Without effective leadership, businesses are nothing more than aimless meetups with people. It forms the crux of organizational success.
However, there is still much ambiguity surrounding the traits and aspects that make a good leader. Even though good and bad leadership and their respective outcomes are fairly evident, it’s hard to define and quantify them.
This may make you wonder how successful leaders keep growing. This has been made feasible by numerous attempts over the years at systems, frameworks, and tools.
One such framework that has received a lot of attention in management circles is the 360-degree leadership assessment. Due to its thorough evaluation of a leader’s effectiveness, it is becoming increasingly common in corporate settings.
Continue reading to learn about a 360-degree leadership assessment, how it works, its benefits, and how to maximize its use.
The 360-degree leadership assessment, as its name implies, is an evaluation technique that collects input on a leader’s performance from multiple angles. This provides a comprehensive picture of a leader’s performance inside the company and includes peers, supervisors, direct reports, and perhaps even clients. Hence, the term “360-degree evaluation.”
Unlike traditional reviews, which only offer the perspective of a superior, this provides a variety of viewpoints and a clear picture of how a leader handles interpersonal dynamics and responds to different situations.
Such an approach to leadership assessment at your organization provides many benefits and, when done right, can add substantial value in the long run.
By assessing different perspectives from various colleagues, leaders gain a comprehensive understanding of their professional position. Besides, they are more likely to strive harder when representing themselves in professional settings, no matter who they are with.
It is often seen that leaders put on a different face when dealing with subordinates than with their own supervisors or superiors. They tend to drop the ball regarding cordial relationships with peers, all of which can be addressed with well-rounded feedback.
Most importantly, this helps build self-awareness with managers, leaders, or executives and ensures they do not lose the plot in professional settings, no matter who they are dealing with.
Armed with detailed feedback, leaders can pinpoint specific areas that need development. For example, if feedback consistently points to challenges in conflict resolution, a leader can focus on building skills in this area.
This targeted development approach helps leaders improve areas that directly impact their effectiveness and team performance.
Great leaders are neither born nor trained; they are built on years of experience and continuous feedback. Someone who aspires to hone their leadership skills should seek robust feedback across all corners, whether it’s their subordinates, peers, or superiors.
The worst thing an organization can do, in all honesty, is not to push leaders to reach their full potential and hold them responsible for their leadership performance.
Companies like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and McKinsey generate a large number of C-suite executives for a reason: they have robust leadership development initiatives.
By implementing a 360-degree feedback system, you can do wonders for interpersonal relationships within your organization.
Such a system essentially compels leaders to be more open to and willing to receive feedback, not just from their peers and supervisors but also from their subordinates. This demonstrates humility and respect, boosting morale throughout the rank and file.
Over time, you’ll see progress toward an open, transparent, and communicative workplace that ensures any interpersonal frictions are dealt with immediately.
The effectiveness of a 360-degree leadership assessment depends largely on how it is implemented. Thus, there is a set of practices to ensure the perfect results for your organization.
Anonymity and confidentiality are essential, given the nature of this assessment. If fear of reprisals keeps subordinates from giving honest feedback to supervisors and superiors, it should be very obvious why.
If the participants in a 360-degree leadership assessment cannot provide open, sincere, and transparent feedback, the evaluation will lose its essence and intent.
The next step is crafting the right questions that truly measure the various competencies and leadership qualities that your organization values.
Many leading organizations even use external consultants or coaches to conduct this survey. This helps maintain total transparency and objectivity in the process while also helping track, analyze, and better interpret the results.
Irrespective of external consultants’ value, the role of in-house HR cannot be discounted altogether when it comes to a leadership assessment.
The HR team plays a crucial role in selecting the right respondents, distributing assessment tools, and collecting responses.
Apart from this, the task of analyzing and generating insights from the feedback received is also important. The consultant might help with this, but the in-house team decides on the right course of action based on the insights received.
What makes such assessments so powerful is the fact that they receive input from across all rungs within an organization. This includes peers, supervisors, subordinates, and more, resulting in a well-rounded assessment.
This also makes feedback more structured, as opposed to the disorganized way it is routinely carried out in most organizations in informal settings, which makes it ripe for abuse, miscommunication, and hurt feelings.
Another key aspect of the 360-degree assessment is that it helps foster a supportive environment where all employees are nudged toward helping one another. Maintaining good relationships is key to progressing in their goals.
Ideally, your organization’s 360-degree assessment report is detailed and well-structured, breaking down core areas that matter most to your firm. These include communication, teamwork, strategic thinking, and emotional intelligence.
In addition, each area should include positive feedback alongside areas for improvement, with the option to include word-for-word comments from respondents. This should provide clear and actionable insights for leaders, which they can use to chart their development going forward.
Though the report should be honest and straightforward, it should maintain a sense of decorum so as not to come off as an attack on individuals. The key is to help leaders improve rather than criticize or demotivate them; all raters must be aware of this.
Leaders should adopt the right attitude and approach to maximize the benefits of a 360-degree assessment. This must be done to add the most value to their respective careers and organizations.
Tip 1: Be receptive to criticism and resolute in pursuing professional and personal development.
Tip 2: Carefully consider the comments you’ve received, seeking out recurring themes and potential areas for development.
Tip 3: Consider developing a detailed action plan to address the feedback. This might involve setting specific, measurable goals for skill development.
Tip 4: Leaders can also consider working with a coach or mentor to help interpret the feedback and support the development of new skills and behaviors.
When used well and taken in the right stride, 360-degree leadership assessment can do absolutely wonders for an organization. It’s easy to set up and implement and doesn’t require extensive tools or solutions. Simple forms, spreadsheets, and report generators should do the trick.
The key, however, is the systems and processes that the evaluation team implements to ensure a transparent and anonymous process for hitting the targets to perfection.
If you are looking for the right tools, consider working with Engagedly, a leading talent management platform with extensive features covering everything you need for leadership assessment.
Regarding the best 360-degree assessment for leaders, Zenger Folkman’s Extraordinary Leader is considered among the most effective models worldwide.
This is mainly owing to the actionable feedback it provides, alongside its focus on strengths and core competencies, helping develop good-caliber leaders.
Leadership assessments usually aim to assess six core traits of leaders, namely adaptability, discernment, communication, maturity, and resourcefulness.
Each leader and leadership style within an organization can be categorized across eight dimensions. These include commanding, pioneering, energizing, inclusive, resolute, affirming, humble, and deliberate.
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