360 Degree Feedback—The Cultural Approach

When people don't understand their situation, how can they possibly do the best job? Good feedback tells people what's really going on.

Two Opportunities to Improve Decisions
Decisions aren't made in a vacuum. It's the situation that mostly tells people what to do. While people never have all the information about the immediate problem, you can do a lot to increase everyone's background information. When you do, people invariably make better decisions. This background or contextual information covers two areas:

1. Interpersonal Relationships—how people are experienced by others, and the effect they have on others and on other departments.
   
2. Operational Areas—information on new products, strategies, customers, politics, other departments, company-wide initiatives, and finances.

This newsletter looks at the first area, Interpersonal Relationships. A future newsletter will discuss the second.

People Don't Always Know What's Going On
Most people try to do the right thing, fitting into situations as best they can. But they can't fit in to what they don't know. Work situations are mostly filled with directives from above, requests from below, customer orders, new products and sales initiatives, inter-departmental requests, and the usual steady stream of incoming problems. This information is not calibrated and finely tuned. It is usually a little messy. To complicate things, people add their personal filters and needs.

Fortunately work situations are kept on track through constant feedback from systems and people. Unfortunately at the interpersonal level, this feedback is often unreliable. Work associates may be reluctant to say what they truly think, or discuss how they experience others, or the effects people have on them or their work groups. When a person responds, even with the best intentions, to this incomplete information, their actions will likely miss the mark. How can anyone respond to what they don't know?

To improve this, some companies use a formal process that gives people more candid, accurate and constructive information about how others experience them. With better information, people do a better job. They also improve their chances of achieving their personal career goals.

What Makes Good Feedback?
A good feedback process assumes that people are always trying to do the right thing, but don't always have accurate information about their situation. This is the cultural or systems view. It is different from traditional employee evaluations that assume a person has a problem and should be told how to correct their behavior. That is an inaccurate and unscientific view of a person. Unlike equipment, a person does not have broken parts that need repair.

The best feedback process gives each person in the team more accurate information about their work situation—in this case from the people they work with. Ideally the feedback also builds team support for each person and strengthens team relationships. Here's one method I have used with great success in many companies. Plan to set aside a couple of hours for this exercise. Explain to people ahead of time what will happen.

The Formal Feedback Process

1. Gather together as many of the work related people as you can—ideally 6 to 12 people. The first time you try this you might include only the immediate work team, perhaps not inviting clients, subordinates, upper-level managers, customers, or people from other departments. Invite them to a future session.
   
2. Ask each person to take ten minutes and write on their individual notepad two things about each other person in the room:
   
   • What one thing does that person do that you really like, that helps you and/or your team do its' job well? This is something you want that person to keep doing.
     
   • What one thing would you like that person to do that would help you and/or your team do even better? This might be something the person does now and you would like more of it, or it might be something quite new.
3. When they finish, invite one person to stand at an easel pad. This person will be receiving feedback about themselves from each person in the room. One-at-a-time, everyone in the room now gives that person their answer to the first question for that person. The person writes what they say on the flip chart—no abbreviations, no comments. Then everyone in the room gives the person their answers to the second question. Again the standing person writes what they say on the flip chart, with no comments from anyone.
   
4. When the standing person has finished writing what everyone said, they are invited to comment on what they have written, i.e. what they have heard from the group, or anything it suggests to them. They might ask a clarifying question, but not get into a discussion. No one else talks at this point. Then the person sits down.
   
5. Have each person in the group do this. No one should be left out. If they are in the room they get feedback—including the most senior manager (but not an external facilitator, if one is used).
   
6. Do a Plus Delta on the meeting. This discussion might take some time and should not discuss specific individual comments.
   
   

Results
When people have a more accurate picture of their situation they make better decisions so performance improves. The change is immediate and significant. This process also builds teamwork so cooperation across departments also improves, often dramatically.

You might repeat this "360 degree" feedback process every three or six months. With time people will feel more comfortable giving and receiving feedback, and to expanding the group to include subordinates, upper-level managers, customers, or people from other departments.

NOTE: Several people commented on a draft of this newsletter that this process could only work with a mature experienced group. One said, "They would start arguing and shouting." That is not my experience. I have used this many times without hostilities. It does require experienced facilitation.