360-degree feedback is a highly effective development tool that provides people with feedback from their manager, colleagues, subordinates and others who know them well, to help them understand their strengths and weaknesses better.
Typically, it involves a confidential assessment of a person’s skills in an online survey. In some cases, it may be conducted through confidential interviews with senior leaders, peers, subordinates, direct reports and other stakeholders by an experienced coach.
Unfortunately, constructive feedback can be hard to come by. Managers and executives are often busy and tactically focused, which means that time and attention to giving careful and thorough feedback on how their people are doing is easily overlooked.
Benefits of 360-degree feedback
Many organisations have recognised that 360-degree survey are a powerful way to help people perform better and realise their full potential. They enable individuals and groups to develop capability because they:
- Raise the self-awareness of participants
- Stimulate self-improvement for job and career success
- Create a climate for honest development conversations
- Help teams learn how to work together more effectively
- Determine common development needs across groups.
Building Leadership Capability
To deliver valuable feedback, a 360-degree survey must contain questions directly related to skills that lead to success at work. Fortunately, you can choose an instrument that best matches your feedback needs:
- Korn Ferry 360 (KF360) – gives a comprehensive view of a person’s capability across four essential leadership domains.
- KF360 Pulse – provides a quick, focused and powerful assessment to illustrate a person’s development progress in a complete 360-degree review.
- Agile Leader 360 – measures the agility required to lead change and transformation in disruptive environments successfully.
- Emotional and Social Competency Inventory (ESCI) – illustrates how a person demonstrates four distinct areas of emotional intelligence.
- Life Styles Inventory (LSI) – helps individuals understand their thinking and behavioural styles and the impact they have on others.
Group Reporting
We recommend aggregating 360 data for groups to identify common strengths and capability gaps.
Whilst no individual data is included, it is a powerful way to identify overall capability gaps. Set in the context of business strategy, it enables organisations to predict the group’s likely business contribution and to respond to overall development needs.
Driving Development
LDN International delivers a proven methodology to identify a person’s best development opportunities and define a path to improvement, plus a robust selection of templates to use throughout the progress.
Insights gained from 360-degree feedback are converted into action to create positive change. However, self-monitoring on the leadership development journey is rarely sufficient, and some people may require follow-up meetings or coaching to sustain momentum.