360 Feedback
One of the best ways to keep your team healthy and learning is to conduct an annual 360 feedback process. Some people call this a 360 Development Process instead because, if done well, the experience can foster growth and positive improvements in your performance and your culture. 360 feedback is an extremely valuable opportunity for the CEO, specifically, to get feedback from their team.
What is a 360 Feedback Process?
A 360 feedback process is an annual opportunity to collect insights from multiple perspectives in an organization to help your team learn and grow. Your team can decide to do this process more often if you like, but to have a thoughtful, thorough, and well-coordinated process is a bit of an organizational lift. 360 feedback should be a positive experience that is anonymous and curated. Organizations typically have an outside coach to help facilitate the process so that all parties can participate fully and to ensure that the feedback that is shared is growth-oriented and actionable.
What a 360 Feedback Process is NOT.
A 360 feedback process is not a performance review. It should not be tied to compensation or promotions. The intent of the process is to support learning and growth, which should be separated from an evaluative or compensation-based outcome. This process should also not be used as a tool to dismiss or fire an employee, although feedback from this process may be helpful in managing them and may ultimately lead to an offboarding process. Ideally, this process will help your team proactively hear constructive and meaningful insights that will help them on their professional journey.
Who Gives the Feedback?
Typical, with 360 feedback, every person on your team should select at least 5 people to provide them with feedback. On a small team, you can ask everyone to provide feedback on each other. On a larger team, you can have individuals select which people they’d like to invite to provide them with feedback so it’s most meaningful to them.
When folks select who gives them feedback, make sure they pick:
A manager or boss - people above them
Colleagues - peers at their level
Direct reports - people who report under them
Customers - if your company has them
You can consider asking board members if you are the CEO - or you can ask the board to provide a separate review that is similar to the 360 feedback process.
When Should We Conduct a 360 Review Process?
It’s entirely up to you and your team when, in the course of a year, it makes sense to conduct a 360 feedback process. To make it clear that the process is not tied to compensation or promotions, you may want to pick a time of the year that is distinct from whatever time of year you are reviewing job descriptions. If you are doing annual goal setting instead of performance reviews (which would be our strong recommendation) then it can be nice to couple the two so that the feedback can be part of what informs individual goal setting.
What Questions Should We Ask?
We like the idea of keeping your feedback questions simple. You should identify just a few high-level and open-ended questions that match your company’s business goals and values. Here are some examples you may want to consider:
Positive Feedback (I always like to start with positive feedback)
How does this person excel?
What are some of this individual’s strengths?
What should this person keep doing?
Challenges Faced:
What has been hard or challenging for this person during this period of time?
What obstacles has this individual faced?
Communication and Collaboration:
What has your experience been like communicating and collaborating with this person?
What have you observed about this person’s communication and collaboration approach?
Growth and Development:
What are some potential growth areas for this person this coming year?
How might you encourage this person to learn and grow this year?
Overall Feedback
Overall, what has your experience been like working with this person this year?
What overall feedback can you provide to help this person develop this year?
What is a Good Game Plan for Running a 360 Feedback Process?
Identify someone who can work with you to facilitate this process.
Align with the leadership team about your goals, process, and which questions you want to ask.
Train all managers on how to help their direct reports with this process - how to support them in filling out the feedback, how to prepare them for this experience, and how to have a coaching approach to processing the feedback once it’s completed.
Introduce the 360 feedback process to the whole team several weeks before asking people to contribute; consider discussing it in an all-hands meeting and encouraging all managers to follow up with each direct report individually.
Ask every person to identify and share who they want to provide their feedback. If your team is 5-10 people you can skip this step; everyone will provide feedback for everyone.
Get the feedback tools and questions ready.
Make sure everyone knows for whom they need to provide feedback; over-communicate about your goals, timeline, and process.
Give people 2 weeks to complete and submit all of their feedback questions.
Provide reminders to folks to get their feedback in on time.
Have your facilitator review and consolidate the feedback, making sure all feedback is intended to help foster growth and learning.
Create a brief report for each individual on the team sharing the anonymized responses.
Share the report with each individual and their managers.
Have each manager meet with each direct report to process the feedback together.
Consider using this feedback to inform individual goal setting.