IMPORTANCE OF LEADERSHIP FEEDBACK



When I was in Jakarta last weekend conducting a leadership workshop, I have presented to every participant a small mirror. Some of them asked me, “ John was is the purpose of the mirror ? “ “ John, are you asking us to examine our look on the mirror ? “ While a small group of the participant said, “ John, thank you for the mirror, it enabled me to evaluate myself. “

It is true that as leaders, we need constant feedback from people who work with us, whom we worked for and who we used to get in touch like our customers, and suppliers.

When was the last time did we get feedback from those whom we work with ? The process is a 360 degrees feedback where not only our boss evaluate us, our peers, our subordinate and our clients provide the feedback too. In some organization, self evaluation is included, the individual completes the same form that all others used to describe his or her behavior. The feedback is communicated to the leader and interpreted with the assistance of an, external human resource consultant or internal human resource professional.



The data from the survey can be used to help leaders fine tune their attitudes and behavior. For example, if all the interested parties gave the leader low ratings on “ connecting with others “, the leader might be prompted to improve his or her communication skills. Action plans for improving empathy would include reading about communication, attending a seminar, or attending a coaching session, and making conscious on the use of words, body language, the vocal tone, pitch and rate of speaking with people in the work place.



According to Robert Hoffman, a major reason for using the 360-degree feedback is that it can detect barriers to success. Feedback sometimes indicates that a leader perceived as a hurdle by those working with or for him or her is stalling organizational or unit growth. Success can be limited by such restricted behaviors as inflexibility, hostility, refusing to give information, lack of initiative, and inappropriate leadership style.

The 360-degree feedback is also a key component of benchmarks, a widely used leadership training program developed by Acme. The leader and a good sampling of work associates complete a web-based assessment about dozens of questions about specific types of behaviors. Self ratings are then compared to ratings with others. Assume a leader self-rates in the 60th percentile on “ putting people at ease: Display warmth and a good sense of humor. “If others rate him or her at 15th percentile on this dimension, the leader is probably not as good at putting workers at ease as he or she thinks.


Some people feel emotionally crushed when they find a wide discrepancy between their self-perception on an interpersonal skills dimension and the perception of others. A middle manager involved in a 360-degree evaluation prided herself/himself on how well he/she was liked by others. The feedback that emerged, however, depicted him/her intimidating, hostile, and manipulative. Upon receiving the feedback, he/she went into rage and then into despondency. Professional coaching can help a person benefit from critical feedback and place it in perspective.

Approached to implementing the 360-degree feedback for performance evaluation and development continue to emerge. It is always recommended to have the 360-degree feedback done on website. This is confidential and from my consulting experience, the assessors will be more frank as the names of the persons doing the evaluation will be strictly confidential. The web-based 360 degrees feedback reduces the amount of paper work and it helps the assessors will fill the form electronically. After all the assessors have done the evaluation, the result will be collected online where only the aggregate will be shown. A chart will be plotted to indicate his/her personal evaluation and compared it with what others have evaluated and the company average.

From my consultancy experience on 360-degree feedback in the past 3 years, managers accept more willingly the web-based 360-degree evaluation as compared to evaluation on paper.

For best results, it is extremely important that 360-degree surveys reflect those attitudes and behaviors that the organization values most highly. Care should also be taken that the dimensions measured reflect important aspects or leadership functioning.



The 360-degree feedback needs to be:-

· Focus on business goals and strategy. Feedback should provide leaders and managers with insight into the skills they need to help the organization meet its goal

· Ensure that the feedback dimensions reflect important aspects of leadership functioning

· Train workers in giving and receiving feedback. Providing constructive e feedback takes coaching, training and practice. One study showed that negative feedback received from a 360-degree survey is perceived as less useful than positive feedback

· Create an action plan for improvement for each leader based on the feedback. For example, a leader rated low on interpersonal skills might benefits form traini9ng in emotional intelligence

Conclusion

Behavior modification cannot work without frequent feedback to individuals and groups. Feedback in the form of web-based 360-degree is the best way to measure and effect such modifications. Organizations like Intel used to have 20% top performers, 70% average performers and 10% under-performers. The 10% under-performers will undergo personal coaching to modify their attitudes and behaviors; while the 20% top performers will enjoy monetary rewards. The average 70% will have their usual benefits.