360 Assessments

4 Reasons to Conduct Assessments in Your Organization

One of the best tools for accelerating a leader’s development is a 360 Assessment – a process where people assess themselves and get anonymous feedback from others on the same assessment questions. Typically, for a leader, the feedback would come from their boss(es), their peers and those that report to/work for them. That feedback is then shared back with the person being assessed, giving them a 360-degree view of their performance.

360 Assessments are incredibly valuable and there are four very specific ways that they can help you and your organization:

They create awareness. There’s no better way to pinpoint the areas that need improvement than hearing it first-hand from employees. Leaders will learn pretty quickly if and how they are failing their team, and that is the first step toward improvement. That is why it’s so important to conduct these types of assessments early and regularly in a leader’s career. This process can stimulate and promote continuous growth and development.

They provide perspective. Leaders will learn about their strengths and weaknesses from a variety of perspectives, including their boss, peers, team and others. They’ll quickly learn if their perception of their style and results aligns with others. What a leader might think is working may not be, and strategies never considered may be just what their team needs.

They create learning efficiency. With the information and perspective gained from a leadership assessment, leaders can be smarter in their learning efforts. They’ll be able to prioritize what they need to focus on. Learning should be an ongoing goal for all leaders, and 360 Assessments chart trends and an ongoing development path.

They provide a benchmark. With a benchmark, leaders can better gauge their progress over time. Think about it this way: if you don’t know where you started, it is hard to see how much you grow. 360 Assessments offer employees a chance to voice their feedback, and while it might be hard for a leader to hear, it is important the team members have voice, and that leaders can receive it in a way that allows them to learn from it.

Very few leaders can clearly define what is holding them back from greater performance. They are either too close to the problem, aren’t sure what they need to improve on most or aren’t even thinking about it at all! In our experience, one of the most effective tools to help get people past all three of these issues is a 360 Degree Leadership Assessment.

Our Process

Our 360 Assessment is based on our 13 Leadership Competencies as outlined in Remarkable Leadership. The tool is completed online and is completed anonymous to all within the organization.

Our process includes not just the actual reporting and assessments, but it also includes personal coaching and action planning – the only way to ensure that you understand the results and more importantly to help you build an action plan for your ongoing improvement. Here is a high-level look at our process.

1. Consultation. We work with the organization to help with selection, communication and timing of this implementation; whether for one person or many leaders across an organization.
2. Preparation. We help leaders understand the process and how to select those who will assess them.
3. Logistics. We handle all logistics, once we have the names and emails of the leaders and their assessors. This takes the load off of the organization, and further assures people that the process is anonymous.
4. Coaching. Each leader receives their report and then has one-on-one coaching from a coach personal selected and certified by Kevin Eikenberry, to help them understand the feedback and create an action plan for growth.
5. Follow-up. Each leader has access to a second coaching conversation at a time of their choosing after the development of the initial action plan.
6. Organizational Assessment. If working with multiple leaders, we can report back to Senior Leadership with our lessons learned, overall observations and trends we see in the 360 Assessments. While we will not reveal specifics about anyone’s assessment or plan, we can provide a perspective the organization could not otherwise gain.