8 Benefits of the 360-Degree Feedback Survey

The benefits from 360 Degree Feedback surveys can positively impact leadership, teams and the entire organization. However, when an organization decides to launch a 360-degree feedback program for the first time, some leaders are hesitant to participate. There are various reasons for this, but they are often prejudiced against the idea of self-assessment through a survey. By the time you finish reading this article, if you want to start something that will bring results, you should know that there is nothing more tried and true than conducting a 360-degree feedback survey with leaders.

Why is 360-degree feedback important?

360-degree feedback surveys provide immediate benefits to leaders, the team and the entire organization. By providing a safe, confidential and secure way for employees to give feedback to each other, a company gains valuable insight into the overall health of the current leadership, teams and the organization. 360 feedback surveys provide leaders with powerful insights and feedback on what is working and what is not. By using this feedback data properly, organizations can act quickly to help employees improve and become better leaders and contributors to the company in the right direction.

But even today, with the world evolving and changing so much, when an organization decides to launch a 360-degree feedback program for the first time, some are reluctant to participate. We still hear the following: "My friends can already tell me everything, why do I need this kind of feedback? Shouldn't I just ask them instead of doing a survey?" or "I have an open-door policy; I already know everything I need to know" or even "What will change if we do a survey?"

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These are not bad reactions, but they are not great either. The reality is that the future is feedback. For feedback '' They say it' s the breakfast of champions and unfortunately, many people, often those with a high need for validation, get caught up in the idea that they will receive negative feedback and the anxiety or fear it creates, and fail to see the 360-degree feedback mechanism as an opportunity for development. Gone are the days when it was acceptable to get things done by gut instinct and good feelings. And while employee perceptions are not a perfect indicator of the reality of the situation, they are still an invaluable part of a leader's career journey.

It is often difficult to get honest feedback on performance. As leaders move up in an organization, candid feedback about their performance or leadership style actually decreases. Other people are often afraid of displeasing those in leadership positions and, when asked for face-to-face feedback, can give much less than candid feedback about a leader's performance. This is where 360-degree feedback surveys become important.

What is a 360 Degree Feedback Survey?

A 360-degree feedback survey provides an opportunity for others to provide accurate and useful feedback to leaders in a constructive and confidential manner. In a 360 feedback survey, the leader and a group of evaluators answer specific questions about the leader's performance. These evaluators can be selected from the people the leader works with every day: managers, subordinates, colleagues, suppliers and customers.

Benefits of 360 Degree Feedback

When done correctly, 360-degree feedback has eight clear benefits:

1. INCREASES SELF-AWARENESS

Self-awareness means understanding your personality, including your strengths and weaknesses, beliefs, motivations, thoughts and feelings. And when it comes to leadership, self-awareness is especially important. Leading people requires careful balancing between competing priorities. Many well-intentioned leaders make mistakes because they are constantly making improvements in the wrong direction.

Many leaders are sure of how they appear to others at work. For example, they may think that I am undisciplined, but our research shows that superiors and subordinates sometimes rate the person being evaluated higher than they rate themselves. Wouldn't it be good to know that people think more highly of you than you think of yourself? Wouldn't it give you more confidence in what you do?

2. CLARIFY IMPORTANT AND NECESSARY LEADERSHIP BEHAVIORS

If I asked you what behaviors constitute good leadership, could you list 62 behaviors off the top of your head? Of course not. We are able to ask that many behaviors in the business leader version of our 360 survey. The very act of asking these questions educates people about what is important to an organization. In addition, it allows us to see that you are not putting too much effort into an area of strength to cover up a weak behavior. For example, a manager who fails to support the basic needs of his team may be focusing only on business results to please management in order to compensate for this deficit. And he or she may be over-striving for results, thinking that getting results is enough to sustain leadership.

3. MEASURES "HOW" THINGS ARE DONE, NOT "WHAT" IS DONE.

Which do you think is better, doing something the right way, even if it may result in failure, or just getting the job done, regardless of how it is done? Or, to put it more succinctly, process or result? For many years, business life has known leaders with the "it is better to get results at all costs" approach. There are still leaders who follow a similar strategy in many companies. However, with the great transformation in the world, results obtained without complying with the standards of quality and safety in processes (wearing an employee down mentally and psychologically is also a safety problem) are no longer accepted as an indicator of good leadership.

Therefore, the answer to my initial question is "the right processes lead to the right results." Therefore, 360-degree feedback surveys serve as a turner paper for leaders to focus on the right process and get results.

4. ENCOURAGES DIALOG

Dialogue is the first step in moving from measurement to improvement. The combination of self-awareness, clarified behavior and the feedback process provides a natural opportunity for dialogue. Ideally, this dialogue begins with a candid conversation between the survey manager and the leader being surveyed where strengths are highlighted and weaknesses are explored. The dialog should continue with a planning dialog between the surveyed leader and the leader's supervisor where development goals and plans are agreed upon. Where appropriate, the dialog can also involve coworkers and employees.

I get frustrated when people ask me vague general questions. It is easier to answer when they have a more specific question. Similarly, if you were to ask an employee a general question such as "How is my leadership?", the most likely answer would be an evasive "Good" after some mumbling. People respond better if you give them guidelines they can use. Whichever topic you want to go deeper into, the behaviors described in the questionnaire provide enough data to establish a positive dialogue.

5. IMPROVES WORKING RELATIONSHIPS

One of the vital behaviors in a relationship is reciprocity - a mutually beneficial exchange. Annual performance reviews are often a one-sided superior/subordinate relationship. Employees don't feel it's their place to say anything to their managers, so they keep quiet. By incorporating the 360-degree feedback approach into this one-sided relationship, we create another channel for mutual communication.

6. ENCOURAGES PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

Leaders are unlikely to get where they are in an organization by acting randomly. Leaders often have initiative and passion as a natural element or they would not have gotten where they are. This leadership journey naturally leads to self-awareness of their strengths, weaknesses and appropriate leadership behaviors. However, honest and reliable feedback is necessary to test their perceptions of themselves, recognize previously overlooked strengths and uncover perceptual blind spots. When they are provided with easy data-driven and digestible areas to examine, leaders will naturally hold on to them to continue their development.

Leadership development in the workplace is about effective individual contributors becoming effective managers, effective managers becoming effective senior managers and effective senior managers becoming effective board members. Employers who offer more personal and leadership development opportunities will retain more talent than employers who expect their employees to seek personal development opportunities outside the organization. In summary, a 360 leadership assessment provides leaders with the necessary elements for personal development.

7. INCREASES ACCOUNTABILITY

The enemy of accountability is uncertainty. The more uncertain something is, the less likely someone is to take responsibility for it. And the way coworkers talk to each other in passing is: "yes, I'll take care of it". A simple answer like that becomes confusion for coworkers trying to figure out what "handle" and "it" mean. You can't tell someone to "be a better leader" or "demonstrate company values" without specifying exactly what that means.

This is where a 360-degree feedback survey comes in handy. Instead of vague concepts, it allows you to make a legitimate judgment about whether a leader is demonstrating a behavior they should be demonstrating. So you can hold someone accountable for those behaviors. The best part is that if you make these behaviors clear enough, you take a huge burden off your shoulders and actually create a legitimate basis for the leader to hold themselves responsible and accountable.

8. IMPROVES PERFORMANCE

All the previous points actually lead to this conclusion, arguably the most important benefit of 360-degree feedback is to improve performance. 360-degree feedback is one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal to improve relationships, increase accountability and provide clarity on how to improve performance. It's not a magic bullet, but many organizations misrepresent it, which can make things worse than they were before. But our internal research tells us that a good 360-degree feedback program is associated with an increase in employee engagement and performance. When done well, 360-degree feedback reviews can be something employees look forward to instead of dread. If you frame it right, if you communicate it right, you become a good business partner because of this simple tool that you give people for dramatic growth and development.