So, you’d like some feedback; like to understand more about how others see you?
Or you think that feedback might be good for you – kind of like medicine?
Or you’ve decided to embrace your leadership development and are keen to access whatever development tools are available?
Whatever, your reasons for considering a 360 degree feedback process, it’s important to consider whether 360 degree feedback is a useful tool for you right now?
So before you proceed, lets ask four simple questions:
- Is there relative stability in your team; have you worked with your peers, subordinates and mangers for a reasonable period of time (say at least 6 months)?
- Is the team reasonably functional? Or are there major on-going conflicts that are impacting on relationships?
- Are you ready for feedback: are you in a place where you can be curious and interested in others’ feedback. Or can you feel your defences rising, just thinking about it?
- Are you a volunteer for feedback or do you feel pushed into the process?
So, your team is relatively stable and functional, and you are ready for and volunteering for feedback, then lets begin.
About the ArbSam 360 Question Bank
The ArbSam 360 Question Bank is a little different to many other commercially available 360 degree feedback tools in several ways:
- With this tool, you select which questions you want to ask.
- You can choose how to gather the feedback – face to face via conversation (recommended) or anonymously via a form.
- It’s a free tool that you administer yourself: there is no third party managing the process and no third party invoice!
So why do we encourage you to gather your feedback face-to-face? Well good feedback is about strengthening relationships; it’s about building awareness and reaching a shared understanding. In our experience, participants who choose to gather their feedback this way report value and impact way beyond their expectations.
However, one way feedback has its place. If may be a better option if:
- the relationship is not mature,
- if raters are likely to be shy of telling you to your face how they really feel, or,
- if you’re trying to get a sense of how a large number of raters feel about an aspect of your behaviour and plan to follow-up with a conversation.
So let’s get started: Choosing your raters…
The first step is to decide who you want feedback from. The term “360 feedback” refers to feedback from above (your leader or manager/s), from the side (peers, key stakeholders, others you work with in an equal relationship), and from below (people who report to you). It’s up to you to decide how many people you want to collect feedback from in each category. And if a category isn’t relevant, then that’s fine too.
The best piece of advice in choosing your raters is: choose people whose opinion you respect; whose input you really want!
Choosing the questions
The ArbSam question bank includes 63 questions, categorised via the NHS Leadership Qualities Framework. You now need to choose those questions that are most relevant to you; the questions you want to use to seek feedback. To help do this:
- Consider your leadership objectives
- Ask: what do I most want feedback about?
- Select a first cut of the questions and answer them yourself first, checking for relevance.
- Have someone else (partner, supervisor, coach) give you their perspective about how useful your questions are?
Now it’s time to access the ArbSam Question Bank. Once you click into the Question Bank (attached to the email), the first step is to save a copy of the word document on your computer and edit it so that only the questions you want remain. The easiest way to do this is just to delete all the rows that contain questions that you don’t want. Aim to end up with 15 to 20 questions only.
Getting the feedback: Going the face-to-face route
If you’ve chosen to seek your feedback face-to-face, then the next step is to ask your raters if they are happy to be involved and offer them your edited questionnaire (showing only your 15 to 20 questions) to look at before you chat. Make a time to chat with them (30 minutes is enough time to begin with) and then dive in!
When it’s time for your chat, prepare yourself by with the following reflection.
- I may get positive and negative feedback: my aim is to remain curious and open about all feedback.
- I may need to ask questions to understand my feedback: my aim is to ask questions in a way which encourages my feedback giver to be open.
- I may feel defensive during the discussion. If this happens, my aim is to suspend my defensiveness and use curiosity to find out as much as I possibly can about their perspective.
- I may get feedback that doesn’t make sense to me. If I do, my aim is to remember that the feedback is representative of the feedback giver’s perspective. It’s important that I understand that they have that perspective, even though I may not feel it is true about me.
- I may need to reassure my feedback giver that the feedback is building our relationship. My aim during the conversation is to build my relationship with the feedback giver.
During the feedback discussion, take as many notes as possible and feel free to explore issues or ask further questions to discover as much as possible. But resist any temptation to argue or disagree about the feedback, or to interrogate or grill your feedback giver.
And remember to thank your feedback giver. They have given you their time and energy.
Going the one-way feedback route
If you choose the one-way feedback method, then you need to prepare your surveys and determine the best way of collecting the completed forms. You also need to decide important it is that your raters’ responses are anonymous and how you will achieve this and communicate about it. Finally you need to create a summary report that you can use to review your feedback. So key steps are:
- Prepare your surveys: Print off enough copies of your personalised version (with your 15 and 20 questions) and mark them so you know which rating group they are going to (leader/manager, peers, others, staff who report to you).
- Decide how to collect the completed forms: One option is to ask your raters to pop the completed form in a pre-addressed envelope and post it to you. Or you may ask someone else to administer the survey for you, collected the completed forms and creating the summary report (see step 4).
- Managing raters’ desire for anonymous responses: Chat with your raters about how the surveys will be collected and collated and what action you will take to ensure their responses are anonymous (pre-addressed envelopes or an administrator) and check if they are comfortable with the proposed method.
- Creating a summary report: You, or your administrator, can create a summary report by simply copying all of your raters’ answers onto one form. Use a different colour for each of the rater categories.
Making good use of your feedback
Now we have reached the best part of the process: actually reflecting on and utilising the feedback. It’s a good idea to get some help with analysing and considering your feedback so ask your reflective partner or another support person to be involved.
Use the following questions as a guide to creating a plan to utilise your feedback.
- What are the key messages / pieces of information in the feedback?
- What do I need to reflect upon / get more info about etc
- Where do I need to grow / where do I need to self- acknowledge
- What are my two or three key learning’s?
- What follow-up actions do I want to be visible to key people?
- Who do I need to thank?
Remain aware of your state of mind as you work through your feedback. Use the following reflection questions to help ensure you remain in an optimally functional state while reviewing your feedback.
- I may get positive and negative feedback: my aim is to remain curious and open about all feedback.
- I may feel defensive reviewing my feedback. If this happens, my aim is to suspend my defensiveness and use curiosity to explore the feedback.
- I may get feedback that doesn’t make sense to me. If I do, my aim is to remember that the feedback is representative of the feedback giver’s perspective. It’s important that I understand that they have that perspective, even though I may not feel it is true about me.
- This feedback may well be just the beginning of a conversation. What future discussion could/should I have with my feedback giver. How can I ask further questions to understand my feedback. How can I build and strengthen our relationship through further conversation?
- How can I thank my feedback givers and let them know I have appreciated and utilised their feedback?
Copyright: Sue Sampson 2011
