360 Feedback – Start off the right way!
By Ian Hirst, Greenbank CEO
An invaluable checklist to make sure your 360 projects start of in a positive way and deliver the results you are looking for
A 360-degree feedback project is a big investment – in terms of money, time & energy and reputation. When it works well the results really justify the investment, but when things go wrong, it can not only be demotivating, but also damage the reputation of the 360-feedback process for a considerable time.
Having worked with 360 surveys over the last 30 years we have distilled some of the tips and hints that will help make sure that your next 360 feedback project delivers the best possible results for everyone!
Before - During – After
When planning a 360 project, it is easy to focus solely on the 360-degree survey itself. Of course, we do believe that this is important and there are some good, bad and downright ugly 360 feedback instruments around, but the survey does not sit in a vacuum. What you do before and after the survey has been completed is probably even more important.
In this blog therefore, we suggest the top 7 things to focus on before your survey is launched…..
1. Who sees the reports
Pin down the underlying reason for conducting the survey – is it purely for individual development or is it part of your performance appraisal, talent management or assessment process?
It is important to be sure of this from the outset. A real-life example of when this did not happen – not from one of our own projects I hasten to say – had damaging consequences….
In our own 360o projects, we therefore always encourage this clarity – the simple question “Who gets to see an individual’s report?” is a useful question to ask early on.
If you want to include the participant’s manager or HR, then that might be OK – but it needs to be explicit during all communication – and we suggest in this case that the proposed list of ‘feedback-givers’ is vetted by a participant’s manager for balance – it’s a bit tempting to ask friendly colleagues who you know will give you good feedback if you know that others will see the report…..
So – there are many legitimate purposes for 360 feedback surveys – but everyone needs to be clear from the very start what that purpose is and then be prepared to stick to it.
A large group of managers in a major FTSE100 company signed up to a 360o survey which was positioned as “developmental” and they were initially told that the reports would only be seen by the individuals concerned – and their coach on a subsequent workshop. However, once the feedback started to come through, senior management felt that the information produced would be ‘too valuable to waste’ and wanted access to it for identifying high potentials.
As a result, word quickly spread that the reports were no longer confidential, and they were being assessed. Subsequent managers going on the same programme made sure that they asked only their ‘friends’ for feedback – as they knew they would say only positive things and the whole process quickly became less than useful…
2. Clarity of next steps
Building on the first point – also get clarity on exactly how the information will be used. For instance:
- How will the feedback be offered to individuals? As part of a group training session, one to one etc…
- Will there be coaching or training support to help people make sense of the feedback and start to put together action plans for development?
- Is this a one-off survey or will it be repeated in the future with comparison reports?
3. Communication
Whether people are familiar or not with 360o feedback, they may be unsure of (or even suspicious) of both why it’s happening and the process.
We therefore always suggest spending time upfront explaining and communicating the process both to individuals and their feedback givers. This should include being clear about levels of confidentiality and anonymity for feedback gives who might be concerned that their feedback could be ‘used against them’
So top tips:
- Try and get face to face or virtual communication with participants before the survey is launched. Don’t assume that people have even heard about 360o
- Make sure that all your communication with feedback-givers reinforces the aims and goals of the project.
4. Standard or tailored survey?
There are upsides and down sides to both approaches which need to be carefully considered…
• A standard company 360 survey (re-using the same questions as a previous survey) can effectively reinforce competency frameworks and produce excellent data to compare different groups within the business and over time.
If this standard survey is also based on an external leadership framework it may also enable benchmarking with similar groups across organisations and geographies. Buying in a standard survey can save time and money as there are no development costs – although some providers of externally benchmarked surveys may charge a high premium for their product and services.
• A tailored approach (creating a new set of questions for a particular project) will allow you to focus on the specific behaviours and competences most relevant for the roles of the participants at this point in time. For instance, an organisation may well have an overall set of management competencies yet still want to offer something more specific to smaller groups with specialist skills e.g. lawyers, project managers or sales executives.
5. Standard or tailored survey?
This may seem obvious, but we have seen 360 surveys that are very confusing and make it both difficult for feedback givers and for participants to make sense of their feedback.
Our basic guidelines would be to:
– Focus questions on the positive (examples of positive behaviour). This is more likely to get an honest response – it is easier to consider what somebody could do more of rather than being asked if somebody is doing something wrong!
– Make sure the language will be understandable to your feedback givers. So avoid HR speak – this might mean translating ‘competency’ language in to more conversational language. This is especially true of course when feedback givers have different natural languages. There are multi-lingual 360o surveys available – and if you cannot access these at least make sure that you choose words that are more likely to be understood and avoid jargon or slang.
– Keep questions focused on one point – rather than including two different aspects in one question; for instance ‘reports are easy to understand and delivered on time’ could be confusing – is the question about clarity or timeliness?
– Focus questions on observable behaviour and actions
– Check them out with a sample of participants – are these questions which make sense to you? Would you be able to see this in others who you work with? Would feedback on this question be useful to you?
6. Selecting feedback givers
Individuals may need to be given some guidance on who to ask for feedback. This may vary but generally we would suggest considering the following…
• Who has a good working knowledge of you and have seen you in action?
• Whose feedback would you value?
• Choose a cross-section of feedback givers – not only your biggest fans but also those with whom you may have a frosty relationship
One additional thought….we usually find it useful for individuals to share and agree their list of feedback givers with their manager before finalising it.
7. A checklist for choosing the best Survey Tool
All the latest 360 tools are now web-based. However, there are a lot of options to choose from. We have seen – and worked with many and they are very varied. The features and options which you need will of course be key to your decision criteria but sometimes you may not know what you need – or indeed what is available. So here is our checklist for selecting the right 360 survey for you: Does the survey….
• Give you complete flexibility – unlimited feedback-givers, categories, questions etc?
• Give you the option to use your own competencies or choose from a library of questions as your starting-point?
• Allow users to give feedback ‘on the go’ via lap-top, mobile and tablet
• Allow for multi-lingual options
• Allow people to see the competencies that are deemed most important as well as the areas they score well/poorly in?
- Allow your questions to sit under a competency heading or to be randomised within the survey?
- Provide real data security? – System should be SSL certificated and automatically cleansed after 6 months, unless requested (e.g. if you want to re-run reports and show comparisons)
- Allow you to do regular reporting to highlight feedback progress?
- Automatically chase feedback-givers to encourage a high feedback-rate
- Allow you to brand the materials for your organisation or programme
- Provide a simple graphical display to allow reports to be easily understood
- Provide an overview page shows the important ‘Self’ v ‘Others’ comparison
- Allow comparison with peers for benchmarking
- Allow you to easily spot trends
- Summarise pages of key strengths and development areas to help turn the feedback into active development plans
- Actively encourage valuable textual feedback as well as numeric
- Provide an overall organisational report – top strengths and development areas for a full programme
A lot to consider, we know but your chose of 360-degree survey and the way that you set it up before the launch will be vital to the success of the project and being able to deliver tangible results to both individual and the business as a whole.
360 feedback is impossible to ignore and can have amazing benefits – If implemented correctly! To help you achieve this, we have developed an industry-leading 360 web tool – Navigator360.
Designed by coaches rather than IT experts, Navigator 360’s easy-to-understand reports are perfect for immediately turning feedback into performance plans and have been used by leading organisations such as Henley Business School and the Center for Creative Leadership.
It is completely flexible, available across multiple platforms and will shortly be multi-lingual – so is designed to fit your 360 needs, whatever they might be!
In addition, the latest version of Navigator360 is designed not only for our own direct clients but for HR departments to administer themselves and also for other training / coaching companies to use with their clients.
If you would like to know more about Navigator360 and how it can help your organisation succeed in delivering positive 360 feedback, then please visit our new web site, which will allow you to download sample reports and also provide you with more hints and tips about delivering a successful 360 project!
Alternatively, please contact us directly via [email protected] or +44 (0)7812 074359