360 Degree Feedback

Building Accountability into the 360 Degree Feedback Process

One of the purposes of the 360 feedback process is to help leaders take accountability for the way they lead. The feedback received should act as a catalyst for personal improvement. The best way to do this is to keep personal feedback confidential, share development plans, and repeat the process regularly.

Confidentiality
When you tell 360 feedback participants that their feedback is confidential, it typically means that they are the only ones who will see their report. Yet, there are some people in the organization that may need to know information about the individual’s feedback in order to make it more useful. In such cases, the best way to get the most value of the report, while giving participants an assurance of confidentiality, is to share the following:
    1. The participant and a designated coach will receive copies of the Individual Feedback Report. The designated coach can be an internal resource (such as HR) who has been trained to know and respect the confidential aspects of a coaching role, or a coach from an outside consulting firm.

    2. The participant and the coach create a development plan that is to be shared with others, such as the participant's manager. Typically, it's after some initial third-party coaching that the manager comes into the picture. Remember, it's the development plan, not the feedback report itself, that is shared with the manager.

    3. The participant's manager may also receive a 360 report summary that shows overall competency scores for the employees in his or her area. Most participants feel comfortable with this, and may voluntarily share even more with their managers. That's ideal!

    4. Human Resources and senior leaders receive a Group Feedback report that shows overall competency strengths and deficiencies for the group. The Group report also identifies trends by rater groups, management levels, past 360s, and divisions in the company.
Some companies communicate up-front that the 360 Feedback is NOT confidential. In that case, they plan to share the Individual 360 Feedback reports with the participants' mangers and HR leaders. Be aware that in most cases, this results in less candid feedback and higher scores.

Creating and Sharing Development Plans
Development plans are created from the coaching process that occurs after participants receive their feedback. Trained professionals can be very effective coaches to 360 participants if they have the skills, as well as the trust of the participants they coach. Ideally, the participant's manager will help the participant implement their development plan, follow up, and coach them on their progress. In our experience, few managers are naturally good in this role. Many of them will, however, do an adequate job if trained on the feedback coaching process. In cases where the participant and the manager have an already-strained relationship, or are not development oriented, the role of a third-party coach is critical.

Repetition
If you only plan on doing 360s once, you run the risk of suffering from the flavor-of-the-month syndrome. Participants will see this as a temporary program that can be ignored once the initial process is completed. By communicating that 360s will be done each year, and action plans will be included in performance development plans, employees get the message that this is important to their success.

Conclusion
Finally, these recommendations are based on using 360 assessments for development, not performance evaluation or appraisal. Using 360s for performance appraisal requires a very different approach, and is something we will address in a future newsletter. Remember, in order to build strong accountability into the 360 feedback process for development, you should ensure confidentiality, share action/development plans, and repeat the process on a regular basis.