360 Feedback Blog

In this article in the Guardian, the writer lists the key areas that, for her, are critical to employee engagement.

1. Consultation - yes! This is critical for engagement. This includes any forum where employees can voice their views honestly and without fear,  including engagement surveys, 360 degree feedback, ideas and innovation groups, and even Ask the Boss forums!

2. I would add Line Manager skills:
To maintain engagement, especially in tough times, line managers must have the skills to manage their teams, give feedback, coach people as they work, delegate effectively, deal with poor
performance, and as much as possible, give people tasks that are going to hold their attention and make a difference.

While it may not always be possible to involve people in
special projects, a great manager,with some enthusiasm and basic managementskills, can make even the most menial task feel like it’s worth doing. 

This is a summary of some research that’s been done on how people feel at different levels of
hierarchy, how it affects their behaviour, and how they can make a change.

- How changing your posture can stimulate or reduce the hormones that make you feel powerful
or powerless
This was something we learned many years ago with NLP but now it’s proven to be physiological.

- How we judge the people we work with: there’s a balance between how much we like them
(warmth) and how well they do their job.  The article emphasises the importance of the relationship; the danger is that too much warmth can cloud our judgement of someone’s performance, i.e. the halo effect, or too little empathy and the horns effect.

- “WhatPeople often are more influenced by how they feel about you than by what you’re saying.
It’s not about the content of the message, but how you’re communicating it”.

So our emotions can hijack us and this can affect how we judge our colleagues.  Building our emotional awareness and getting feedback on our behaviours, using tools such as 360 Degree Feedback, is essential.

In this article, the writer states that 360 Degree Feedback should never be anonymous.  I disagree!

Whilst, ideally, we should all be mature enough to accept feedback directly from our colleagues - active acceptance is a lovely idea but somewhat unrealistic. 

As a 360 Degree Feedback designer, practitioner and coach, I know that it takes at least a couple of years to build employees’ and managers’ confidence in their organisation’s feedback processes - as well as in the the broader culture of management, accountability, and whether people get help or get pulped when they make a mistake.

I fear the writer is missing the big point of 360 Degree Feedback here: the point of 360 is not to avoid feedback from your colleagues (although I admit that it’s sometimes used like this). 

The point about 360 Degree Feedback is that it collates trends and consistent messages that are coming from many people, not just one, and therefore can provide information that one person’s experience can’t.  While individual comments and scores are useful, we coach people to look at consistent messages from the 360, not outliers. 

Therefore anonymity does not reduce the value of the feedback, and actually encourages people who would not have given feedback to do so.

In this article in Training Zone the author discusses the way technology is changing the way individuals learn, develop and manage their careers.

Individual learning and development does indeed translate into ubiquitous performance support, and e-learning and other online forms of learning are brilliant for doing this.

Whilst the individual is certainly responsible for building their personal brand and their skill set, organisations that employ individuals need (now more than ever) to link the performance support they provide to the skills and performance that the organisation needs to succeed.

For the organisation to provide the right performance support, it needs to:

1. Identify the critical skills the organisation needs in order to achieve its strategic goals
2. Identify who the key people are who are going to deliver those goals - These are not necessarily the top
teams - a study by a global courier company found that the key people for them were their delivery drivers
3. Measure the strengths of those critical skills in the key people or group
4. Concentrate on filling the critical skills or competence gaps in the key groups (using both development activities and on the job experience)
5. Consistently and regularly measure the results and refine the training and refine development activities based on those results.

For more information on online tools and support for talent management, visit
www.tracksurveys.co.uk

Most Employers Are Ineffective at Supporting New Managers
A study by i4cp finds that most organizations don’t provide any measurement when transitioning employees to management for the first time. 

This has the effect of:

• Leaving new managers floundering and performing poorly

• The organisation with no data on their new managers’ current or anticipated skills

• No development or talent management plan

Scary.

But what’s even more scary is when this effect is multiplied around the organisation, with managers transitioning into new senior manager roles, and senior management moving up to board level. 

We would apply the 4 recommendations in the article to people at all critical transitions in their careers and their roles - give them clarity on what’s expected of them, evaluation and measurement before they begin their new role and regularly after that, 360s for a rounded assessment of management and leadership skills, and lots of training and support.

 Feedback can be learnt

Another point to remember is that vague, feelgood feedback doesn’t really help either.  It’s much more motivating to hear ‘Thanks for updating me on XYZ. Its really useful for me to know whats happening’, than ‘You’re a great guy, keep up the good work’.
Vague positive feedback, because its not specific, is unhelpful and can also sound insincere.

This article has some compelling reasons why we need to know our weaknesses and why we need to get feedback from people around us.

Our brains are designed to overlook our own flaws and weaknesses and to feel more confident about our skills than is realistic (how many people do you know who think they’re a much better driver than average?…I know an awful lot of them, inculding myself!).   This being the case, feedback from others on specific areas and behaviours is essential if we are going to improve, whether in work or elsewhere. 

 So for organisations, making sure that people get structured, focused 360 Degree Feedback is even more important, because the success and maybe even the survival of the organisation depends on people performing at their best, and knowing where they need to improve.

If you’ve been following The Apprentice, as we have been here at Track, you’ll remember the interview episode (Episode 11).  I was struck by how often the candidates talked about the feedback they had received throughout the series, how they felt, and what they were going to do about it. 

• You’ve got to be tough-skinned and brave to hear that…
• Some people have said that I rub people up the wrong way…
  I find that extraordinary because I never thought that I did!
• I’ve learned how my personality and the way I communicate…
  has an impact on other people
• It’s a painful experience for someone to hold up a
  ‘professional mirror’ to you and say ‘this is what I see’
  and it’s something you see differently,  but it’s actually
  one of the most liberating things you can do… because I’ve
  got the opportunity to transform that..
• The hardest part about today to was to really see (myself)
  through someone else’s eyes…

People who are thinking about starting 360 Degree Feedback in their organisation, or who are looking at improving how they run their current process, often ask “what are the key things you need to get right for successful 360 Degree Feedback?”, “how can I make 360 Degree Feedback really work for us?”, or “how can I use 360 Degree Feedback really effectively to get visible and measureable change in our organisation?”.

1. Be very clear at the start on what you’re going to get out of the 360 Degree Feedback process.
   Is it going to help people identify their learning needs for leadership and management development? Is it going to be part of Appraisal process? Will it be used to manage problems with performance, if these arise? Will it affect employees’ salaries, promotions, career prospects? Will it support your Talent Management activities?
   Read about how Fujitsu Services use 360 Degree Feedback to support the Fujitsu Management Academy.
   
2. What is the 360 Degree Feedback going to measure?
   Be very clear on what you need, and what you’re going, to measure. For instance, if the 360 Degree Feedback is going to measure leadership or management skills, make sure that the 360 statements are specifically asking about those management skills that are important and relevant for your company. It can also be a useful tool for assessing Return on Investment: if you want to use it for this, make sure you’re linking the questions with your organisation’s revenue or cost saving goals.
   Read here about how a leading charity uses 360 Degree Feedback as part of its Management Development programme.
3. Don’t use competency framework statements as your 360 Degree Feedback statements - your 360 Degree Feedback statements need to relate to very specific, observable behaviours. Competency framework statements can sometimes be vague or general, for example, instead of saying:
   “Strives to continually exceed customer service expectations” (hint: how can you tell if someone strives or not?), we would suggest breaking down the competence into specific, demonstrable actions, such as “Proactively contacts the client on a regular basis”, “Finds ways of exceeding what we currently do to meet customer’s expectations” or “Obtains and shares customer feedback to ensure we are exceeding customers’ expectations”.
4. Be wary of generic ‘leadership’ or ‘manager’ 360 Degree Feedback statements. Off-the-shelf statements or generic lists may be a useful place to start developing your 360 Degree Feedback statements, but employees and learners have been shown to have a very negative response to statements that sound ‘corporate’ and that don’t sound like they relate to their own organisation. Make sure you tailor your 360 Degree Feedback for your organisation; Feedback that’s intelligent and personalised is much more likely to be successful.
5. Don’t ask too many questions!
   We’ve worked with clients who started off wanting to ask over 150 questions in their 360 Degree Feedback - this is far too many.
   Think about how many learning points your employees can take on board at a time, and how many things they can focus on for change. Keep the 360 Degree Feedback focused on the key areas for change in your company. And think of the people who have to give feedback on more than one person!
   We have found that a good number of statements for successful 360 Degree Feedback is between 15 and 20.
6. Make sure your senior management or Board is fully supportive.
   Senior sponsorship and participation is very important if you are introducing 360 Degree Feedback into your organisation for the first time.
   Without visible support from the leaders in the business, your 360 Degree Feedback may end up as just another chore or tick-box exercise for the rest of the company.
7. Ensure that confidentiality is built into the 360 Degree Feedback process.
   By putting a few key steps in your 360 Degree Feedback process, you can ensure confidentiality and therefore help people to trust the process.
   Easy steps include requiring feedback from at least three colleagues, and make sure that the report randomises the scores and comments.
8. Keep the Reports Simple! Too many statistics, means, averages and graphs just end up confusing people and taking their focus off the key messages that the feedback is giving.
   The key things that employees need to know from their 360 Degree Feedback are 1) whether their Self-reviews are consistent with their colleagues’ feedback 2) whether feedback from different colleague groups is consistent 3) what areas are strengths and 4) what they need to do better or differently.
9. Make sure that people understand how to read and interpret their 360 Degree Feedback reports. Until they get used to the concept of 360 Degree Feedback, employees need to be briefed and helped through the process and the information coming out of it. Provide one-to-one support for people who have difficulty understanding their feedback or knowing what to do next (or provide coaching and training for managers on how to use 360 Degree Feedback effectively with their people).
10. Ensure consistency across your organisation by using a robust, online delivery tool that is simple for employees and managers to use. If you have employees overseas, it’s well worth investing a little extra in multi-language online 360 Degree Feedback. As well as giving your project consistency, credibility and a high profile, overseas staff will be much more enthusiastic and willing to buy-in to 360 Degree Feedback in their own language. Read more about Empower 360 Degree Feedback here.

All of us here at Track Surveys are really excited about the launch of our new Online Training Management toolkit. Consolidating our current products with brilliant new online tools will give our customers the ability to manage all their Training and Development activities quickly and cost-effectively over the web.

It’s like having an in-house Training and Development assistant, without the overheads!

Track already supplies leading-edge online tools that support Training and will make your Development programmes really stick, (Empower 360, Team Works). We’ve also developed a tailored learning portal – Learning Station - for each employee, where they can find the right tools and resources for them, at the click of a button.

This makes all your training and development easily accessible by everyone, in one place, and ensures that all your programmes get a high profile all round the organisation.

Another tool that we’ve been upgrading - Talent Map - lets managers and their teams assess their current skills and training needs, relative to the job that they do, then creates a personalised online development plan for each person which can be managed and monitored online.

This means that you have a current, up-to-date record of everyone’s training, allowing you to monitor your talented staff as they progress through their career.

And if you’re responsible for training in your organisation, would it make life easier if people could book themselves on training courses with an in-house, easy-to-use online tool..? And would you like to be able to manage availability of training courses, budgets, approvals and attendance? If so, Track’s brilliant new online booking tool, Click and Book, is now available.

So now you can control and significantly reduce your training administration costs, all in one go. Contact us for a demo.

And of course, our classic, professional survey tool, Climate Check, is there to help you assess what’s going on in your organisation. From small departmental pulse surveys to global, multi-language Employee Opinion Surveys, we will tailor Climate Check around your needs, and fully support the survey process for you.

So you get the information you need about what’s happening, without any of the hassle of doing it yourself.

And, did we mention that all Track tools are built with a multi-language function? This makes them ideal for cross-border and international activities, providing consistency and credibility for all your training and development across the world.

So contact us now for a chat. We’d love to hear from you.

About Track’s Online Toolkit: http://www.tracksurveys.co.uk/tools.html

About Track Surveys: http://www.tracksurveys.co.uk/about-us.html