All Praise The ‘Real 360’ – The Leader’s Mirror & Critical Friend
People tell senior leaders what they think they want to hear, not necessarily what they should be hearing.
This, combined with the pressures of the role, can lead to ineffective communication, lack of empathy, unhelpful behaviours, crooked thinking and poor decision-making. This also leads to senior leaders becoming isolated, lonely and less grounded in reality.
The sense of isolation and lack of connection at senior levels has been magnified by the Zoom/Teams led virtual meeting culture that we have all been forced to adopt during the global pandemic.
The executive coaches at Ascend are being increasingly asked to work with leaders who have lost touch with the impact they are having in their organisations. There is an arc of distortion between the way these leaders want to come across and the way they are actually coming across. In some cases, the leaders are unaware of this distortion and in other cases, they are aware of it but don’t know how to address and overcome it.
This is where we see 360-degree feedback (sometimes in tandem with relevant, executive psychometrics) as a vital, powerful development tool that helps executives understand the real impact they are having in, and sometimes on, their organisations.
Let’s be clear: we are not talking about the automated, online 360 systems – in our experience, these are riddled with critical flaws:
senior leaders are skeptical of its confidentiality
participants often don't take the time to really think about the message(s) they want to land, or they write banal, diplomatic feedback that loses the real message or insight
and because participants are super busy, feedback becomes a low priority item that is rushed just to tick a box, if it is completed at all
Our approach to 360 Feedback
When we work with senior leaders, we only use a high touch, but one human to one human interview-based 360.
This allows the coach to drill down to the real knub of the message the interviewee is trying to give in a way that automated 360s do not allow. The interviewer can pick up on incongruence between words, tone/emotion, and body language and press harder when they feel the interviewee is being too general or wilfully evading giving straight answers. The coach can also delve into why they are being general or evasive.
Our process is simple and only involves 5 steps:
We ask the target and the sponsor to agree a list of names to be interviewed.
These are usually direct reports, peers and other senior stakeholders (sometimes from outside the organisation too).
We hold a series of one to one interviews with the people on the list against a structured question set.
This allows us to identify key themes relating to stand-out strengths, leadership derailers, potential for stretch, the climate the leader creates around them, and priority areas for development.
We synthesise this data into a concise and clear one-page report.
Our findings are lit up by non-attributable quotes that lend heft to the messages we are trying to land.
We ask the same questions to the target of the 360.
This allows us to compare their answers with the key themes pulled out from the other responses. This is the ideal way to understand how self-aware the target of the 360 is, and also it is a brilliant way to hold the mirror up to them.
We discuss the findings of the 360 with the target and their sponsor.
This provides the basis to pinpoint the focus of executive development going forward, whereby the executive and their coach can prioritise working on the areas that they feel will have the biggest positive impact.
We have found that, because we pull out key themes from the data, i.e. things that have been mentioned multiple times, the results are almost impossible to argue against. The results provide excellent provocation for the target to reflect on how they want to come across and actually how they are coming across as a leader and role model.
So to summarise, at the senior level, if you are going to use 360 as a powerful development tool to create significant shifts in leadership habits, behaviours and impact, don’t compromise - use it properly or not at all.
At Ascend, our job is to work with leaders and teams helping them to achieve their goals, become better role models and more inspirational leaders, to navigate their way through challenges, to make better, more rounded decisions and, to leave a legacy of positivity behind them.
To find out more about how we can help you and your leaders become exceptional, please contact us here or email christina.grieve@ascend.world.