360 Feedback Blog

A word of warning and an illuminating discussion thread about bosses, employees and 360 Degree Feedback in today’s Guardian.

I found this great summary of questions people often ask about 360 Degree Feedback, and some of the criticisms that can be levelled against the process.

Here’s our response (we’ve repeated the comments/questions at the beginning of each paragraph):

It’s right that 360 focuses on managers and above; this is because 360 is most effective when measuring management, communication and leadership skills, and it’s at manager level that those skills become important.

There are indeed some key things that need to be in place for 360 Degree Feedback to be effective and valuable.

1) giving appraisals is a difficult task.
Yes appraisal can be difficult, but managers need to be trained in giving appraisals.  360 Degree Feedback is an additional tool to help with appraisal, because it gets feedback from multiple perspectives; it is one form of appraisal, not the only one.

2)there may be a gap between an organization’s business objectives and what 360-degree feedback programs measure.
I so agree with you - it is critical that the 360 Degree Feedback measures the behaviours that are needed for the organisation’s business objectives.  This is normally the first thing we do when designing 360 Degree Feedback.

3)time and cost associated with 360-degree feedback also are stumbling blocks
Yes, there is time and cost involved in doing any people development work.  However good communication and positioning of the 360, and careful planning, can reduce the impact of the activity. And a tool that helps employees, their managers and the organisation to understand skills gaps and strengths, is critical to the organisation’s success.

4) Reviewers and those being reviewed fail to follow up after feedback.
Follow up is essential - as with any people development tool, using it and then forgetting about it is a waste of time and money, and creates negative attitudes in the organisation.  The 360 should be integral within the people processes of the organisation, should be meaningful, and should be aligned with other activities like appraisal, training needs analysis and management and leadership development.

For a free guide on 360 Degree Feedback Best Practice, go to our website Track Surveys and download the document.

‘What organisations increasingly need is a cost-effective way of developing the leadership skills of large numbers of managers in a way which moulds them into the type of manager best suited to the organisations’ needs – and preferably, without taking them away from their day jobs – ideally through, an approach that allows them to dip in and out when time and opportunity permits’.  View this article on localgov.co.uk

I would add that effective learning should be all about learning through the medium of the individual’s day-job. By focusing on 360 Degree Feedback and coaching, as in this great example, individuals can reflect on how they do their job, what they need to change to improve, and then do it, in the context of their workplace and their colleagues.  The regular 360 Degree Feedback and coaching is so important because it’s easy for busy managers to forget about what they are learning, and their learning targets - 360 feedback and regular coaching keeps them focused. 

On the point of ensuring that the organisation gets the skills improvement it needs (as well as individuals improving personally), it’s critical that the 360 Degree Feedback is aligned to the organisation’s learning objectives, which in turn must reflect the skills and behaviours it requires in its people in order to meet its business objectives. 

In this article from Management Today the writer describes a common situation: someone who refuses to accept the feedback they have recieved from their colleagues.

I would say that this happens in every organisation that has people in it, i.e. every organisation!  It’s less about conflict and more that there is always a small percentage who do not accept feedback, either because of their own insecurity, their lack of trust in the feedback methodology, or lack of trust in their organisation.

1. People need to thoroughly understand how the 360 Degree Feedback is gathered and how the resulting scores are calculated. This is especially important for analytically-minded people who will tend to believe it more if they can understand the numbers!  Guaranteeing confidentiality is also important.

2. Each individual getting 360 degree feedback also needs to make a choice as to what in the feedback is important and relevant to them, and why, so help from their coach or mentor is important.

3.  Acceptance comes only after shock, denial, then questioning and understanding, very much like the response cycle to bad news or events.  You need to give people time to get through this cycle.  (Click here to download our guide on Helping People to Deal with Difficult Feedback).

4. Finally there is the ultimate choice: if the person totally refuses to listen to feedback and agree to change (’that’s just the way I am’), as an organisation, are you willing to continue to support and promote that person, and put them in charge of other people, despite their abrasive behaviour? That’s where organisations usually have the greatest difficulty, particularly if someone is a good revenue earner…

This article in today’s Guardian appears to show evidence that people work better in teams.

However, in an article in Harvard Business Review called ‘Why Teams Don’t Work, the authors debunk the myth that teams are the answer to every performance issue, and that teams always perform better than individuals working on their own.  They question the whole idea of ‘team dynamic’ as an absolute, consistently positive force.

Common misconceptions about teams include:

Teams that work harmoniously together are better and more productive than teams that don’t: there is more evidence that teams who are more productive, and are recognised as a team for it,  get on better together because of their good performance, not the other way around.

Teams work better because the work is shared out, and the bigger the team, the more effective: unfortunately this is cancelled out by the difficulty of keeping the right people informed as the team gets bigger, so big teams are not necessarily a good idea.

Teams should be renewed constantly to encourage creativity: again, this is not proven by evidence. In fact the more productive teams were those who had been together for a number of years and understood each other deeply.  Many teams are never given enough time to settle in and learn to work together.

In a research paper called ‘The Romance of Teams’, (Allen and Hecht, 2004), the authors conclude that the reasons people like working in teams are mainly because of the social interaction, because

1. team members feel good being part of a successful team
2. people also feel somewhat ’sheltered’ in a team, and
3. they can blame someone else on the team if something goes wrong!

To ask a question or share ideas about team performance and how you can measure it, go to
http://tracksurveys.co.uk/AskTrack.aspx

 For more information, articles and resources on teams and team performance measurement, contact me on jo.ayoubi@tracksurveys.co.uk
or go to:
http://www.tracksurveys.co.uk/TeamWorks.aspx

In this interview with the CEO of a high tech corporation in the states, she makes a number of interesting observations about her development as a leader.  In summary, the key messages are:

- She has learned not to try to do everything herself
- She listened to feedback and learned to modify the way she dealt with certain issues
- She realised from her 360 reviews that sometimes you don’t realise the messages you’re giving to people in the organisation and that those messages might not be what you intended.
-Sometimes strengths can be overdone and become weaknesses, so she has learned to be aware of that and act accordingly.

Follow the discussion here and on UK Training Zone.

On my Training Zone blog I talk about the reasons why 360 Degree Feedback is an ideal tool to support feedback, irrespective of individual styles or preferences.

In this interesting blog, the author asks some fundamental questions about the soundness of 360 Degree Feedback, whether people are honest when giving 360 Feedback, and how to deal with potential manipulation of the results by mutual back-scratching.

Here’s my response:

These are great questions, and ones our clients often ask us. 

As a starting point, your questions assume that 360 Degree Feedback:
- is given face to face
- consists of unstructured comments
made by colleages
- shows who has made what comments
- and that there is no guidance or control over the process.

However, key attributes of successful and properly run 360 Degree Feedback are:

- It is completed in confidence,securely and online by the person giving the feedback. The individual also self assesses and gets to compare this with feedback received
- The person receiving the feedback is scored on a set of consistent criteria - the scores are collated to give a picture of their areas of strength and weaknesses, not to show scores from individual colleagues
- Comments can also be included, but these are anonymous (although they
can be identified if they relate to a specific situtation)
- Is carefully communicated and managed, not left up to people to use (or misuse) in an unstructured way.

So in answer to your questions, and assuming that your 360 is set up and managed
correctly, as I’ve outlined:

1. Yes, the scores should be an honest reflection because they cannot be traced back to the feedback-giver.

2. The subordinate will not be the only person giving their boss feedback, and the
feedback will be grouped with that of other people, so their generosity (or lack of it)will not be identified!

3. By obtaining feedback from all levels (not just friends, but also senior colleagues, team workers and the people who report to you - hence 360 Degrees), the manipulation of the system in the way you have described cannot work. 
And if it does get past  the monitoring system, a feedbackreport that only includes friends’ feedback would be instantly recognisable as invalid and could not be used for any purpose. (In any event 360 should never be used as the sole contributor to the annual salary review).

4. As an HR manager you should be in the forefront of using feedback to improve your performance and get better at your job.  Again, if you only receive low scores from one client, and the rest are high, there may be a relatoinship issue with that client (rather
than a performance issue) which you need to address. Thus the 360 can pick up other issues that need to be dealt with.

5. Other methods include: face to face feedback on a day to day basis
(’how am I doing?’ ‘what can I do better?’), clear, goals and targets, scorecards,
team meetings…

For documents on giving great feedback, things to avoid when giving feedback, and helpingpeople through difficult feedback, go to
www.tracksurveys.co.uk and download.

We’ve just set up Ask Track - a great online site that allows you to ask and share questions about 360 Degree Feedback, Appraisal and Performance management. Our expert team will email you the answer to your question, and publish the question and answer online (without publishing your name or organisation details).  You’ll also be able to view questions that other people have asked, together with our answers.

You can even give us your answers if you think they’re better than ours!  Just go to: Ask Track and type in your question.

In this article the reader wonders how he can coax his manager to give him feedback.

Ah the reluctant feedback giver - we all know a few of these!

Our suggestion is: don’t ask for ‘feedback’! 

Some people have an aversion to what they think are management fads, or ‘management speak’, and ‘feedback’ may be one of these.  Other may even feel threatened by the whole idea as they may not be sure how to do it right.  It can be just as frightening to be asked for feedback as to get it!”

So what about just saying:

‘How am I doing’? ‘Is there anything I can do better, or differently?’ What would you like me to do more of?’ .  Even better, refer the question to the work you’re doing at the moment, so the feedback can be really specific: ‘What can I do better on the XYZ project?’

Another good approach is Start, Stop, Continue…..’What would you like me Start doing, Stop doing, Continue doing?’ . This lets the manager off the hook if they are a bit reluctant or nervous, and allows them to focus on real actions, behaviours and examples from work, projects, clients etc ….making the whole experience a better one for the individual and their manager.

Go to www.tracksurveys.co.uk and download more tips for How to Give Great Feedback, and What not to when Giving Great Feedback.