We run our highly effective 360 feedback programmes for individual leaders and for whole leadership teams, often Executive Teams.
Instead of distributing anonymous online 360 feedback questionnaires, we believe in promoting transparency and authenticity by asking people to own their feedback. We therefore ask each client to nominate a small group of interviewees – 5-7 people (direct reports, line manager, peers etc) to give him/her feedback. We then interview these people for an hour to explore their views and produce a report for each interviewee (approved by the interviewee with his/her name on it) which is given to the client.
Based on our many years of experience of being involved in feedback processes, we have found that, if the process is anonymous, the person receiving feedback spends an inordinate amount of time trying to guess who said what and why. If all feedback is owned and acknowledged, this allows the recipient to discuss each individual report with the interviewee, to understand how certain issues can be resolved or relationships improved. This is far more constructive than anonymous feedback which gives the recipient no opportunity to put things right, as s/he does not know who made a particular comment.
Our whole feedback process is very constructive and developmental. We encourage interviewees to be very candid but, when we write up the feedback, we use constructive language which gets the point across clearly, yet in a balanced fashion (+/-). Through our conversations with the interviewees, we help them to articulate their thoughts, as well as providing practical suggestions as to what improvements would look like. This way, we will also support the feedback recipient in choosing how to address each issue.