4 Secrets to Making the Most of 360-Degree Feedback

Facing the results ofa 360-degree feedback survey can be a bit nerve-wracking. It's like waiting for a bullet, blindfolded, trying to guess what people are going to shoot you with. Will they aim for your head or your heart? How do you know who said what? And how will you defend yourself against this army of snipers you don't know?

As an executive coach, I interpret 360-degree feedback from clients, and I find that the 90 minutes I spend explaining how to make sense of their reports really enlightens them and they find the feedback, whether positive or negative, really valuable. They don't feel the need to defend themselves because it's usually not hit below the belt; instead, they find a way to embrace the data and move on, incorporating it into themselves.

In this interpretation session we are trying to answer two binding questions:

1. What do these numbers and comments really mean? What do people expect you to take away from these scores and comments?
2. What do they mean to you as a participant? So what - if anything - should you do about it?

I will share my secrets with you: Here are four tricks to decrypt and appreciate your 360-degree feedback report:

1. How well do the reviewers know you?

I start the interpretation by reviewing the demographic summary and asking my survey buddy how intimately the reviewers know his or her work. " How long, how often and how closely have you worked with each of them?" This gives us an idea of how firm the judgments are and the perspective the reviewers have. This is our first clue as to what the evaluation might mean.

If someone doesn't know you in a certain area or about a certain substance, they will usually do one of two things: 1) "I don't know," or 2) It gives you a safe score, such as 4 or 5 (on a scale of 7). So if you have a lot of 6s and 7s, 5 sounds like a bad score, but it could mean that your performance is not visible enough on a particular item or area. The assessor or assessors have chosen to play it safe because they don't have enough data to give you a high score. This is often the case in peer groups, as peers often do not work together on a regular basis; they may even work in different places.

2. Tin Question and Golden Question

There is one question I never ask when looking at 360-degree feedback reports: Who is right? That is, when the evaluators give different scores (which is both natural and common), whose score do we believe? For example, let's say I give myself a 7 (the highest score) for a behavior, while my manager gives me a 5. Do I think I am something, or is my manager missing something? Should I believe my manager's score instead of my own just because he is the boss? What if others also gave me a 7? Will the majority prevail then?

These are natural questions to ask, but they are not important at all, because 360-degree feedback is already subjective. This survey is about perceptions and performance rather than right and wrong. This doesn't mean that scores are given grudgingly or made up out of whole cloth; it just means that people have different perspectives on what you do - different expectations of you and different data ontheir interactions with you. No one is privy to the secret of what is true about you; they just have their own views of your performance. And while these views are not absolute, it is important to understand them. Others' perceptions of your performance affect your reputation in their eyes, their trust in you, and the strength of your working relationship.

The "golden" question I ask, the one I always ask, is: "Why did you get this score fromthis person or group?" This is a very thought-provoking question.

For example:

• Why does your manager think this is a strength and others don't (or vice versa)?

• Why is this group's score the highest of all the evaluators?

• How is your interaction and work with this group different from the other group who gave a different score?

Treating data in this way helps people make sense of their scores.

3. Select Only the One or Two Most Important Action Items

Once the meaning of the available data is more or less clear, you can answer the second question: What should you work on?
A 360-degree feedback survey contains far more information than you can handle in practice, so it's best to pick one or two high-impact areas to focus on. In doing so, there is an assumption that almost everyone makes that needs to be addressed and often dispelled: "Obviously I should focus on my lowest scores." Not quite so.

The practical value of a 360-degree survey is to give you an idea of how others perceive your work across a broad range of performance skills. But the real ingredient needed to make this data meaningful is you: Importance. You ultimately decide the relative importance of each skill area to your work and what these scores mean.

For example, I often see people score between 5.0-5.5 in Innovation and Creativity. If these scores are low, this seems like the natural area to focus on improving. However, when I ask them how important innovation and creativity is in their work, they often say it's not important, and sometimes it's not even allowed! So why bother to improve an area that doesn't matter? Probably because you want to waste your time and effort.

Joking aside, this little exercise shows that a score of 5 in an unimportant area is perfectly acceptable for that area. Then we look at the important areas where it would be useful to raise the score. When you blend the importance factor with what others have said, you have a good idea of what you do well (so you don't bother improving those areas) and what would make a big difference if you improved it.

You may be tempted to pick more than one item to improve as you go through the 360-degree report. Don't do that. Instead, prioritize your list of possibilities and concentrate your efforts on numbers 1 and 2. The reality is that in the hustle and bustle of your already busy life, you will need to devote time and energy to improving these areas, so be practical. If there are three or four (or five) areas you really want to improve, start by focusing on one or two and plan to address the others at a later date.

4. Give Yourself Room for Improvement

Another common tendency is to ignore your best scores and obsess over low scores. While high scores may indicate areas where you don't need to improve, they shouldn't be discarded. Instead, think about how you can capitalize on your strengths that can help you get better in one or two areas to work on. This will give you a head start in your self-improvement efforts, allowing you to put the skills you have already developed to work. I've found that this approach, which many people don't think of, makes a lot of sense when you think about it.

For example, if you are strong in business acumen and you are trying to improve your delegation skills, use your knowledge of what is important to the business to delegate tasks. There are various ways to do this.

• Match skills for impact: Give high-impact tasks to a competent subordinate. Give low-impact tasks to less experienced employees to use as development opportunities.

• Clearly explain the importance of the task so that your subordinate pays attention. With your high business acumen, you may see the importance of the task more clearly than others.

• When meeting with your subordinate in status meetings, you will be able to ask pertinent questions about how things are going and provide expert coaching if needed.

Getting the most out of results

360-degree feedback scores are confusing or enigmatic at best, misleading or upsetting at worst. So it's important to think in a way that doesn't get buried under an avalanche of numbers, and to turn the numbers into inputs you can use. I have found these four tricks to be both enlightening and empowering in explaining 360-degree survey reports and enabling action.