360 Assessement for leaders

It provides the participant and the people providing feedback, confidence that an unbiased and neutral organization is facilitating the process. Having confidence in the process provides better opportunities for honest feedback.

360-degree assessment (also known as multi-source or multi-rater feedback assessment) is a way for individuals to understand their personal strengths and areas of development, using the constructive feedback of others who work with them the most. It’s an anonymous online feedback form that takes about 10 minutes to complete.

It’s a development tool for individual leaders and employees – the combined insights from the collective feedback process are then used to inform an individual’s development plan.

360 Development is multi-rater feedback. This means it should be given by those colleagues who work directly with the person who’s receiving the feedback. This can include supervisors, colleagues, direct reports, board members, and community partners.

It’s also best practice to choose a reviewer (HR Person/Board Member) who has worked with the subject for six months or more. They will have a more consistent experience of the employee’s behaviour, by working with them and seeing them experience various scenarios at work.

 Feedback must be:

• Seen as an investment in an employee through feedback from peers, direct reports, managers, leaders, the board and community partners.

• An authentic review (not a political tool) for developing your employees and not evaluating them

• Distributed via an anonymous online feedback form

Feedback must NOT be:

• Used for performance appraisal.

• A tool that determines employees’ pay, performance, or promotion.

When done effectively, the benefits of a 360 include:

• Increased employee self-awareness

• A balanced view of the organization as well as the broader growth and development strategy and expectations

• Identifying strengths and areas of development in employee skill sets to build on or improve upon them

• Building a culture of feedback that allows for open communication

• Ensuring successful succession planning;

• Generating an optimal flow of identifying training opportunities

When done poorly, some of the downsides of 360-degree feedback include:

• Fear of retribution or anxiety over poor working relationships in the future

• People feeling overburdened by the workload involved

• Heavy costs of getting consultants to facilitate the process

• Lack of follow-up leads to apathy around the effectiveness of the process