360-Degree Feedback for Leadership Development
By holding up the mirror, 360-Degree Feedback assessments allow leaders to see themselves as others see them. While successful leaders often have a high degree of self-awareness, the unfortunate truth is that, for many leaders, self-ratings are the least accurate. People rate themselves on their intentions, and others rate them on their behavior. While sometimes these are aligned, oftentimes they are not, leading people to have blind spots. These are weaknesses that everyone else knows the person has, but the person does not see.
What is a 360-Degree Feedback Assessment?
Whether you want to enhance the leadership skills of your high potentials or help a struggling leader get back on track, 360-Degree Feedback surveys are a powerful development tool. 360-Degree Feedback, also known as multi-rater feedback, is a widely adopted talent development tool used by most of the Fortune 500, but also by small- to mid-size firms for personal, professional, and leadership development.
The purpose of a 360 assessment is to provide a well-rounded and holistic view of an individual’s strengths, areas for improvement, and potential blind spots to ensure they are an effective leader. Unlike traditional performance reviews, where feedback typically comes from a single supervisor or manager, 360-degree feedback involves gathering anonymous feedback from peers, subordinates, clients, supervisors, and themselves. The assessment is coupled with a development plan process that provides individuals with a comprehensive assessment of their competencies and behaviors to better understand their leadership skills and performance.
The Value of 360-Degree Feedback for Leadership Development
Nobody’s perfect; including the leaders you’ve entrusted to operate your company. However, ineffective work behaviors are hard to change if you don’t recognize them. In fact, without accurate and candid feedback from an objective third party, it’s very hard to bring about the kind of change that increases measurable effectiveness. Period. With 360-Degree Feedback from Chapman & Co. Leadership Institute, we hold up the mirror to leaders so they can identify the following:
- Where they stand on the key competencies that matter most for success.
- How they are perceived by and impact others around them.
- Clear strengths and areas for development.
- Potential derailing behaviors.
- A foundation for a robust growth and development process.
With Chapman & Co. Leadership Institute’s 360-Degree Feedback, you will receive:
Anonymous Competency-Based Feedback
- Helps leaders understand where they stack up on competencies that matter most for success.
- Shows leaders how they are perceived by and impact their teammates.
Feedback from Multiple Groups
- Provides a birds-eye view of how different groups of coworkers within the organization view them.
- While the leader's ratings stand alone, ratings from peers, direct reports, and other coworkers are aggregated into those groups so the data from any one person is anonymous.
A Leadership Development Plan
- Highlights areas for further development, as well as strengths.
- Uncovers any serious issues.
- Starts long-term development plans.
What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
What makes one effective early on in their career are not the same skills that make them effective as they rise through the ranks to more senior levels in the organization.
Early on, competencies such as Driving Results and Being Action Oriented are important for success, but as one moves up, other competencies become more important, and those early competencies sometimes become less important.
It can be incredibly insightful for a leader to learn that they are over-relying on those competencies that got them into a leadership role in the first place, and not shifting to the competencies that will lead to success today, like Collaboration, Managing Vision, and Purpose, and Strategic Agility.
How Does 360-Degree Feedback Work?
As part of the 360-Feedback process, your leaders receive anonymous feedback from a variety of raters, which can include: their leader, peers, direct reports, customers, and others. The person also rates themselves on the 360-degree review, which allows them to compare their self-perception to the ratings of others.
The Value of Multi-Rater Feedback
Why is it important to get ratings from different rater groups? Some leaders manage different groups quite differently. Some manage up to their leader really well but can be quite harsh to their direct reports. Others are fully supportive of their team but don’t connect as well to their peers.
The value of the 360-feedback process is that leaders get a birds-eye view of how different groups within the organization view them. While the leader's ratings stand alone, ratings from peers, direct reports, and other coworkers are aggregated into those groups so the data from any one person is anonymous.
Our 360-Degree Review Program
We leverage a variety of tools to best meet the needs of our clients. These include the new suite of 360 tools from TalentTelligent and Korn Ferry’s widely known KF360. Based on 30 years of research in leadership development and employee engagement, these offerings cover the spectrum of competencies key to success in managerial and executive roles.
Our online, fully customizable surveys measure your leaders across many competencies, which cover the gamut of leadership levels across your organization. Since the surveys are fully customizable, organizations can choose to select competencies or may select a subset relevant to the role or organization. The TalentTelligent framework even breaks down the competencies by level based on what research has shown is most critical for each level (Leader, Manager, Individual Contributor).
Another key feature of our 360 survey tools is that not only is the skill level of the person measured but raters are asked to indicate how important each competency is to the success of this individual. This allows the person to really hone in on those competencies that will give them the biggest bang for the buck from a development perspective. Finally, open-ended questions allow raters to put in specific comments regarding strengths and areas for development.
Chapman & Co. Leadership Institute can manage and deliver 360-degree feedback using our staff of highly trained Ph.D. consultants, or we can teach you to manage the process in-house.
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