CONTENTS Chapter 1: The basics
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1. What is 360 degree feedback? ..................................................................2 2. Why should a team use 360 degree feedback? .......................................2 3. Limitations of 360 degree feedback .........................................................4
Chapter 2: The how-to for a feedback recipient
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1. Accept ...........................................................................................................6 2. Spot ..............................................................................................................7 3. Understand ..................................................................................................7 4. Plan ...............................................................................................................8
Chapter 3: The how-to for a feedback giver
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1. Package No. 1 contains a formula
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2. Package No. 2 contains a lot of language tips ......................................12
Chapter 4: The how-to for managers (re: follow up)
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1. The 1-on-1 Conversation: be a trusted friend .......................................15 2. The Action Plan: be an understanding coach ........................................16 3. Follow Up: be the empathetic supervisor ..............................................18 4. The Self Assessment: be a learner ..........................................................19
Few final words‌
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Chapter 1: The basics What was your thought when you first heard the phrase “360 degree feedback”? Thorough? Complicated? Puzzling? Well, 360 degree feedback is not a no brainer but it does not have to be hard to master. As long as you know the basics. And here are the basics.
1. What is 360 degree feedback? 360 degree feedback is the feedback that comes from multiple sources. The sources are normally an employee’s immediate work circle. It includes direct reports, colleagues and line managers. In most cases, 360 degree feedback involves a self evaluation. Some companies choose to include external parties, like clients and suppliers, but it is not always the case. A 360 review is an evaluation process carried out by a team in order to get each of the team members to improve. It should not be a performance review, even though some use the word performance in the title. The feedback in a 360 review is about spotting strengths, and possibly weaknesses, which are used to plan personal growth and map specific paths for development.
2. Why should a team use 360 degree feedback? There are several pros that make 360 degree feedback well worth spending time on.
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Improved Feedback Feedback is more well rounded because it comes from multiple sources. For example, you want to know better about your ability to get along with people. It would be more helpful to hear answers from all members in your team, including your managers, the colleagues that have worked with you for a long time and the new ones. Moreover, you can look for patterns and tendencies in 360 degree feedback. For instance, you have consciously spent more time explaining the motives of your decisions to your colleagues. When most team members responds to it with positive feedback, you know it is the right direction to move forward.
Team Development A 360 review helps team members learn about the impact of their behaviours on other members. They can then make well-informed adjustments in order to work more effectively together. As an example, one learns that her act of interrupting affects her colleagues’ flow of thinking. She is likely to change her behaviour and be more patient in future’s team discussions. When each member adjusts his or her behaviour in order to bring positive impact, it will definitely benefit the team’s collaboration.
Personal Growth This is the main purpose of 360 degree feedback. Each individual comes to understand the need to grow and which areas to grow into. Managers and employees can then sit together and make step-by-step plans to improve. For example, an admin assistant receives feedback on her ability to prioritise tasks. Most people said that she took on more and more tasks. However, she occasionally failed to finish a task as previously committed, and became a bottleneck in the process. Having read the feedback, she now knows that 3
prioritising tasks is a skill that she should focus on so that she can grow and take on more responsibilities. The admin assistant can sit down with her line manager to work out a growth plan. Her manager can give her advice on how to avoid overloading. “Before deciding to take on a new task, you should spend some time going through the status of the current tasks and think about how to allocate time for the new one”. Improved feedback, team development and personal growth will benefit the growth of the whole company, even though it is not the main purpose of a 360 review.
3. Limitations of 360 degree feedback It is not that 360 degree feedback is flawed. It is that way too many companies make mistakes while implementing 360 reviews. You should be aware of the limitations to avoid the failure trap.
Impact lies outside the process 360 degree feedback processes can only have positive impact if everyone works on the feedback you give them afterwards. They need to understand the whole lot of feedback they receive and work out the next steps to take. Since that is not built-in knowledge for many, feedback recipients need coaching, which many companies forget to include in the process. More on coaching will be discussed in Chapter 2.
The need and the will to follow up When 360 degree feedback is used for personal development, there is no mandatory follow-up. Combined with a busy work schedule of some, no follow up mandate can lead to neglect. It means that some employees do not do anything about the result of a 360 review. An effective solution is to assign the follow-up task to a responsible person, most commonly a line manager. I will discuss more about this in Chapter 4. 4
Focus on the wrong end There is a tendency to focus on weaknesses rather than strengths when giving 360 degree feedback. Many people think of growth as correcting mistakes and improving weaknesses. However, you can reap much sweeter fruits with maximising strengths and using them in the right place. Feedback should be more about building strengths than working on weaknesses.
The possibility to integrate It is difficult to integrate a 360 review into a company’s culture of giving feedback. People tend to consider it as an one-time event, pursuing very little to no follow-up. How to position biannually 360 reviews into a culture of continuous feedback is not an easy question to answer. But it is what companies need to find out if they want to build a culture of feedback that benefits their people. The success of a 360 degree feedback process depends mainly on the people involved in it. Namely, HR or whoever in charge of arranging for 360 degree feedback to be given and received. You also have to count the feedback recipients who need to work on the results. Never to forget the givers who kindly (and bravely) offer their insight. There are
also the line managers,
whose roles are not so obvious but very significant. Basically, each individual needs to play his or her role right. Running a 360 review is a skill that a team needs to master. In the following three chapters, you will find more information about the responsibilities of each role, and useful tips to do 360 effectively.
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Chapter 2: The how-to for a feedback recipient Presumably you are one of the recipients in a 360 review. You are getting feedback from your peers and managers, perhaps even your internal clients. In principle, this is the time for you to ďŹ gure out your opportunities to grow. In reality, what you are likely to face is an avalanche of comments and opinions based on various observation and interpretation. In the best scenario, converging positive feedback comes from all sources. Unfortunately, there are often variety and contradiction. So what do you do? How do you get to understand the whole lot of feedback and take the best out of this 360 review? Here is step-by-step guide that you can use. It will help you break down the feedback, and start working on improvements.
1. Accept First of all, you need to accept the feedback for what it is. Most of 360-degree feedback will be anonymous, unless a giver chooses to reveal his or her identity. Hence, the temptation to guess who thinks highly of you, and also the opposite. However, you have to overcome this temptation. Your focus should be on what is being said, not who said it. Work on your curiosity as well as your emotion. Even if you feel like some feedback is totally unfair or simply wrong, don’t get all emotional. At this stage, you should not try to think of the reasoning behind. Here and now, you simply record what is said. 6
2. Spot In this second step, you want to spot tendencies in the 360-degree feedback. Take a step back to look at the big picture. Identify patterns and trends. If most people say you are providing useful feedback, that means you are quite a team player. There is a possibility that you will find some outliers - one or two people say the opposite to the rest about a certain skill or behaviour of yours. You should not worry about those for now, sparing them for the next step. At this stage, you want to note down the most common patterns in the feedback. For example, 8 out of 10 respondents noticed that you have been more in control of handling multiple tasks. More than half said you located time to each task of yours reasonably and hardly felt behind. This is the pattern for good time management skills. Look for patterns like this one and note them down. Those patterns give you an overview of your competencies and a general direction for your growth path.
3. Understand Now is the time for you to develop a better understanding of each piece of feedback. This step is very important because it will help you know more about your behaviours, the impact on others and what you can do to develop further. So, dig in. Read between the lines. Take out your measurement tape. Compare A to B, and B to C. Basically, you want to do whatever it takes to understand more about others’ perspective toward your behaviours and skills. For each piece of feedback, you should try to separate objective observation and the giver’s interpretation. Let’s use an example to illustrate this:
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“You were quiet during a meeting with a client last week. I think you should be more assertive in order to become a better sales rep”. The being quiet part is objective observation. The not being assertive part is the interpretation of the giver. You probably have a different explanation for your quietness. You knew the client very well and knew that she liked to take the lead in conversations. She liked to think that it was she, not you, who drove the deal. That was why you stayed more quiet than you normally do. It can also be the case that the giver was right and you failed to make a quick decision and give timely responses. The point here is that by separating data and interpretation, you understand more where the feedback comes from and where it goes to. Whether you agree or disagree with the feedback, a better understanding will always help. Unfortunately, not all givers would give you both. Some feedback is so unclear that you wish to seek clarification. If a giver leaves her name with her opinions, you should suggest a 1-on-1 conversation to discuss the feedback further. If they don’t, there are ways around it. Impraise allows feedback recipient and giver to start a conversation while keeping anonymity. Don’t forget to balance the feedback in this 360-degree report with other feedback you’ve received and your self-assessment. If there are gaps, now is the time to think of reasons. With a better understanding of the feedback, you already avoid falling into the emotion trap.
4. Plan In the fourth step, you want to plan a specific roadmap for your personal development. 8
Take the above example, people appreciate your feedback. What can you do with this valuable teamwork skill? You can participate more in team brainstorming sessions or collaborative tasks. Are these activities significant for your current role? Will they benefit your career path? This is the flow of questions you should ask yourself in order to narrow down a few most relevant skills. Obviously, you can be ambitious and want to develop all possible skills. However, you might find yourself improve faster if you focus on a few. Think about what you do everyday and what you want for the future. Discuss this with a mentor, a friend, a trusted colleague or a manager if you need advice on which skills to pick. Finally, you need to make an actionable plan (more on this on Chapter 4), and start working on it TODAY.
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Chapter 3: The how-to for a feedback giver So if you switch role to be the feedback giver, what should you know? It is important that you remember the following two things. Firstly, the purpose of your feedback is to help your colleague improve. Think more toward coaching and appreciation, and less toward evaluation. Secondly, in order to help with development, it does NOT have to focus on weaknesses. I can’t stress this point strongly enough: You are actually helping more when you focus on your colleague’s strengths. Not everyone is a natural feedback giver. It takes a real skill to give constructive feedback that your colleagues are more likely to accept. But it is definitely something you can learn. Here are two packages to help you learn faster (and less painful).
1. Package No. 1 contains a formula
Feedback Formula = Situation + Behaviour + Impact + Next
Before going into details of the formula, I want to emphasise that you can use this formula to make all feedback more impactful. Since most people consider it much more challenging to give critical comments, I will mainly use examples of constructive feedback (rather than praise).
Ingredient No.1: Situation First of all, you want to specify the situation on which you give your feedback. It is important to give your colleague a point of time and date to relate to. Let 10
her know that you talk about what happened during the team meeting yesterday afternoon (not the presentation three days ago, for example).
Ingredient No.2: Behaviour Secondly, you describe the behaviour. Make sure that you are being clear and objective. Focus on the actions that your colleague took, not her personality. Here is an example: “You were so excited about the topic we discussed that you cut off Mark a few times.”
Ingredient No.3: Impact Then, you make your feedback stronger by describing the impact of the above-mentioned behaviour. Your colleague’s action can impact one person, a few people or the whole group. In the above example, the act of interrupting repeatedly affects Mark's contribution to the discussion. It also has an effect on other participants who were listening to Mark. The flow of the whole meeting is also compromised. Think of the big picture and choose the impact that is most appropriate in each situation. On one hand, it sends a stronger message when you talk about the impact on the group. “After you interrupted Mark, the whole meeting was sidetracked to a different direction for 10 minutes. We could have discussed that matter on another meeting and kept yesterday meeting short and focused otherwise.” On another hand, your opinion is more credible when you talk about the impact on you. “After you interrupted Mark, I found it hard to follow the discussion because I was trying to guess what Mark could have said.” Another option is to take an objective perspective and talk about the impact on a third party (e.g. Mark in the example). “After being interrupted, Mark went quiet and stopped to contribute to the discussion”. However, be careful not sounding speculative. When you say something without hard evidence (e.g. 11
“Mark was upset”), the recipient might question the credibility of your opinions all together.
Ingredient No.4: The Next Step Finally, offer your colleague the next steps that she can take. Suggest to her what she could do to make it better next time. For instance: “Maybe next time you could let Mark finish his thoughts. Allow him more time to explain what he means exactly. It would help everyone understand him better. He would also feel more confident about contributing to discussions. The meeting would stay more on track.”
2. Package No. 2 contains a lot of language tips The way you bring your message across has a significant effect on how it would be perceived. Choose your language appropriately so your colleague will be more likely to accept it. Here are some language tips.
Offer Suggesting Statements If you think that something is wrong with a colleague’s method, there are three ways to bring up your opinion. In a strong statement: I think the way you implemented it was flawed. In a question: Do you think the way you implemented it was flawed? In a suggesting statement: I would suggest a few changes to the implementation next time. Which one sounds the best for you? The last one is my choice. The statement format is more assertive than the question format. Say, you ask the question, and the recipient’s answer is No. It would be pretty awkward for you to keep pushing your opinion forwards 12
(i.e. You think that it was flawed). Also, a suggesting statement is more polite and deferential than a strong statement. Consider the feeling of your colleague and phrase your feedback accordingly.
Avoid the BUT Word Sometimes it is so tempting to say: “I think you did a good job but…” You thought you were being nice but your colleague might actually think: “There is that but again, what is wrong now?” The little but quickly sets him or her into a defensive mode. It results in him or her fencing out all your constructive inputs. When you want to deliver both positive and negative comments, use and. Or list your points separately, like this: “First of all, I have to say that you explained the conditions to the client very thoroughly. Nicely done. Secondly, maybe it would be better if you try to keep the consulting session a bit more focused. I found a few details that could be left out, because they were not relevant in this case. I was lost at times.” Say it like I write it. Leave some space between the two points because they are equally important.
Use Past Tense You want to refer to a specific behaviour in the past. The use of present tense would imply that your colleague does that type of behaviour all the time. It makes your feedback sound too generic and you might lose your point.
Use Verbs Verbs are better than Adjectives because it leaves less room for interpretation. If you say that a person was rude, I might think he lost his 13
temper with you. Others might think he was moody and didn’t make any effort to communicate. There is also a possibility that he didn’t open the door for a lady. Just to name a few. What you don’t say: “You were rude to a client yesterday.” What you do say: “You raised your voice a few times and used unnecessarily short sentences with a client yesterday.” Go the extra mile to explain what you mean.
Take Care of Your Body Language When you give your feedback in person, be aware of your body language. Avoid gestures that might either send recipients into a defensive mode or make them afraid for their future in the company.
- Don’t raise your voice. You are not angry, you just say all these critical comments to help them improve.
- Don’t cross your arms. You don’t want to look like you are not going to let them explain their behaviours.
- Don’t frown. You are not there to judge but to provide support. - Keep a friendly tone and an open body because you want to create an atmosphere of intimacy and openness. That would really help the recipient to take in your feedback. In brief, many people find giving constructive feedback daunting. You risk damaging your relationship with your colleagues, and sometimes, for nothing. They do not accept your opinion and won’t work on it. However, from a giver’s perspective, you just have to try your best. Formulate your feedback in the format of Situation - Behaviour - Impact - Next, while carefully picking your language. I hope that you are more confident at giving feedback after reading this chapter. If you have any other tips, please write to us. We will be waiting. 14
C h apter 4 : T h e how-to for m anagers ( re: fo llow up) A direct manager plays multiple roles in a 360-degree feedback event. You are a trusted friend, an understanding coach, a caring supervisor as well as a continuous learner. You don’t play all the roles at one time, but be aware that they are equally important to the success of a 360 review. The lack of a follow-up plan and the infrequency of follow-up activities account for 2 out of 7 reasons, according to Forbes, why 360 reviews fails1. And, who is the better person to do the follow-up if not you - the one working with each and every one of your team members daily. When you take up the follow-up responsibilities, make sure you follow the right process so everyone in your team can benefit from 360-degree feedback.
1. The 1-on-1 Conversation: be a trusted friend Shortly after a 360 review finishes, you should initiate an informal 1-on-1 conversation with each team member. You want to check in on your team’s morale, and understand more about their 360 experience. Here are some questions you should cover in the conversation:
• How do you feel about giving feedback to your colleagues? • Do you feel that it is more challenging to give feedback to a certain person? If so, can you describe the reasons?
• How do you feel about the feedback you receive? 1
Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/08/17/the-7-reasons-why-360-degreefeedback-programs-fail/
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• Do you find some feedback unfair? Is there anything I can help with there? • Do you find some feedback unclear? Have you started any conversation to seek clarification?
• Generally, do you think the feedback is helpful or unhelpful? Any reasons? Basically, you want to find out how your team feels about the 360 review. If they have any concerns, point them to the right directions. For example, when a team member finds a piece of feedback is unfair or unclear, suggest him or her to start a conversation with the giver for clarification. Listen to their concerns and offer help when appropriate. More importantly, gather their opinions about the 360 review. If they find it helpful, try to understand what helps them exactly. If they consider the 360 review a waste of time, you want to know which part is the most timeconsuming one. This information will make valuable input for the success of other 360 reviews in the future. However, it is very important to respect the privacy of both the feedback givers and recipients. When a team member shares some feedback with you, stay objective and do not share the feedback with anybody else without her permission. Make this be known explicitly between you and her.
2. The Action Plan: be an understanding coach After the 1-on-1 conversation, hopefully both you and your team are aligned with the process and the situation. Let your team go off and work on understanding or clarifying the feedback they receive. Then you can set a time to sit down and work on an action plan with each of your team members. In 1-on-1 conversations, you play the role of a trusted friend. You are there to share an experience with your team and to offer help when appropriate. Here, you are the coach. Your main task is to guide a team member through 16
the process of choosing appropriate skills to develop further and a specific course of action to get there.
Help your employee decide on the actions The purpose of 360-degree feedback is for one to understand her skills better and how to grow further. Since nobody can really develop all skills at one time, she should pick out a few skills that most benefit her current role and what she wants to achieve in near future. Because the task is not always easily done, here is when you come in. Firstly, find out what she wants to achieve in the next year or two, which path she wants to take, and which skills she thinks she will need to get there. Secondly, offer your counter opinions. Tell her what you think about the path she wants to take. If you think of some other skills she should focus on at the moment, explain your suggestions explicitly. If it is mandatory to have certain skills to align with the company standards, let her know about them. Otherwise, make sure she knows your suggestions are optional. Discuss everything openly until you reach consensus. Remember that the action plan would be hers, not yours. Make sure she understands the reasoning of each choice. Then, write the choices down. After choosing the skills, she need to decide how far she wants to reach. Work with her to find out the best incentives for reaching her goals. Here is an example to make it easier to follow: Your admin assistant wants to improve her time management skills. She wants to commit to meeting deadlines at the rate of 100% instead of the current rate of 80%. You ask her to list the obstacles which stopped her from having met certain deadlines. You notice a tendency of procrastination so you suggest two incentives: 17
- Get (her) more self-organised: She should create a separate calendar for all the deadlines she has. Set up a few reminders for each deadline (e.g. one day, two hours and 15 minutes before each deadline). She should get into the habit of checking that calendar everyday before starting her work day.
- Find a third party to keep her accountable: make sure that whichever deadlines she commits to are shared with that party (e.g. another team member or you). Accountability often helps with procrastination. Ask about her preference to each incentive. Look into her past experience and what has worked before. Once you decide on the incentives, and write them down.
Agree on the time frame The next thing to do is set a time frame. If appropriate, set small goals and a time frame for each of those.
Find out the best way to follow up Last but not least, identify all the matters regarding the follow-up. Let your team know when you will want to check back in with the progress officially. Building a skill takes time, so give your team the time and the space they need. However, don’t leave it too long. I will discuss this more in the next section. In brief, at the end of any action plan meeting, you want to make sure that your team understands and agrees with a specific course of action, a time frame and follow-up methods and frequency.
3. Follow Up: be the empathetic supervisor Regular check-in meetings Once you have scheduled a check-in meeting with a team member, make sure you actually do it. 18
When you notice improvement, offer timely praise and reinforcement. You want to bolster up any progress as soon as possible. When you notice one lagging behind, address the issue in an open and friendly manner. Avoid making an assumption about the reasons why she is not on track. Ask questions like: “I notice that you have a tendency to fall behind. Are there any obstacles that I am not aware of? Anything you find more difficult to implement in reality than when we did the planning? Anything I can help with?” Informal follow-up Besides, informal follow-up can do many good. It is helpful to ask casual questions, like How are you finding the new task? It shows that you care. It also keeps you up-to-date with any new obstacles. You can help your team timely resolve arising issues. Hint: Avoid to come across as nagging for improvement. Keep informal follow-up questions casual and off-the-record conversations. You don’t want your team worry about whether they have made any progress since the last time you asked. That is for the official check-in meetings.
4. The Self Assessment: be a learner It’s important for you to do a self assessment on your roles in the process. Take time to reflect on your actions and their impact. You want to look deeper in three areas of process, relationship and results. A good way of self assessment is to answer a series of related questions. You can see some examples below.
Process Was it the right time for you to initiate a 1-on-1 meeting? Did you cover all important points in the feedback session? 19
How did you handle the meeting to develop action plans?
Relationship What was the style of communication? What was the recipient’s reaction? How high was the level of trust between you and the recipient? Were you overbearing or collaborating?
Results What are the changes? How quick have changes happened? What is the difference between expectations and progress? Evaluate yourself so you can learn from your own experience and grow yourself. In brief, the 1-on-1 conversations, action plan meetings, deliberate followups and self-assessment reinforce the ongoing nature of constructive feedback. They help integrate 360-feedback events into a wider culture of continuous feedback. They are needed for fostering growth among your team. So, do not stop the process of learning right after the finish line of a 360 review. In this case, the extra mile that you go will help bring success to the 360 review.
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Few final words… Prepare, Push Through and Follow Up 360 degree feedback reviews can have a huge impact on the growth of your people if done right. It is however a complicated process with many failure traps hidden along the way. I like to share three final words that will help remind you not to fall into one of those traps. Prepare Before starting, you want to set up the right focus for your 360 degree feedback event targeting building strengths and using them to create a better workplace. You also want to prepare your people, make sure that they understand the purpose of the 360 reviews, that they have the skills required, and that they can get support if needed. Push Through Do it. Share the feedback that helps others grow. Discuss the feedback to make sure that messages are not gone missing or misunderstood. Follow Up Carry out those 1-on-1 conversations, action plan meetings, check-in and self-assessment sessions. Foster the growth of your people and yourself continuously and at all time. Whichever role you play in a particular 360 review, and whenever you feel the lack of confidence, refer back to the corresponding chapter for specific tips. I wish you the best of luck and success in growing (with) your people. 21
CREDITS QUYNH NGUYEN Quynh is a workplace innovator. She believes in continuous development and personal happiness at work. She takes pride in helping companies reďŹ ne various HR processes and moving toward a culture of feedback.
IMPRAISE Impraise brings 360 degree feedback to all the devices you work with. You can share actionable and timely feedback with you colleagues from anywhere and at any time. Impraise stimulates a social working culture of continuous learning where everybody is highly engaged with their own and each other's personal and professional development. Check out Impraise Blog at http://impraise.com to learn more about best practices in HR.
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FR0M ZER0 T0 360 by Quynh Nguyen