360 Leadership Assessment
Empower your leaders and build your culture.
A 360 feedback assessment your leaders will love.
When done wrong, a 360 feedback process is a dreaded experience for leaders, a nightmare for administrators, and a waste of time and money due to the lack of actionable next steps. When done right, a 360 leadership assessment is an efficient way to gather meaningful data and uncover rich insights that accelerate growth and reinforce your culture.
Here’s how we help you do it right:
- Learn about your organizational culture, values, and leadership competencies.
- Advise on your communication strategy and alignment with other talent initiatives.
- Apply our expertise in item writing, competency measurement, report design, and user experience to build your customized 360 feedback survey and report. (We also have off-the-shelf options.)
- Listen to your feedback and use an iterative design process to reflect your culture and brand.
- Administer the process from start to finish with the option to transfer it in-house.
- Debrief reports with your leaders and train your HRBP’s how to do so.
Do you have Competencies and Core Values?
We design fully custom 360 leadership assessments that align with your culture.
People Expertise
Our psychologists are subject matter experts in talent assessment. It’s all we do.
+
Powerful Technology
We leverage QuestionPro’s platform due to its unmatched functionality and flexibility.
The Value of a 360 Leadership Assessment
When combined with potential and performance data, 360 feedback tools complete The Truth Triangle. It’s called this because multiple sources of data lead to a more accurate picture of the person: how they are viewed, what they have done, and what else they could do.
- Perceptions are best measured with a carefully crafted 360 leadership assessment that measures your organization’s critical competencies.
- Performance is measured with annual reviews, talent reviews, accomplishments, and sometimes, objective metrics.
- Potential is best measured with psychometric assessments. It’s the only forward-looking piece, and it’s the most objective.
360 Feedback Best Practices
Below are some quick tips for selecting and implementing a 360 leadership assessment.
- Be Proactive & Enthusiastic. These assessments are best used to accelerate growth versus fix problem behavior. If used for the latter purpose, people will form negative associations and fear the process. Build excitement around the tool and consistently communicate, “Congratulations! We’re investing in a 360 leadership assessment to support your growth because we value you.”
- Invest Wisely. If you have a leadership competency model, a customized tool is a great option, especially if it will be widely used in the organization. If you are considering 360 for C-level succession planning, you may want to invest in an interview-based 360 conducted by a business psychologist. If you intend to use the tool on a smaller scale, for entry-to-mid-level leaders, and don’t have your own competencies, an off-the-shelf tool can work well.
- Enable Comments. Research shows that most people tend to be “nice” raters when completing a 360 leadership assessment. And, because ratings are aggregated by group (e.g., peers, direct reports), mean scores rarely fall below the mid-point of the range. By allowing or requiring comments, your leaders will get more meaningful and actionable feedback.
- Review Rater Nomination Lists. The onus should be on the participant to come up with a list of raters. However, these should be reviewed by their manager and/or HRBP to ensure diversity or perceptions within the group.
- Due Dates & Extensions. We suggest giving raters 2 weeks to complete the survey, with a reminder after 7 and 12 days. Most of the time, a 1-week extension will be needed to improve participation rates.
- Always Debrief. The worst thing you can do with a 360 leadership assessment is send the person their report and be done with it. An HRBP or external consultant should conduct a debrief within one week of report delivery. This keeps the momentum going. This should be followed up with an alignment meeting with their manager and monthly or quarterly check-ins to monitor progress toward development goals.
- Keep it separate from Performance Evaluations. Performance evaluations are often not done well, and many people dislike them. Even if they are done well at your organization, keeping them separate from the 360 leadership assessment will help with consistent messaging that the process is an investment in them, not an evaluation of them.