ENTREPRENEUR’N MOORE
Want to Develop Your Leaders – Use a 360-Degree Feedback Tool
A 360-degree feedback process is an excellent tool for giving leaders clear feedback from their peers, employees, and managers. It creates strong motivation and specific focus to improve skills and performance.
3. Customizes development: Some organizations create development programs without taking individual needs into consideration. One of the key benefits of 360 evaluations is that they form the basis for customized individual development plans. As the Confidentially administered 360-degree purpose of 360 evaluation is development, feedback by a business coach shows leaders leaders are motivated to control their career how they are perceived as leaders in the tru- paths. Along with a coach, the leader creates a est sense – how much they inspire, motivate, tailored training & development action plan to and develop team members, or how their at- strengthen or acquire new competencies for tempts to drive change and improvements are continuous improvement. being perceived. 4. Accountability: You can even determine which leader beThe enemy of accountability is ambiguity. haviors are most likely to derail a career. The more vague something is, the harder it becomes to hold people responsible. Similarly, Below are 5 benefits to leaders and organi- it is how coworkers end up talking past each zations from a properly administered 360 de- other. Something simple like, “I’ll take care of gree-feedback tool: it,” becomes a semantic battle of what “take care” and “it” even means. 1. Offers multiple perspectives: The 360-degree evaluation provides a You cannot tell someone to “be a better leader” well-rounded and broad view of the leader and or “demonstrate company values” without their management practices. Raters from vari- providing specifics for what that means. This is ous levels in the organization provide a realis- precisely what 360-degree feedback assesstic outlook on how the individual is perceived. ments do. They clarify behaviors which then Along with a self-assessment, these multiple allow you to make a legitimate judgment on perspectives identify the leader’s blind spots whether a person demonstrated the behav(unnoticed behaviors) and competency gaps. ior or not. Which, in turn, enables you to hold The variety of perspectives enables the indi- someone accountable for those behaviors. vidual to improve their working relationships But the best part is, you can take a lot of the and optimize their leadership. burden off your shoulders. If you made the behaviors clear enough, the individual would 2. Enhances skills & behaviors: hold himself or herself responsible. Research on leadership has shown that there are critical skills and behaviors that ef- 5. Creates a culture of learning: fective leaders have in common. These key Organizations that use 360 feedback for decompetencies can be used in the evaluation to velopment are creating a culture of learning determine the individual’s strengths, areas for and continuous improvement. Every individual improvement, and potential for advancement. within the company is encouraged to develThe 360-feedback coupled with coaching will op personal training and development goals. allow the leader to develop new skills and/or Since support for 360 comes from the top modify behavior to maximize their impact. down, this shows a strong commitment from
senior administration to workplace learning. Through 360 feedback, potential and current leaders can be encouraged and motivated to attain a higher achievement level. In summary, whether you are a larger organization identifying and looking to grow high potential employees (More than 85% of all the Fortune 500 companies use the 360-degree feedback process for the overall leadership development plan) or a small business owner looking to grow their leadership team or bench so that the business works without the owner, the 360-degree feedback process is a worthy investment to consider to attract, engage and retain key management personnel.
Henry Dumas, Business Coach ICF Credentialed Coach – MCC linkedin.com/in/henrydumas Moore Norman Technology Center 405-801-3540 • mntc.edu
MARCH 2021 | MOORE MONTHLY | 17
