Leadership Development: 360-Degree Feedback Reviews

The Typical Review Cycle

Annual Performance Reviews are common in most organizations. Unfortunately, also in most organizations, this annual review tends to be the first time they have given feedback on their employee’s performance since the last review…

Equally unfortunate is that most managers in organizations today get little, if any, constructive feedback on their own performance. It seems the higher one goes in an organization, the less feedback they get. Senior leaders in the organization are then surprised when an employee engagement survey yields results that indicate:

1. Communication is regarded as terrible to non-existent
2. Team members do not know the company’s strategic direction
3. Team members do not know how they contribute to the success of the business
4. People are not engaged

These are just a few of the more common ones I see.

Leadership development is paramount in every organization, after all, leaders are people too, and… people being people they are a work in progress. For leaders, school should never be out, and we should always be looking for ways that we can continue to develop our leadership practices.

A New Review Cycle

One of the best ways I have found is to have regular 360-Degree Feedback Reviews completed by direct reports, peers, and upper management. If you have never had a ‘360’ completed for yourself, you do not need to wait for the ‘official program’ from the HR department. You can ask someone you trust in the organization to conduct one for you.

Included in the 360 review should be your direct reports, your manager, your peers, and some other individuals that you deal with regularly in the organization.

Here is a simple format that I use for 360’s:

*email me for a copy of the the 360 I use.

Moving Forward

1. Once all the data and feedback is collected, sit down and review.
2. Check your ego at the door. There is no room here for denial of the feedback that you are going over.  People will give you ratings and verbatim comments as they see you not as you see yourself.
3. Make an action plan.
4. Thank people for their feedback and share what you have taken on and what you are going to do about it.

Robert Murray is a Vancouver, BC based Business Strategy Consultant, #1 Best Selling Author, International Keynote Speaker, and TEC Top Speaker of the Year for 2018. For further advice, insight and inspiration on how to unlock your inner leader, follow Robert on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

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