Handbook of Strategic 360 Feedback Book Summary - Handbook of Strategic 360 Feedback Book explained in key points

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Handbook of Strategic 360 Feedback summary

Name: Handbook of Strategic 360 Feedback
Rating: 3.7 (136 reviews)
Author: Allan H. Church, David W. Bracken, John W. Fleenor, Dale S. Rose

Allan H. Church David W. Bracken John W. Fleenor Dale S. Rose

Useful Tools and Strategies to Optimize Performance Management

3.7 (136 ratings)

19 mins

Brief summary

'Handbook of Strategic 360 Feedback' by Church, Bracken, Fleenor, and Rose is a comprehensive guide to designing and implementing effective 360 feedback programs for improving leadership and organizational performance.

Topics

Social Psychology Talent Development Work Culture Teamwork Leadership Goals Coaching

Table of Contents

Handbook of Strategic 360 Feedback
Summary of 9 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 9

What’s in it for me? Understand the value of 360 feedback and what happens if you don’t implement it correctly.

Feedback is an integral part of our lives. It affects everything from raising children to helping employees grow in the workplace. It’s no surprise that the act of collecting and delivering feedback in organizations has developed into a formal process integral to human resource and management practices.

Today, 360 Feedback, or the collection of information on employee behavior through multiple evaluators including clients, bosses, and subordinates, is a routine part of individual and organizational development. Increasingly, it’s also being used for decision-making. With insights from leading practitioners across the field, this Blink lays out the best practices for you to reap the rewards of the 360 Feedback processes.

When Feedback Works

At a large General Mills manufacturing facility, corporate leadership wanted to set some strong goals in the areas of innovation and product improvement. To do this, they wanted to identify people who displayed the talent and behaviors necessary to advance their goals.

Having heard about the idea of 360 Feedback, the organization decided to conduct an experiment using 140 employees and giving them both 360 Feedback and the standard top-down performance appraisal.

At the end of a three-year period, they’d learned a few things. First of all, top-down appraisals tended to focus on key performance indicators and past performance, whereas 360 Feedback focused on behaviors and competencies present in each employee. Secondly, the two forms of rating often didn’t agree—an employee may rate high in 360 Feedback and low in appraisal, or vice versa. And finally, supervisors and peers see very different things.

As a result, the study found that both forms of feedback offered value. We’ll dig into the specific value of 360 Feedback in sections two through five – but first let’s discuss the conditions under which 360 Feedback works.

To be successful with 360 feedback, you have to have the right organization and the right parameters.

An organization is ready to implement 360 Feedback when there is a culture of learning, trust, comfort with feedback, and low competitiveness and ego. If your organization meets these conditions, it has a high likelihood of experiencing success using the 360 Feedback method.

However, there are still some pitfalls to avoid. Because the feedback is given by peers, you have to make sure everything is handled anonymously. Additionally, you want to be careful about informing your raters – people you’ve chosen to give feedback – of the goals associated with data from the feedback. This is to prevent people from rigging the game by being strategic or deceptive about their feedback.

If you can create fairness in your feedback collection methods, you’ll have a better chance of collecting pure, useful data.

Now that we’ve talked about the conditions for success, let’s get into the benefits of 360 Feedback.

Talent Management

360 Feedback is especially valuable when managing the future of your talent pool.

One company decided to implement 360 Feedback to analyze the potential between two of its employees, Robert and Amanda. Based on the top-down appraisal, Robert had far more management potential than Amanda. He’d been around longer, always performed well, and was reliable. Amanda had a good rating, but she was newer and had not yet proven herself as a leader. In fact, her manager credited her with growth potential, but didn’t see any future for her as a leader.

Leadership Development

Because 360 Feedback can be very time-consuming, you want to make sure not to fatigue your raters. To prevent this, be very purposeful in how and why you’re using feedback for leadership development.

360 Feedback is most useful for leadership development in three specific situations.

Team Performance

Back in 2011, Whirlpool began experiencing reduced profit margins and falling stock prices as a result of international competition. In response, they realized they needed to create a high-performing team of executives who could become a powerful force for change and innovation.

To create this team, they implemented a 360 Feedback process that evaluated the individuals on the team as well as overall team performance. What they found was that the group wasn’t acting as a team. Individuals performed their functions independently of the overall goal. Problems that could be solved within the team were taken to the leader, slowing down that leader’s ability to move forward.

Organizational Development

360 Feedback can help you drive change in your organization.

Essentially, feedback at the organizational level is still feedback at the individual level. Rather than trying to change the culture to shape the individuals, you focus on the individuals to change the culture.

Rater Ambiguity

The flaw in any system is the human element. 360 Feedback makes use of data from people, or raters, working in different roles around the person or situation being analyzed.

Rater performance can make or break your 360 feedback process. If you start receiving flawed data or information that seems inflated or lacking in variance, the problem may be ambiguity. Your raters may not understand the rating scale. They may not see the purpose in or understand what you’re measuring.

Bias and Confidentiality

Trust is essential for the success of any feedback system. When it comes to 360 Feedback, gender bias can erode data, and confidentiality breaches can do large-scale damage to your organization.

First, let’s talk about bias. Unfortunately, there is no proven framework for using 360 Feedback in a way that eliminates gender bias, so it’s the job of leadership to regularly assess their programs for flaws that could lead to biased data.

New Analytics

One of the previously mentioned pitfalls of qualitative data like verbatim comments from the rater is that they could expose the rater’s identity. With modern Natural Language Processing, you can have quotes and comments analyzed in a way that allows you to get the value from the qualitative data while retaining your rater’s anonymity.

Another new tool is linkage analytics. This framework makes use of 360 Feedback data to link employee sentiments with actual results to predict things like employee turnover and internal conflicts so you can prevent those things from occurring.

Final Summary

If your organization is growth-minded and has a culture of cooperation over competition, 360 Feedback can be a useful tool to integrate throughout your systems. It can help you manage talent and teams, develop leadership, and grow your organization. Be sure to watch for pitfalls like ambiguity, bias, and confidentiality problems. And make use of tools like natural language processing to help you get the most value out of your feedback data.

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What is Handbook of Strategic 360 Feedback about?

The Handbook of Strategic 360 Feedback is a guide to the pros and cons of 360 Feedback, including detailed guidance on how to implement the process as well as how to avoid pitfalls such as unconscious bias or people who try to game the system.

Handbook of Strategic 360 Feedback Review

Handbook of Strategic 360 Feedback (2019) is a comprehensive guide to implementing effective 360 feedback processes in organizations. Here's why this book is worth reading:

It provides practical strategies and tools for designing and administering 360 feedback programs, allowing organizations to enhance leadership development and performance management.
The book offers insights from leading experts in the field, drawing on their knowledge and experience to deliver valuable perspectives.
With its thorough exploration of various aspects of 360 feedback, such as best practices, evaluation, and application, it offers a wealth of knowledge that is both informative and engaging.

Who should read Handbook of Strategic 360 Feedback?

Company leaders
HR managers
Team leaders

About the Author

The Handbook of Strategic 360 Feedback brings together 30 expert practitioners, researchers, scientists, and consultants to contribute research and insight on the design, implementation, and management of the 360 Degree Feedback process.

Categories with Handbook of Strategic 360 Feedback

Communication Skills Corporate Culture Management & Leadership Psychology

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