The popularity of 360 assessments seems to come and go in the corporate world, going in and out of fashion like a 90s trend. When done right 360s can provide a valuable and rich source of feedback for your employees who are able to gain valuable insights (perhaps for the first time) into how others truly experience them. However, they also come with a warning. Handled badly and they can cause damage, breaking down trust and seeding doubt into work relationships.

If you are considering using 360s in your organisation, read on for how to ensure you reap the rewards and avoid the pitfalls.

Choose your Tool Carefully

Much of the critique around 360s comes from data on assessor bias that shows that individuals are pretty bad at judging the skills of others. Our assessments of others are often heavily influenced by our judgements of ourselves, and our overall rating of others can reveal more about us than the people we are assessing (people tend to be low, medium or high raters across the board when assessing others). Competency based 360s are particularly problematic as most of the assessors have an incomplete picture of the skills of the person they are rating. For example, someone could be asked to rate their leader for strategic thinking capability but have no interaction with them on strategic issues or know anything about their thinking process.

In our 360s we use values to see how each assessor experiences that person in the workplace, without making an assessment about their skills/competencies. Values based 360s are grounded in positive psychology and that means there is no good or bad result it is simply the values that others are experiencing. This works to give the person being assessed a complete picture of how they are showing up in the workplace without judgements being made about their skill level in different areas. This is particularly helpful for leaders where the dyadic nature of the leader-follower relationship means that perceptions of how the leader shows up are particularly important to the impact that they can make as a leader. With leadership, perception is reality. If I don’t perceive my leader as being trustworthy, as a follower, I am unlikely to open-up to them – regardless of whether they actually are trustworthy or not. By giving the leaders 360 information on how others perceive them we can then work with them to support them to show up in a more authentic way that aligns with their actual values.

Debrief Properly

360s are most damaging when the results are given with little to no debriefing and support. Individuals are left to make sense of their results and process the feedback on their own. Every 360 should be accompanied by a 60-90 minute debrief session conducted by a certified professional. The debrief process allows the person to fully understand their results and consider how they integrate the findings into their development plans. If uncomfortable issues do come up in the 360, having a guide there to support them will make the processing of any negative feelings that arise easier to manage.

Having an experienced debriefer can make all the difference of whether it is a positive experience or not. Even when the individual is facing harsh critique a skilled coach can make it a positive experience. When we are faced with a harsh report there are several techniques that we use to soften the impact. This includes an extended intro before the results are shared focused on exploring the leaders' strengths and challenges. By deep-diving into these issues we can usually explore the sensitive topics before they are revealed in the report. In cases where self-awareness is not high and the individual cannot identify their challenges we move with care and reveal the essential feedback, without showing some of the more sensitive data.

Support with Coaching

When done in isolation, studies show that 360s can have minimal impact on employee performance. Impact is increased when the 360 is supported with coaching focused on supporting the individual with increased self-awareness and implementing behaviour changes. Coaching can help to overcome some of the issues typically associated with 360s – processing feedback information, integrating the feedback into the participants sense of self and translating the feedback to become a more effective leader. With a guide through the process and someone to hold leaders accountable they report overall greater satisfaction with the 360 process and more significant behaviour changes.

Voluntary/ Mandatory?

There is much debate on whether 360s should be voluntary or made mandatory. Those in the mandatory camp argue that if 360s are an integrated part of performance management then they should be treated like other performance interventions and applied equally to everyone in the target group. While on face value this makes sense, given the nature of 360s (the huge opportunity for upside and downside) the implementation needs to be more carefully considered. I would argue for voluntary participation of 360s at ALL LEVELS. So, everyone in the target group has the opportunity to take part and it made expressly clear that it is voluntary. (see below for times when people may be actively discouraged from taking part).

Voluntary participation also applies to the assessors in the 360. We recommend sharing the 360 with around 40% more people than needed to ensure there are enough responses. Sometimes HR or leadership want to determine who the assessors for each person should be. We strongly recommend against this and push for the person themselves to remain in control of the process. We want the individual to be bought into the results of the 360 and if it has been shared with people whose opinions they don't value it is easier for them to be dismissive of the results.

Confidentiality

Companies will differ on this, but we operate with full confidentiality on the 360 reports. This means that we don't share final reports with HR or Line Managers. Why do we do this? For us, the 360 process is for development. It isn't a tool that should be used directly for hiring/firing and promotion decisions. We suggest to participants that they can share their report with their line manager, but it is important they are in control of that process.

Following a 360 process in an organisation we share themes with HR and leadership as well as summaries of the top observed and requested values in the group. The results are used to inform leadership development.

If line managers want more involvement in the process, then we can conduct pre and post assessment calls with the person being assessed, their line manager and the 360 assessor/coach. The coach will guide the conversation and get the two parties fully aligned. Topics that can be discussed in these sessions include – needs and expectations of both parties; setting shared goals for the persons development; discussing any contentious issues; 360 key takeaways, interpretations and actions; setting an agreement for ongoing support for the individual.

When Not to Use

There are some clear cases when 360s are not appropriate:

1. When someone is very new to a role. Give them time to settle in and for people to fully experience their leadership before asking for assessments. At least 6 months is usually recommended.

2. Low organisational trust and psychological safety. If the organisation culture is experiencing high levels of dysfunction and low levels of trust, 360s are not recommended. There may be doubts about the promise of confidentiality and more false positive ratings will ensure.

3. Poor performance. If a leader is not performing well – whether this is an ongoing issue or a slump in performance – a 360 could work to demotivate and discourage that person even more. It may be used by HR or their line manager as a way to avoid having a difficult conversation. Don’t do the 360 and give clear honest and compassionate feedback instead.

Contact us to understand more about how we approach 360s, plans and packages.