Successful leadership throughout an organisation is critical to a business striving for success. 360 degree feedback aids in evaluating the current leadership structure in your business to ensure maximum productivity.

360 degree feedback offers a useful method in analysing and evaluating leadership infrastructure through the use of multiple feedback sessions with managers and employees. 360 degree feedback offers an organisation a greater understanding of the role leadership plays in performance in a management role and identifying strengths and weaknesses to improve.

Through 360 degree feedback organisations are able to identify their successful skills, areas and attributes, as well as ones they need to work on – helping them to become better equipped in today’s society and develop skills that will improve their productivity.

360 degree feedback can not only be used to gain feedback from organisations employees, but also to gain feedback about their employees. This helps an organisation to evaluate the relationship their employees have with their customers, and how they can strive to improve it.

360 degree feedback is important as it enables an organisation to gain a well rounded insight into their company, its strengths and areas for improvement.

Full Circle Feedback

Once the survey results are in is when the real work begins. Whilst the communication of results is crucial to the business, a major survey mistake that often occurs is the lack of follow-through action. After discussing the results with their team, many leaders fail to implement and follow-through action plan that supports team members, causing there to be no change from before the survey. This also causes team members to doubt their leader’s motivation and capacity to make a difference.

If a manager fails to communicate clear accountabilities and to conduct strict follow-up actions, chance, motivation and improvement are unlikely. Follow-up actions are crucial to a business’s success as if they are not conducted staff members will feel as if their opinion is not valued, become unmotivated, and lapse back into old behaviors. This not only damages productivity, performance and team morale, but also causes a loss in investment.

Through experience we have found that without a formal and structured process, and when left to participants and their managers, less than 30% of 360 degree feedback participants meet with their manager to discuss their feedback, planned actions and development.

If you want to improve your business through feedback surveys, it is crucial that you implement a follow-through action plan to enable communication, motivation and change throughout your business. A carefully designed implementation plan will note clear accountabilities and consequences – which are both essential elements of a follow-through action plan.

Full Circle Feedback

Although survey construction is important, they are not as important as the ultimate aim of the survey. Once the survey has been completed and you have received the results is when the real work begins. To ensure that the results are used to their maximum value, it is important that you communicate and take follow-up-actions as soon as possible once you have identified the survey results. If you wait too long to advise people on the results of the survey, it is almost just as bad as not having communicated anything in the first place!

By communicating the results soon after receiving them it enables you to celebrate your successes, discuss with others about the feedback, as well as take immediate actions to solve issues that appeared in the results. When identifying the information that needs to be communicated, it is important to consider the different communication needs of various stakeholder groups such as the executive team, general staff, the board, team leaders, parent companies and contractors.

By communicating your survey results as soon as results have been received, it shows participants that their input is valued, allows clarification, shows that there is direction and reinforces the survey aims. By clarifying your team goals through survey results, you motivate your team as well as making them feel valued.

It is important that you quickly address the survey results to your staff. We have found through experience that managers who don’t quickly address the results teams tend to continue to rely on the problematic processors, systems and behaviors that were found to be holding their business back in the survey.

When you are looking to rapidly communicate your survey results to your team, make sure that it is actually the right time to discuss the results. Making sure that the proper resources are supplied to increase staff’s understanding will increase your team’s motivation upon receiving the feedback, which is critical for achieving positive change.

By doing all this, you will ensure that your staff are engaged and also creates accountability across the business.

Full Circle Feedback

Sometimes due to budget constraints, managers are left to undertake in-house survey construction themselves. Although this may be cost effective, Managers often do not implement robust, quality surveys because they lack survey design experience or expertise.

Managers do not always have the foresight and expertise required in designing the right questions, and right kinds of questions, to ask. They fail to implement careful planning of surveys to ensure that they receive the appropriate information the business is looking for. It is crucial to consider how the results for each and every survey item may be used.

Managers who design their own surveys often create questions that are unclear, biased or that contain jargon respondents do not understand. If you ask unclear questions, you will receive unwanted, unclear results that are a waste of time and investment for your business.

The quality of the questions asked is not the only important thing when it comes to survey design, the survey questions that are not asked can be just as important! Surveys can easily lose their value when participants feel as though they are being made to answer the question in a specific aspect; this is something managers often accidently do when creating a survey by implying the ‘right’ answer.

Weak survey design means that it will fail to implement a robust and valid survey and can lead to participants to be confused or give irrelevant results.

Full Circle Feedback

Whilst the action itself of gathering feedback is crucial to a business, it is just as important that that feedback is gathered in the right context to ensure that the information gained is relevant and valuable to your businesses cause.

Leaders often fail to set the scene to participants for feedback initiatives. By failing to communicate your context, it may leave participants feeling uncomfortable providing honest and constructive feedback. This is unwanted as it means that the feedback process was a waste of time, and money, for the business.

When creating a context of feedback to participants you should:

• Clearly communicate the feedback aims and policy.
• Detail how the information will be used.
• Reassure the participant about issues such as anonymity and accountability.
• Insure that the feedback is done in a private and comfortable environment.

Anonymity and data confidentiality are important factors for concern when it comes to the feedback process. It is important that you communicate that all information will be anonymous and confidential as it ensures that participants will provide honest, valuable and constructive information.

If you’re managing surveys internally, there are often concerns about anonymity and participants may fear negative consequences. Because of this, they may be more inclined to say what they think management ‘wants’ to hear rather than what management ‘needs’ to hear. You want to ensure that this does not happen, as if it does the entire feedback process has been a wasted investment.

It is also important that managers communicate the “who, what, when, where, why and how” details to participants. It may seem like a very simple and obvious thing, but many people in leadership positions fail to explain this to their participants to ensure they understand ‘the big picture’.

You must also ensure that you are frequently encouraging and reinforcing to participants that their feedback is valuable and essential, otherwise participants may choose to not participate or forget – and without a sufficient amount of feedback responses the survey becomes less valid and useful.

Full Circle Feedback

When wanting to create effective, long-lasting change due to your 360 feedback, staff and employee or stakeholder and customer feedback surveys, you must ensure that there is an alignment between the senior leadership’s vision for change and the actions that must be put in place to ensure that that vision can be reality. If a senior leader is disengaged throughout the feedback process, the feedback results and recommendations can become disconnected from the actions taken by leaders to fix issues.

It is critical that people in senior leadership positions remain engaged and supportive throughout feedback initiatives as it ensures a lasting return on the investment (ROI). Participants need to feel comfortable and confident that their opinions are valued and acted upon by the leaders as it ensures you receive the most valuable feedback results. If a leader remains unengaged in the feedback process, it sends a negative message about the value of the exercise.

An example of poor senior leadership engagement may be:

“In a 360 degree feedback project, the CEO and senior executive group chose not to participate with the rest of the management group in the survey process. The results of the feedback process revealed challenges in managing performance, coaching and developing critical new skills for implementing change. The participating managers agreed these areas were essential to the organisation’s future growth and financial targets and not on creating long-term reward structures to implement lasting change, manage performance or improve skill development.

Without the involvement of the SEO and senior leadership, the organisation’s reward structure remained linked to short-term financial success and they failed to create positive behavioral changes that are critical for the team’s development.

Unfortunately, the critical need to develop a performance management culture and to build new organizational skills and capability were overlooked.”

To make constructive changes in the work place, you need to ensure that senior leadership are strongly committed  throughout the entire feedback process, from the initial communication of gathering feedback to the follow-up actions that have been determined as a result, if a senior leader is not committed to the cause it will have a rippling effect in the organisation.

If you ensure that your senior leaders are engaged, team leaders are better enables to receive feedback results and to subsequently implement changes, as well as promoting employee engagement to all!

Full Circle Feedback

Whether you’re receiving feedback through staff and employee surveys, stakeholder and customer surveys or 360 degree feedback, they all have one thing in common – the feedback you gain from them is crucial to your business!

Feedback is important to your business as it enables you to gain a greater understanding of your organisational strengths, opportunities and problem areas. By gaining this understanding, leaders are able to make more informed, effective decisions and developmental changes.

However, there are 5 major survey mistakes you must avoid when receiving feedback to ensure that it leads to enhanced individual and organizational performance.
The 5 major survey mistakes to avoid are:

1. Poor Senior Leadership Engagement – It is important that you’re senior leaders are involved when implementing feedback initiatives to ensure survey success.

2. Failing to create the context for feedback – By creating the right context for feedback, it ensures that respondents remain engaged throughout the process to ensure valid results.

3. Weak survey design – To ensure valid results, you must carefully consider the questions asked, as well as those not asked, to ensure good quality feedback.

4. Ineffective post-survey communication – If you don’t effectively communicate feedback results to participants, it stops them from being able to make productive changes in the workplace.

5. Lack of follow-through action – If you don’t ensure follow-through actions after receiving feedback, your time and resources used to gather that feedback has been wasted.

In the next few blog posts, we will be looking at each of the 5 major survey mistakes to avoid in further detail, to ensure you don’t fall victim to them when completing your business feedback.

Full Circle Feedback

Different Personalities and Feedback

1. Perfectionist ‘If a job’s worth doing it’s worth doing well.’

Description

You are quite a serious-minded person and do not readily let go of your
inhibitions. You pride yourself on your discipline, organisation and quality
control. You concentrate on doing things right and can be preoccupied with
the importance of not making mistakes. You are able to spot mistakes and
people can sometimes regard you as overly critical. This is particularly true
when you are in a supervisory role, although you are as hard on yourself as
you are on others. If you commit to a task you will ensure it is done to the
highest standards. You worry about doing the right thing and have a cautious
nature. You are prepared to work hard and may even be described as a
workaholic. Your conscientious nature precludes the need for close
supervision.
When you are under pressure you tend to work even harder and lose touch
with your own emotional needs. You have high personal standards and high
expectations of the way others should conduct themselves in the workplace.
You have a tendency not to delegate as you feel that no-one could do the task
as well as you. People may find it easier to work with you than for you, as you
are such a perfectionist.

You are polite, but are prepared to be direct and can feel a strong sense of
righteous anger when people do not do the right thing. Your reaction will be
even stronger if it does not seem to concern them. As a general rule though,
you don’t like to express anger in the workplace. People may regard you as
formal and a stickler for doing the right thing. You have a tendency to see
things in either black or white, as either right or wrong. You have a strong
need to be as close to perfect as you can in anything you do. You can
sometimes feel that life is not fair when things are not working out. You are
often uncomfortable with rapid change in the workplace and dislike having to
make decisions on the run. You like to deal with real issues and others tend to
regard you as grounded.

Key motivators
· The need to be right and to be seen to be right
· To work towards the highest goals and ideals
· To improve self and others
Leadership style
· Hardworking
· Thorough
· Controlled
· Exact
· Conservative
· Honest
· Steady
· Practical
· Structured
· Independent
· Methodical
· Principled
· …

Feedback, change and leaders

At Full Circle Feedback we have been collecting data about the bench strength of Australian leaders for over a decade. The company was founded on the basis of trying to answer a few, key questions:

1. How do leaders gain the feedback they need to help them be the very best leaders possible?
2. How do leaders effect and sustain real change?
3. How do teams and organisations understand what sort of leadership they need and how do they strategically build their leadership capacity?

We still focus on those questions and we are continually improving our processes and consulting practices to assist manager/leaders and their organisations grow their leadership capacity.

There are many qualities that we want our leaders to display but what do we consider the most important of these?

According to the data we have collected over the last ten years from thousands of 360 degree feedback profiles, the strengths that Australians most value in their leaders, as perceived by leaders themselves, their peers, direct reports, managers and stakeholders, in order of importance are:

Strengths

- Results Focus
- Problem Solving
- Strategic Focus
- Decision Making
- Focus on Quality
- Customer Focus
- Teamwork
- Accountability

Our research also explored what people perceive to be the greatest challenges to leaders. According to our review, in order of importance, the biggest challenges that leaders face are:

Challenges

- Developing People
- Conflict Resolution
- Innovation and Change management
- Managing Performance
- Developing Trust
- Celebrating Success
- Influencing and Motivating People
- Developing Self

It is not surprising to see the classic task/people split in the results. People are promoted and rewarded for tangible, often short term results. A good dose of personal ambition seems to help as well!

So how can 360 degree feedback help leaders improve?

As managers and leaders we are all works in progress. One of the great benefits of 360 degree feedback is that we catch people when they are on their journey, help them focus on their strengths and ask them to honestly examine how they can be the type of leader that everyone wants on their team.

360 degree feedback allows leaders to gain honest feedback from their peers, direct reports, managers and stakeholders. Gaining such an holistic picture of their performance as a leader can help leaders become the very best they can be. It also allows teams and organisations to strategically build their leadership capacity.

So what areas does 360 degree feedback address?

The key challenges…

How to Successfully Implement Feedback Projects

Feedback, implemented successfully, can deliver significant return on investment. However, a robust planning and implementation process is essential to eliminate the potential pitfalls. Full Circle Feedback has successfully used the following proven implementation process with many clients.

Project Planning and Preparation

The first phase of the feedback program requires a collaborative process focusing on clarification of the project aims, objectives and policies, development of a consultation and communication strategy, and customisation of the methodology to meet client needs. Full Circle Feedback works closely with our client to ensure that:

• Key aims and objectives of the project are clarified
• Key learnings from previous projects are understood
• Key stakeholders are identified and their needs are understood.
• Steering Committee/governance process is understood and in place
• 360-degree feedback policies are defined and agreed
• The FCF methodology is understood by client staff and customised to meet specific needs of the client, the participants and the raters
• Appropriate program timelines and schedules are established and agreed
• Consultation and communication strategies are established and agreed
• Define benchmark parameters

Design the Detailed Implementation Process

The next phase is to reach agreement about the precise methodology to be employed and to design the implementation process. We work in partnership with our client to develop a detailed project plan that outlines the roles and responsibilities of all consultants and client staff who will be contributing to the design and implementation of the project. This phase involves the following actions:

• Detail the project plan and gain sign off
• Develop and implement the consultation and communication plan
• Design the client project page on the FCF website
• Design and develop briefing and program materials
• Confirm required report formats
• Clarify key roles, accountabilities and responsibilities for the project

Design and Validate the Survey, Reporting and Feedback Parameters

In this phase, the survey and key project parameters are designed and validated. Based on our experience, different surveys are usually required for different levels in order to achieve the most successful outcomes. This may involve the following:

• Gain an understanding of client competency models and history
• Examine previous surveys that may have been used

…