s case, it was a very effective negotiation a number of weeks back. This one action or task creates an impression of high performance in all areas, which is also reinforced by group concensus, hence a ‘Halo’.   

In Jim’s case, because of the negotiation, he gained a reputation as a ’strong candidate’, and one of the fired candidates, Vincent, had been only too happy to seek Jim’s opinion and advice throughout.   In the end, Jim proved to be vindictive, unwilling to take responsibility and ineffective in the task, and both the remaining candidates and Lord S were visibly shocked at this ‘change’ in their perception of Jim.

The Halo Effect can be a serious problem for you if you have to assess or grade someone’s performance, or if you are asked give 360 Degree Feedback, or particularly if you are assessing ‘potential’ for talent and leadership pools. 

It’s difficult to avoid the Halo Effect - after all, our brains are designed to create short cuts to speed up decision making - and its sister, the Horns Effect.  But just being aware of the biases in our thinking, and also how easy it is to be swayed by ‘group think’, helps in balancing our understanding of someone’s strengths and weaknesses.

This article describes the effect of bad appraiser skills combined with poor 360 Degree Feedback design.

One of the key messages for using 360 correctly is that statements such as
“You’re not liked in this organisation”are not useful or practical kinds  of feedback! 

Also, although the article talks about 360 Feedback, it appears that the pain described is coming from the appraising manager’s lack of skills in giving feedback,
not the 360 feedback itself, which should be a reflection of key consistent messages
coming from all the raters, not the opinion of just one person.

The level of misuse, and misunderstanding around the use, of 360 Degree Feedback never fails to amaze me.  This article about the GoldmanSachs Appraisal process, describes how Goldmans has been using 360 Degree Feedback. Pretty much everything they did was totally wrong and worst possible practice…including:

•  Using 360 to rank people’s performance in appraisals
• Allowing raters to be chosen on a random basis, so people were chosen who would give only positive feedback
• Glowing self-assessments were taken into account as part of the appraisal (this is implied in the article)

And please ignore the advice of the article writer, which is…..if you want to ‘do well’ in a 360 appraisal, “cultivate lots of people who think you’re great”, and write a great self-appraisal!

To recap, 360 Degree Feedback can only be valid and useful where there is a balance of feedback givers, where the process is clear and fair, and where there is no direct (or sole) connection to pay or reward.   
 

We are often asked to brief people in our client organisations about the best way to give feedback in a 360 Degree Feedback exercise.

Here’s a link to a short video that explains the key areas and some hints and tips for giving great 360 feedback.

This article describes a Face to Face 360 Degree Feedback process that she experienced with her best ever boss.

Face to face feedback like this can be a very effective tool for managers and teams
to use both at appraisal time and  regularly throughout the year.

Of course, the managers that need the feedback the most are the ones that are least likely to volunteer for it!

So while it’s good to give managers a choice, if you really want to give managers an
awareness of their blind-spots (and their strengths too), and you want to build a consistent level of skills in the manager group, the feedback needs to:

1. Be based on the same questions for each manager and each person giving the feedback
2. Have an element of anonymity so that the feedback from those reluctant to give face-to-face feedback, is also recorded.
3. Be reportable in a format that is easy to read and understand

 After all, even smart people need feedback!