Small Data – The Best Performance Feedback Tool

Have you ever received 360° feedback in your leadership role? Have you ever been asked to provide feedback for your boss? A peer? A direct report? We find that asking for and receiving 360° feedback from those you count on for results is invaluable in terms of improving your effectiveness. And how can  you know how you’re doing if you don’t ask?

For our 360° profile assessments, we turn to our partners at The Forté Institute. The process begins when we ask participants seeking feedback to first consider whom they would like feedback from. The assessment template that we use measures 8 competencies over 25 questions with a 5-point scale. We advise candidates to include their boss, a few peers, a good sample of direct reports, and possibly an ‘other’ who’s opinion the participant values. If there is an ideal spread, we suggest around 15 total. We do stress that feedback providers (or ‘raters’) remain completely anonymous in the report with the exception of the manager – whose feedback should be identifiable.

The report generated provides the participant quantitative and qualitative feedback. The radar charting within the report shows how they have rated themselves against the competencies in relation to how others see them. This makes it easy to identify possible ‘blind spots’ or gaps between their self-perception and the perception of others. The Forté i360 focuses on strengths that help make feedback more positively received and encouraging. We like to say ‘let’s not focus on who said what, just what was said’.

We follow the reporting process with an initial 30-minute call to show the candidate how the information in the report is presented. The participant then has a few days to reflect on their data prior to a second 1-hour coaching call. The 360 process starts with this collection and review of data, prior to having the participants attend a 2-day self-development workshop. The live event is then followed by reinforcement learning in the form of 5 weeks of ‘Leader’s Daily’ sound bite videos that arrive via email Monday through Friday. It’s multi-touch, multi-topic and multi-method – all in the interest of helping participants become as effective as they can be in leading the enterprise.

If you would like to learn more about Forté i360 profiling, or our full learning process and the benefits for your organization, contact kelly@donbrown.org