Five 360º Feedback Survey Traps You Must Avoid to Succeed

The kind of survey where you get feedback from the full circle of people around you at work…your boss, your direct reports, your peers, your customers and yourself…can be enormously valuable.

Done right, 360 feedback helps you learn how you are viewed by others while acting as a kind of training needs assessment to understand where you can improve performance. But, poorly handled, 360’s can also be too costly for the value they provide. 

Here are the traps to avoid when you consider implementing 360 degree feedback:

1. No specific purpose for the surveyMake sure everyone understands the explicit business reason for the 360 and that specific actions will be taken as a result of what is learned.
   
2. Lack of privacy for ratersYou need to have enough raters for each person in order to mask the comments of individuals so they can respond honestly without the recipient being able to figure out “who wrote what.”  The rule of thumb is to have at least three respondents in each category.
   
3. Forced participationIf the purpose is relevant and if the process makes sense, the chances are that the majority will volunteer to participate. But nothing is to be gained if you force naysayers to comply with something that they do not believe in.
   
4. Mixing development with performance reviewsResponses are far more likely to be truthful if seen as an opportunity for learning and improvement rather than directly affecting promotion or raises.  Keep development and compensation separate.
   
5. Lack of support for and commitment to next stepsParticipants should have professional help in interpreting the results, planned support for taking positive steps to improve and be held accountable by management for action plans.

Learn more at: http://www.lsaglobal.com/training-needs-assessment/