Alexandre Diard Today, businesses often focus heavily on their employees. This raises several questions:
- What can we do to increase employee motivation?
- How can employees develop new skills?
- Should we offer more training?
While these are important questions, what about the manager? Developing a manager’s skills is just as crucial for their personal job satisfaction and for their team’s success.
Managers often believe they know themselves well. They claim to understand their management style and behavior at work. This is where the utility of a tool like 360 feedback comes in. The results of a 360 feedback can be a real eye-opener.
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What is a 360 degree feedback?
This approach involves evaluating a manager by their professional circle, offering a chance to discover new aspects of their personality by identifying unknown strengths and weaknesses. It highlights discrepancies between the manager’s self-perception and how colleagues see them. This powerful tool accelerates a manager’s professional development, fostering self-awareness and prompting introspection. Analyzing the feedback helps managers focus on areas for improvement and develop optimized managerial practices.
360 Feedback is essentially a commented report comparing the manager’s self-image with that of their surroundings. It objectively assesses the effectiveness of the management style. At PeopleSpheres, you can customize 360 feedback through the Interviews/Goals module—a software designed to increase motivation and performance within a company. We highly recommend implementing it to advance your organization.
Some insights on 360 degree feedback
Feedback: a source of progress for the manager
Giving and receiving feedback are enriching management tools that should not be overlooked in a company. Whether professionally or personally, positive feedback helps an individual correct their course. When communicated well and accepted, feedback can create a snowball effect. The individual feels more listened to and valued, boosting their motivation, confidence, and performance.
Implementing a feedback culture in a company offers strategic advantages and promotes well-being at work. This culture should be shared by all professional environment players. In the context of 360 feedback, a manager looking to improve and develop their managerial skills must be open to self-reflection:
- Do my employees see me as a good manager?
- Is my management style suited to the company’s reality?
- Should I change my methods?
- What image do I project to my collaborators?
- Am I liked?
- Am I fulfilling my managerial responsibilities?
If a manager wants to develop their leadership and achieve optimized performance goals, they should consider 360 feedback—a powerful management tool promising very promising results.
Who are the evaluators?
The uniqueness and advantage of this evaluation involve many collaborators. The 360 feedback is a “multi-evaluator” questionnaire that invites colleagues, clients, partners, suppliers, and subordinates to participate in evaluating the manager.
The manager can select the different individuals involved in the process. Lastly, the 360 feedback evaluation remains anonymous to maintain the confidentiality of the results. With the software offered at PeopleSpheres, your data is protected, ensuring that participants’ responses remain unseen. Typically, the results are addressed to the evaluated person, the HR department, or a coach.
When should the evaluation take place?
A 360 feedback requires the attention of many individuals over a short period. This procedure can be difficult and costly to implement. It is often recommended to seek external support, such as human resources consultants or a coach
360 degree feedback & Customizing evaluated elements
The idea of 360 feedback is to evaluate key competencies deemed necessary for a manager. The questionnaire offers flexibility in choosing questions, but it is advised to develop an evaluation grid of 50 to 100 questions. Typically, questions are personalized based on the industry, the manager’s role, and the company culture. The competencies studied are operational and behavioral. In the following paragraphs, we invite you to look more closely at some elements that may be requested during a 360 feedback questionnaire.
Hard Skills
A manager’s knowledge involves their expertise in their field and their familiarity with managerial tools. The know-how refers to the operational competencies of the manager. In this case, several sub-competencies are evaluated:
- Can the manager perform their tasks correctly?
- Are they able to lead and coordinate their team?
- Can they clearly share the company’s strategic vision?
- Do they react promptly to complex situations?
- Are the set objectives understandable and effectively shared?
Mastering these technical competencies is essential for the strategic plan of the company. A manager considered to be performing well must meet these operational qualities.
Soft Skills
While a manager is expected to be an expert in their field to be credible and appreciated by their employees, they must also demonstrate emotional intelligence.
Soft skills are a more delicate characteristic to evaluate. Unlike hard skills, which can be tested through technical questionnaires and situational assessments, evaluating a manager’s soft skills may involve reaching out to their professional surroundings. A manager is appreciated when they can give time to their team members, placing employee fulfillment at the heart of their managerial practices. They should be benevolent and actively listen to the concerns of those around them. As a coach and mentor, they value team spirit and consider collective intelligence essential for the company’s success.
These examples of desired behaviors can be elements analyzed during a 360 feedback. Soft skills are essential human competencies. A manager can also be evaluated on their ability to promote team cohesion and manage conflicts effectively.
Leadership
Finally, 360 feedback will also test a manager’s leadership ability. They will be judged on their decision-making capabilities. They must be able to influence their employees in the company’s interest. Strong leadership often leads to significant mobilization of collaborators.
We have chosen to present the questionnaire in three levels of analysis: knowledge & skills, soft skills, and leadership. What we have described is just an example. It is important to remember that if you decide to undertake a 360 Feedback, the questionnaire can be composed as requested.
How Does 360 degree feedback work?
360 degree feedback is primarily a collective effort. First, to ensure the proper implementation of the evaluation tool, it is crucial to clarify the desired attitude among stakeholders. This evaluation aims to be constructive, where transparency and benevolence are expected. Indeed, the effectiveness of this evaluation relies on the sincere participation of the evaluators. The 360 process seeks maximum objectivity. The feedback provided by each collaborator contributes to the progression and development of new competencies for the manager.
Self-evaluation & evaluation by evaluators
Once the method and conduct codes are shared by all process participants, the evaluation can begin. First, the evaluated must fill out their responses to the questionnaire while remaining as honest as possible. The evaluators, in turn, must honestly answer the questions on a similar grid received by the manager.
Analysis of results & debriefing
This final step is crucial because it is the moment when the manager can finally learn about the results attributed to them. Whether you use a 9-box or bell curve to identify low and high performers, understanding and interpretation of the results must be carefully studied.
The goal is to highlight not only their managerial strengths but also their points for improvement. It is important to remember that 360 degree feedback is not just an exchange of feedback but an opportunity for the manager to step back and establish a concrete action plan based on their improvement areas so they can respond more positively. Overall, feedback significantly improves retention.
With 360 feedback, it’s an opportunity for a manager to step out of their comfort zone, surpass themselves, and develop new managerial techniques.
360 feedback is also a moment of recognition for those who took the time to respond to the questionnaire. The success of such an evaluation relies on the serious participation of collaborators.
Finally, a well-conducted 360 degree feedback will lead to relevant and formative results. The idea is not to destabilize the evaluated but rather to enlighten them on their improvement levers.
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