360 Feedback Blog

This blog by Robert Sutton describes the mindset of a great boss. 

What stuck me was No 1 on the list: “I have a flawed and incomplete understanding of what it’s like to work for me”.  What Robert Sutton is saying is that, as a great boss, you will already know that your view of yourself and your skills is not accurate.

The next step is then getting some evidence that gives you a better picture of how your colleagues rate you, especially the people who work for you.  The best evidence-based tool for doing this is 360 Degree Feedback, as it allows your colleagues to give structured feedback anonymously and honestly.  Because it’s structured, it means you’re getting feedback on the same things, so you can compare the feedback from different people and compare like with like.

At the same time, you can also get examples that people provide in free text, which will help to put the scores into context and give you specific advice on what you can do better. 

This article from UK Training Zone talks about the mistakes we can make when trying to judge potential for future leadership.

I especially recognise the ‘I can judge potential by having a coffee with them’ as we all think we are better judges of potential (and other things) than we really are!

It’s especially important if we are going to treat people fairly and equitably that we have some very clear definitions of  what we want the ‘potential’ to be - I have been in situations where ‘potential’ is a handy way of promoting someone whose face fits, and who is liked by the boss, rather than someone who will be able to step up to a new role in the future. 

Therefore some systematic definition of skills (job description, 360 Degree Feedback) is important - testing, feedback and profiling are certainly not going to guarantee a perfect candidate, but  they will help to inform and support decisions that have to be made.  After all, what gets measured, gets managed!

In this short video clip from BBC Radio 4’s The Bottom Line, Helen Alexander, President of the CBI, explains that getting great people working in your organisation is critical to your success as a leader or senior partner.

To make sure that you do have those great people, and that they are continually improving and growing, it’s important to regularly assess and measure their skills through 360 Degree Feedback - especially in those skills that are important at senior levels: Leadership, Strategy, Communication and People Development.

This is a great list for effective Objective-Setting.

A key part of objective setting is to ensure that people have the right skills to be able to achieve their objectives - 360 Degree Feedback is a great way to do this.

This is a great blog from the ever-refreshing Peter Honey in People Management yesterday.  It’s about the recent claim that every school needs an incompetent teacher so that kids can learn how to deal with incompetence in the future.

If you take Peter’s path to its logical conclustion, we would also need a certain level of incompetence in the workplace to give people new and useful learning experiences in how to deal with incompetent managers and colleagues.  This would then require us to assess for Incompetence in the annual appraisal, ensure that new recruits had a certain level of Incompetence and inlcude Incompetence in leadership and senior manager development programmes!  

I like this reverse thinking so much, I’m even thinking of developing a Incompetency 360 Degree Feedback - any ideas of what you might like to include?!

Here are some thoughts on giving feedback from our 360 Degree Feedback discussion group on UK Training Zone.

In this poll, reported in the US, 68%  of managers believe that looks have an impact on the way managers rate job perforamance.

If this survey is to be believed, Attractiveness comes only below Experience and Confidence in recruitment situations, and trumps Education and a sense of Humour - apparently known as the ‘Hottie’ effect!  The author advises those of us who are non-Hotties not to despair but to make the best of whatever assets we have…..

On a more serious note though, how can we overcome these biases which appear to be inbuilt in most of us and can make a big difference in how employees’ performance is judged?

The first answer is Awareness: once we’re aware of our biases, our assumptions and things like the Halo and Horns Effect, we can start to adjust our opinions of that person and inject some objectivity into our appraisal of their performance  (for more on Halo/Horns, go to 360 Degree Feedback and download our paper entitled What Not To Do When Giving Great Feedback ).

Second is judging people on what they have actually done, so setting SMART objectives is critical (Specific, Measurable, Action-based, Relevant and Timely).

Third is making sure that your own judgement is not the only one that counts….tools like 360 Degree Feedback are very important in ensuring that a number of different people have input into the appraisal, and that there is consistency in assessing performance, especially in hard to measure areas like management, leadership and team working.

This article talks about the negative effect that feedback, including 360 Degree Feedback, can have on the recipient when insensitively given.

In addition, we always advise people who are going to give face to face or anonymous feedback to:

- Say out loud what you think you’re going to say to the person; you will know pretty quickly whether it’s going to come across as negative and critical
- Ask yourself how you would feel if someone gave you the feedback you are going to give the recipient - put your own name in the sentences….
- Keep practicising until you find the right words, then use these in the feedback
- Be careful that you are not putting a halo around everything the person does, just because you like them, or because you think they’re a bit like you
- On the other hand, don’t have a downer on them because of one thing they did a long time ago, or because they disagreed with you

As this article says, being a leader, and staying there, is tough, and it’s getting tougher.

The author’s tips for surviving as a leader include:

• Know yourself
• Play to your strengths, and
• Avoid your derailers (that is, the behaviours that take you off-track and jeopardise your success)

That’s why it’s absolutely critical for all leaders, whether they’re just starting to lead a team, or they’re leading a big corporation, to use 360 Degree Feedback and coaching to get a really clear picture of their strengths and weaknesses, and how other people see them.

We love this concise business case for measuring and managing performance: in this clip from Radio 4’s The Bottom Line, Jacqueline de Rojas,  UK and Ireland vice-president of software company, McAfee, talks about the importance of ‘Inspecting what you expect’ - setting performance goals and regularly measuring against them.  

360 Degree Feedback, Appraisal and Performance Review are just as important for teams as they are for individual employees.