10 Top Ways to Use 360 Leadership Assessment Feedback to Improve Your Company
Leadership is a complex topic to address. It takes skill, time, and judgment to excel in a leadership role. However, not everyone is cut out for it. Therefore 360-degree assessment offers a way to get a realistic view of your leadership skills and qualities.
These are the top 10 ways how 360-degree assessment helps an organization excel:
1. Exploring Potential Leadership Needs at an Individual, Team or Company Level
A 360 Leadership Assessment is an in-depth evaluation of a leader’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as their potential areas for growth. The assessment aims to identify the leader’s personal and professional skills, work style, and their leadership style. It also assesses the leadership traits that are most important for success in the current organizational environment. Using a 360 Leadership Assessment tool that focuses on the most important areas of management, you can quickly assess those skills a leader possess and where there may be gaps.
2. Leadership Self-Assessment
There is often a big gap between what we think of ourselves and how others perceive us. The 360 Leadership Assessment will help you to understand your own strengths and weaknesses more deeply so that you can improve your leadership skills. It will also help you identify immediate areas where you can initiate change, allowing you to more effectively lead important strategic decisions that ultimately affect the overall performance of the business.
3. Adaptability to Fast-Paced Environment
In today’s fast-paced and competitive workplace, leaders must be able to adapt to an ever-changing environment. Leaders are expected to be able to create a vision, motivate their team, and execute the vision of the company. A 360 leadership assessment should focus on areas of communication and mentorship which can identify how well a leader can help their teams through fast paced change.
4. Curate Customized Training Programs
One size does not fit all and this is absolutely true when it comes to standardized training programs. 360 Leadership Assessments not only present a holistic view of strengths and weaknesses but also helps to identify skill gaps. Ultimately, your company will be able to offer customized training and L&D initiatives to fill in those gaps- whether at the individual or organizational level.
5. Creating a Culture of Commitment and Learning
Participating in a 360 Assessment takes time and commitment from senior management and serves as the trickle-down effect from top to bottom. When implemented successfully, it conveys a message of commitment senior management have for the growth and learning of their employees. Successfully implemented 360 reviews promote a culture of learning and development that fosters an environment leading to the ultimate behavioural change.
6. A Tool for Change Management
360 Feedback can be used as a tool to initiate and drive the process of change and transformation throughout your organization. When companies do multiple 360 Assessments during a similar time span, this can show systemic problems happening across an organization. Additionally, think of employees as a kind of company internal brand ambassador. Words travel fast and a 360 review process help employees gain a holistic perspective other than their own limited purview.
7. Lower Attrition Rates
Employees stay longer in the organizations where they feel the company is ready to invest in them for the long haul. Evaluating managers through 360-degree assessments will demonstrate to all of the participants that the company is interested in their future.
8. Succession Planning
Investing in current leaders is a wise decision but keeping a succession pipeline and successfully investing in junior leaders is even wiser. A broader analytical representation of each individual’s skill set helps in developing successors, avoiding costly and labor intensive outside recruiting. Having succession plans keeps a company competitive, avoiding downtime when a senior leader moves on.
9. Assessing a C-Suite or a Board of Directors
It’s difficult to find a way to appropriately evaluate how an executive member is doing. Often, successes are self-reported and there is little way to gain an organizational view of performance. The 360 Leadership Assessment often takes less than 10 minutes, can be done at any time of the day (flexible) and allows for direct feedback from multiple channels. This can be powerful feedback for any executive.
10. Anonymous Feedback
360 review tools most often rely of all participants being able to give anonymous feedback. Often individuals want to give constructive feedback to their manager, peer or staff member but may feel “stuck” in how to address this. A 360 tool allows for appropriate feedback and often means the employee will really hear (sometimes for the first time) areas where they can improve. This often leads to a major benefit — the respect gained by colleagues when they allow themselves to be vulnerable by accepting feedback from others, even anonymously.
To sum up all of the above, when organizations use a 360 Degree Leadership Assessment tool to analyze employee performance, they can find out more about the person’s skills, weaknesses and potential. This information will help every employee to improve work processes and career development:
1) The individual gets to know their own strengths and weaknesses to improve their leadership performance
2) Leaders can use the feedback from others to improve themselves
3) Individual gets an idea of what people want from them as a leader
4) Leadership effectiveness can be measured by how well they’ve been able to execute on their goals
5) Leadership Development programs become more focused and effective focusing on areas of need.
Looking to do a 360 Leadership Assessment? Find out more about our unique trademarked Launch 360 Tool
