Bowland Solutions
Underpinning Leadership Development with 360 Degree Feedback
A quick scan of the latest ‘how to run a business’ publications to emerge, reveals a large number which focus on the importance of leadership, and the ability to assess great leadership behaviours through 360 degree feedback.
It probably comes as no surprise that as we are navigating our way through an economic crisis, recession and some fundamental changes in the way we work, that people need their leaders to exhibit behaviours which show strength in the face of the adversity, coupled with a humility which enables them to be open to new ways of working, drawing ideas from their people and their changing environment, and being resilient in handling the ambiguity they face.
Date confirmed for next free 360 degree feedback seminar & webinar
We are very pleased to announced dates for our latest seminar & webinar entitled “How to successfully implement a 360 degree feedback process within your organisation”, on Wednesday 21st July and Thursday 22nd July respectively.
This popular seminar is now running for the third time and offers attendees a great opportunity to learn, share best practice, ask questions and network.
By the end of the seminar, you will:
- Understand the critical factors that will ensure success when introducing 360 degree appraisal into your business
- Take away a checklist to help you work logically through the implementation process
- Appreciate the key principles that will help you design a great questionnire, communicate effectively to get company wide ‘buy-in’ and facilitate face-to-face debriefs.
If you cannot join us for the seminar then please do sign up for the webinar, where we will be sharing the same content.
You can register for either event through the ‘Free Stuff’ registration form to the right hand side of this blog post.
We hope to meet and speak with some more of you next month.
Wisdom…a missing competency in 360 degree feedback?
We often work with our clients in designing their competency frameworks to support a 360 degree feedback process and I have become conscious of some subtle shifts in what is expected of leadership teams in the new, ambiguous and changing world we find ourselves in.
Most notable is a desire for leaders to exhibit resilience, tenacity, an outward looking focus and agility; these underpin an ability to respond and overcome constant challenges, where the answers aren’t always readily known and one must make decisions on the information available.
Information abounds, data is all around us, but it is the ability to make sense of this and apply it sensibly that can distinguish ‘good’ from ‘great’.
To this end, I am reminded of a quote which unfortunately I cannot attribute, which states:
“Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad”
Let’s get ‘Wisdom’ in the mix with 360 degree appraisal!
3 steps to great 360 degree feedback
360 degree feedback can become complicated. Often there are some tricky things to think through. What is useful when you are putting together a 360 feedback project is to have some key points to focus on and to test your solution against. My three are
- Ask the right questions
- Follow a well-structured process
- Have a great conversation around a great report
If you check whatever 360 feeedback process or service you devise against this list then you will do ok. Are we asking the right questions? Is our process well-structured? Are the people involved going to have a great conversation around a great report?
Our 360 degree feedback white paper expands on these – but don’t lose track of these simple requirements.
Read More…
The importance of SMART objectives in the performance appraisal cycle
Picking up on my last post, emphasizing the importance of setting well-formed objectives, it has been interesting to note through our training programmes, just how difficult this step in the performance appraisal cycle proves to be for many line managers.
Undertaking a training session on how to set well-formed objectives probably wouldn’t feature highly in most line managers priorities, but we are seeing more and more that this module helps unlock some of the difficulties line managers struggle with further down the line; most notably, giving positive and negative feedback, coaching conversations and critically the end-of-year performance review meeting.
One of the key difficulties in setting ‘good’ objectives is a superficial attempt to apply the SMART template; the term is so ubiquitous that the temptation is to run through it without thinking through what it really means.
Why performance appraisals are like marmite
Love them or loathe them? Performance appraisals seem to engender strong feelings in both camps, with firm advocates for structured performance reviews seeing them as a productive and valuable process both for the individual and organisation, and as many seeing them a necessary evil that could be replaced by a blank sheet of paper and a chat.
Such polarity probably represents the very different experiences people have had both as an appraisee and an appraiser; it can go horribly worng, but it can also go spectularly right.
Setting ones own experience to one side and thinking through the purpose of performance appraisals objectively, one should come to the conclusion that an appraisal process, whether it be highly structured or very loose, is useful if it serves to improve the performance of an individual and by implication the organisation.
What is the average colour of a traffic light?
How this links to 360 degree feedback will follow!
Let’s assume we have a basic traffic light system. And we find out that we have the following distribution
- Red 50% of the time
- Amber 10% of the time
- Green 40% of the time
And someone wants to know what colour it is on average. What to do?
Average requires numbers.
So, let’s give Red the number 1, Amber the number 2, and Green the number 3. A bit of Maths will find the average now (50% *1) + (10% * 2) + (40% *3) … 1.9 is the answer.
Transparent 360 degree feedback within Google
A brief note to highlight a recent article which had an interview with Google Europe boss John Herlih, in which he describes, amongst other things that make Google work well, how they take their people through 360 degree feedback every 6 months.
It is clear that they have a passion for attracting, recruiting, developing and retaining the best people, and this comes through in most articles written about Google – what is interesting here as well is how the 360 degree feedback results are shared with the whole company, providing a transparent process, which presumably serves to foster a more open culture.
Certainly not for everyone, but then when did Google ever follow the crowd…?
Read More…
360 degree feedback; throwing the baby out with the bathwater…
Here is a recent blog post I came across recently which lambasts a few management practices, one of these being 360 degree feedback processes.
As with many articles of this nature, I often find myself agreeing with some of what is said; poorly executed management practices, such as a badly implemented 360 degree appraisal process, can do more harm than good – so if people have a ‘bad experience’, it can colour their view about such practices permanently.
However, as with most things in life, this isn’t a ‘black & white’ situation, and despite their being poor practice in evidence, there is also (certainly in our own experience) very good practice around which suggests that there is a danger of throwing the proverbial ‘baby out with the bathwater’ as one looks to kick against bad practice.
360 degree feedback should complement the whole myriad of management practices, tools and processes out there – it isn’t a complete substitute for open, honest and regular communication between bosses and direct reports, peer to peer, etc, which should most definitely be encouraged, but it certainly adds value as organisations seek to create this kind of transparent culture which can take time to take root.
Extracting wisdom from 360 degree feedback
Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, is quoted as saying that “Data are widely available, what is scarce is the ability to extract wisdom from them”. I’m focusing heavily at the moment on debriefing 360 degree feedback and the 360 degree feedback report. For both an upcoming seminar, and a new whitepaper, I’m looking to fine tune our thoughts around how we make best use of a 360 feedback process.
The current line of thinking is to consider how data becomes information becomes knowledge/wisdom. The 360 feedback questionnaire generates data. Our challenge is to take that data and produce information from which the recipient gains knowledge. Along the way we have to avoid the dangers of losing information or of forming unwise conclusions.
The report and the conversation around the report is where the transformation happens and where best practice can lead to the best knowledge outcomes.
Data, data, everywhere – what to pay attention to
360 degree feedback deliberately generates data from a range of sources – it creates more data than a standard performance appraisal. Annual performance appraisals are also starting to commonly seek information from a range of sources – it reflects a move to more networked organisations and less structured boss->subordinate relationships.
That all makes sense to me – it is a sensible growth in data. But when it comes to the annual performance appraisal working out what is worth measuring is important. I’ve been thinking about this a lot as I’ve been looking recently as my wife develops a new business promoting deals and discounts for days out in the UK.
Her website has Google analytics that tells her how many people visit the site, which pages are popular, etc. The blog http://blog.topdogdays.com tells her how many people have subscribed to the blog. Her twitter service http://www.twitter.com/topdogdays tells her how many people are following her. Amazon tell her how many people have bought a book having visited the site, and google tell her how many people have clicked on an advert on the site. Data, data, everywhere. Eventually all of this data can distract from the purpose of the business and managing it. But it is highly seductive and of course in the early days it is great feedback.
Too much 360 feedback – time to be selective
I was listening to Radio 5 in the UK. There was a debate about class – a standard fixation. Initially a couple of experts in the field discussed the issues around class and social mobility, with the presenter facilitating the debate. All good so far and I was learning stuff. Then “Chris from Manchester” called in. It is a feature of many news avenues now that we are all invited to contribute. Chris wasn’t an expert, he was a perfectly fine person with an opinion and I was now listening to it. It wouldn’t be long before another 20 people would call in with their opinion and I began to learn less and less.
In 360 degree feedback we seek feedback – opinion – from a variety of people. We sometimes get a desire to garner feedback from many, many people. The concern is that if we don’t ask everyone possible then 1) someone will feel left out and 2) we will miss a piece of valuable feedback. At times, for certain clients, these are valid concerns and the solution is to get feedback from 20-30 people. But usually, getting feedback from too many people has two problems.
Performance related pay and the annual appraisal
One author wrote that if you want to make performance appraisals really difficult then link the individual’s pay to their numerical rating.
Without judgement, we take the position that some organisations wish to use the performance appraisal process to help them determine the level of renumeration – salary or bonus – of individuals. If that is the case, then how should the performance appraisal process be run to best achieve this?
First, let us consider what is a good outcome. We would argue that a good outcome for the advocates of performance related pay is
- Individuals motivated to achieve targets that will improve the organisation and meet the organisational strategy.
- The correct people getting the correct rewards
The performance appraisal meeting
The appraisal meeting strikes fear into many managers. They fear its time-consuming nature and they fear the meeting itself. The former issue is often cultural. The time spent on performance appraisals is a fantastic investment for managers if the process is run well. A stitch in time saves nine.
The meeting itself is only feared by poorly trained managers who are uncertain of how to handle the meeting. Appraising an individual is an unnatural task for many managers but it can be trained.
The structure of our own training course for the performance appraisal meeting is as follows.
- Understanding the purpose of performance management and the annual cycle
- How to review performance in-year
