New Thoughts about 360-Degree Feedback
You can contain your training costs if you use 360-degree feedback to identify the strong and weak areas, and if you use this information to make sure that training is focused only where it’s needed. You can even limit the training to those who need it most. Also, you can limit executive coaches to the top management team. Or you can just focus your programs on middle and first-line levels of management, in which case ongoing feedback from 360-degree feedback respondents can take the place of executive coaches.
In fact, 360-degree feedback can do other things to make your follow-up reinforcement program both inexpensive and successful. For example, the items used in 360-degree feedback are a great vehicle for defining expected leader and team behavior. And you can employ a brief, focused 360 as a pre-test for training programs and use the same 360 several months later as a post-test. Using 360 this way can increase motivation and establish accountability.
In addition, you can use selected members of the 360 respondent group in a coaching role. After respondents have given their formal, structured feedback, certain individuals can be asked to give feedback during the reinforcement phase.
So 360-degree feedback is a powerful tool in reinforcing behavior, but the key to doing this economically is to use the right 360 system. There are many fine 360-degree feedback systems, but most of them aren’t designed to be used for these follow-up applications. For example, some of the best feedback during this phase may be quite brief, addressing only one or two questions, and may not collect ratings at all. What you need is a highly flexible 360 platform that can be quickly customized onsite to let you use the language you want and focus on a specific area for improvement.
Also, you want a confidential system. You want to be able to control and safeguard the personal information given as feedback.
Most important, you need a cost-effective way to manage these follow-up 360 surveys. You need a single technology that does it all and lets you pay one time, up front, so you don’t have to worry about additional costs in the months and years ahead as you continue to use your 360 survey platform over and over again in creative ways.
We recommend 20/20 Insight GOLD, which was designed to satisfy the special needs of follow-up reinforcement and meets all the requirements for customization, confidentiality and low cost.
You know the saying, “Share your fish with others, and they’ll have food enough for a meal. Teach them how to fish, and they’ll have food for a lifetime.” In that spirit, here are half a dozen additional low-cost or no-cost tips:
- Before you administer 360-degree feedback, teach the people who will receive the feedback how to ask for and accept ongoing feedback. If they can learn to do this well, coworkers and team members—people who care about the outcome—are more likely to be honest and encouraging during the reinforcement phase.
- Also, teach the program participants a structured way of analyzing their daily on-the-job experiences, so they can consciously and regularly gain insights and learn lessons from their daily successes and failures.
- When identifying respondents for 360-degree feedback, pick individuals who will be available to give ongoing feedback during the reinforcement phase.
- Teach these feedback respondents how to give effective feedback, both written 360 comments and person-to-person verbal feedback. Not only is this a powerful team skill, it’ll make them more confident to hold a mirror up to the participant while he or she is trying to stay the course.
- Another effective method is to team a person who is trying to improve a particular area of behavior with someone who scored high in that area. The 360 summary reports will identify these individuals, who can meet from time to time to discuss problems and lessons learned.
- Don't push people to fix everything at once. Help participants set goals for only one, or at most two areas for improvement. People skill behavior patterns are hard to change, so focusing on a single area of greatest need will increase the chances for success.
Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., CEO, Performance Support Systems
Dave Erdman, President, Vital Learning Corporation
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