360 Degree Feedback

Now imagine your boss was Simon and he was the only person giving you feedback on your performance! That’s the situation many people faced in the early days of performance management. It’s still how it happens in many organizations today.

360 degree feedback, sometimes referred to as multi-rater appraisals or multi-source feedback is a tool designed to address this problem. By gaining feedback from peers, reports, managers and even internal and external customers a person gets a valuable insight into how others see them.

Peers, reports and customers are all exposed to a person in different ways. Feedback is no longer one dimensional. This multi-dimensional approach often provides great insights into how different groups see a person. For example leaders really need to understand how their reports see them, just as much as they need to understand how their own boss sees them.

Just as different groups such as peers, reports, managers and customers can see a person in different ways, they are also often very consistent in how they perceive a person. This is powerful because the person receiving the feedback can be more sure of the accuracy than if the feedback comes from one person. This is a much greater motivator for change – one person’s feedback can be easily discounted, many people saying the same thing can’t be easily discounted.

The results of 360 degree feedback often give a person insight into areas they didn’t realize were strengths. It also reinforces a person’s understanding of areas they did recognize as strengths in themselves. Having the knowledge that others recognize their strengths builds confidence. Just as important as understanding their strengths, a person is also made aware of their golden opportunities for improvement. This ability to see themselves as others see them is of immeasurable value.

Perceptions matter

The other area of performance management that 360 degree feedback addresses are behavioral skills such as communication, team work and leadership. How do you go about determining how well a person communicates or how good a leader they are? This can be a difficult thing to do, particularly because one person’s assessment of another can be highly subjective.

360 degree feedback addresses this by using a range of people who are very familiar with a person. The importance here is that if a group of people perceive a person in a similar way, that perception matters.

For example, if a person’s manager perceives them as a good leader, but the person’s reports do not, there is an issue. This is a golden opportunity to find out why the reports don’t perceive the person as a good leader. It could be that people aren’t given recognition for their contributions. Improving this would ensure the team’s performance and lead to higher retention rates.

Tips for successful 360 degree feedback...

360 degree feedback is a highly effective process that can be successfully implemented in your organization.  11 essential guidelines for making it work:

• Involve your employees in the design of your 360 degree feedback system.
• Develop any competencies and questionnaires with careful consideration and much feedback from the people who will use it and from experts in the field.
• Develop a system that won't require employees to spend excessive time learning and then using.
• Remember that you can use a multi-rater approach that doesn’t include all groups if needed.  For example, starting with just manager and peer feedback.
• Run a small trial before implementing across the organization.
• Make changes to your system based on the feedback from your trial.
• Educate everyone in the organization.
• Implement your system.
• Ensure confidentiality is maintained.
• Monitor the success of your system and modify appropriately.
• Ensure that the emphasis in your 360 process is to focus on performance strengths rather than weaknesses. **An emphasis on weaknesses can have a negative impact on performance of up to 10.9%. An emphasis on strengths can have an impact on performance of up to 36.4%.