In this article by by Lee Gardenswartz, Jorge Cherbosque, and Anita Rowe on the ASTD site, the writers provide a great checklist for helping teams to develop emotional intelligence and therefore perform better.
"Teach respectful ways to provide feedback, and encourage openness by institutionalizing 360-degree feedback and using feedback sessions as a tool for development".
As well as individual feedback, the team can obtain feedback about what they're like to work with as a group, i.e. how responsive, creative, communicative and co-operative they are. They may well find that individuals and other teams have some unexpected (and constructive) observations to make. Teams, just like individuals, develop habits and ways of doing things that aren't always necessarily useful or productive, but if no-one ever tells them, how will they know what to change?
For more information on Track's Team Works tool, click here.
The Problem with 360 Feedback
The article above presents a good challenge to using 360 Degree Feedback as a means of communication in an organisation. I would respond as follows:
- Face-to-face communication, with immediate and relevant feedback is of course the best way to manage individuals and teams. 360 Degree Feedback should never be used as a substitute for this, or as a way of avoiding difficult conversations.
- 360 Degree Feedback is part of a wider set of activities that helps people to understand their own skills and how they can grow as managers or leaders in their organisation. That's why generic 360s are less useful that those that are customised and aligned with the organisation's goals.
- Even in organisations with good face-to-face feedback, we find that individuals who recieve 360 Degree feedback are often surprised at the perceptions of others about them, and that this can lead to an increased awareness of their day to day behaviours and their impact on other people.
- And in an ideal world, of course I should tell my boss when I'm not happy that she chews me out in front of the rest of the team...and she should accept that feedback directly from me and without any reprecussions, but we know that's not always the case. And maybe my boss needs to understand that a number of other people might feel that way? 360 is a great way of getting that message across.
Used correctly and in the right situations, 360 Degree Feedback is a very powerful tool for development; please don't throw the 360 Degree Feedback baby out with the bathwater!
Tim Wright's article Why Feedback Matters to Employee Engagement talks about how successful feedback increases communication in the organisation and helps employees to feel involved.
I would agree, and add that, for Feedback to be really effective:
- The content needs to be right i.e. what are we asking and what exactly is the feedback telling us
- The way it's positioned is cricital, i.e. it's not just another thing that HR want us to do, but something that is going to be takent notice of will make change happen
The bigger message from individual or group feedback is that you are valued as an employee and that the organisation cares about talking to you and listening to you.
Of course, don't do what some people (and organisations) do and scupper that great message by asking for feedback and then
1. Disagreeing with it ("yes, but there's an reason why I/we do it like that..")
2. Listening but not hearing ("thanks for the feedback", then nothing apparently changes)
3. Using the feedback as a stick to beat people up with, or
4. Only hearing and acting on the negative stuff - positive feedback is just as important..we can always do more of the good stuff!
The Struggling Manager says: 'How do you succeed with 360 degree reviews? Easy. Never do them'.....Here's my response...
Hi Stuggling Manager
Great article. I love it so much that I've tagged it and linked to it from my blog. It's great (and I'm not being ironic) because it says everything that people say who don't like 360 Degree Feedback, or who've had a bad experience with 360, or whose organisation does 360 very badly. All of which are valid points of view.
Can I ask you a couple of questions though...?
- Who told you that 360 is a scientific survey? Whoever they were, they lied! As a 360 practitioner I can tell you that 360 is a subjective, observational exercise, not a scientific measurement or a personality test.The idea is that you get some observations, on the same behaviours, from a number of different people. If you start hearing the same message from a number of different people, it might be worth taking some notice...
- As you say, asking someone 'what kind of a manager' John is, is completely unhelpful. Of course you're going to get unfocused generalisations and opinions based on people's theories about personality. That's why good 360 doesn't ask you those kinds of questions.
- "Criticism never is useful"..Really?! Have you never heard something about yourself from a friend or family member that made you do something different?
- How much politicking have you seen around 360? OK, there could be some, but do people really have the time to manipulate feedback to such an extent as to make a difference? In my experience this is rare- of course if you use 360 to determine salaries and promotions that might be the case, but you really shouldn't use it to do that - very dangerous.
- I so agree with you about jargon, 'thinking out of the box' and the rest of it. That's why 360 questions have to be worded clearly, focus on actual, observable behaviours, and not woolly or managment-speak. As well as structured questions, a good 360 will also have a section that allows you to give some clear behavioural feedback, just like your great examples. We use, for example, things you would like your colleague to start, stop and continue doing.
- "360 degree reviews exist only because effective management is not there to fill the void". What kind of managers have you had, Struggling Manager? And yes, managers should be giving you feedback, but what about all the other people you work with? Don't you think that they might be able to give you some helpful insights too, that they might prefer not to tell you face to face (e.g. tells jokes when others are starting to appear frustrated)?
You see I think when you say 360 feedback, you really mean bad 360 feedback. Am I right? Hope to hear from you!
Very best regards
Jo
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:
In this article the writer talks about the gift of feedback and its benefits; I've added the following comments:
Great article, but I would put it this way: "You heard. You listened. You said Thanks. You responded". Saying thanks and acknowledging feedback from a colleague means that you have listened to what they've said, and that you value the feedback. It helps build your relationship with that colleague and encourages them to come to you with more great feedback in the future.
For an individual, receiving feedback from a number of different people and levels in the organisation is fairer than being subject to just one person’s judgement.
Therefore 360 Degree Feedback:
- Provides a formal structure for the natural observation process
- Helps to ensure that everyone involved is being judged on the same criteria
- Encourages and supports open discussion between employees, their managers and their colleagues
- Identifies areas of strength, and areas for growth and development
- Increases self-awareness and insight
- Develops people’s observation and feedback skills
- Counterbalances pure results based performance – it helps with the discussion around what gets done, but also how it gets done
- Encourages a culture where giving and receiving feedback is the norm
Next time: when, and when not, to use 360 Degree Feedback
This month I thought I would go back to some basic information about 360 Degree Feedback, what it does, how it works, when to use it (and when not to!). Here goes!
- 360 Degree Feedback, also known as multi-level or multi-source feedback, is a process whereby feedback on an individual’s behaviour and effectiveness is obtained, in a structured way, from a number of colleagues with whom that individual has worked, and with whom they have different working relationships. The people providing feedback to an individual can include:
- direct reports (people who report directly to that person, still called 'subordinates' in some organisations)
- peers (people at the same level in the organisation to the person receiving the feedback, or who have similar roles)
- managers (people to whom the individual reports, formally or otherwise, still referred to as a 'boss' in some organisations
- customers
- suppliers
- coaches/mentors
Feedback is provided on a consistent set of criteria through responding to a set of statements or questions, generally using a rating scale, for example:"Person displays this behaviour"
- Always
- Frequently
- Sometimes
- Never
There is also an opportunity to provide free-style comments and examples to support the ratings given. Normally, the individual also completes a Self-review which allows them to reflect on, and assess, their own performance by responding to the same statements or questions as the people giving them feedback. Statements or questions are normally related to key behaviours and skills which are valued in the organisation. 360 Degree Feedback is not an opinion survey – it should be based on observable behaviours and concrete examples and as such can be a valuable tool. However, ultimately it is still a subjective exercise and needs to be used accordingly. It is not a psychometric test.
Next in this series: The benefits of 360 Degree Feedback
In this article on Training Zone, David Cooper of Lumus sets out how 360 Degree Feedback can be used in different ways to help teams work together and perform better. I would add:
- Tailoring of the standard question sets is critical - I'm very much in agreement with that.
- There are other team performance models that can be used to construct a feedback framework for teams; for example, leadership, team process, culture and relationships.
- Finally, our TeamWorks survey is able to separate out the team leader's scores from those of the rest of the team - this is important as an indication of how well the team leader's perceptions are aligned with those of the rest of the team.