Why 360-degree feedback is important

360° feedback directly benefits leadership, teams and the entire organization. By providing a confidential and reliable way (for employees, colleagues and managers) to give feedback to managers, a company gains valuable insights into current leadership and the overall leadership culture of the organization.

360° feedback provides managers with important insights into what is working and what is not. This allows organizations to quickly take action and help employees improve and become more successful leaders.

The advantages of 360-degree feedback

Properly conducted leadership feedback has seven clear advantages:

1. Increasing self-awareness
2. Focus on the "soft" factors
3. Anchoring a common understanding of leadership
4. Promoting dialog and good working relationships
5. Accountability thanks to facts
6. Encouraging personal development
7. Results

In this article, we will take a closer look at the first three aspects. You will find the other advantages in our next article.

Increasing self-awareness

Self-awareness means understanding one's own personality, including strengths, weaknesses, beliefs, motivations, thoughts and emotions.

The decisive factors in leadership are self-awareness, the ability to reflect and change perspectives as well as recognizing the beliefs that influence our actions. Many leaders with good intentions make mistakes because they are constantly making improvements in the wrong direction.

A realistic assessment of one's own strengths and weaknesses is the hallmark of a mature leader. Our experience in various 360° feedback projects shows that an intensive examination of the results leads to an improved self-perception. If the feedback is repeated at a later date, the self-perception and the perception of others will have converged significantly.

Focus on the "soft" factors

Results are important in day-to-day business, but even more important is how these results are achieved. Because only a well-founded management process guarantees long-term and sustainable results. The 360° leadership feedback gives a manager an indication of how they function in their day-to-day work from the perspective of their immediate working environment (employees, peers, superiors). Knowing how employees rate you as a manager promotes an understanding of your own "leadership mechanics".

Anchoring a common understanding of leadership

Tailor-made leadership feedback is based on the organization's values, leadership guidelines and competency grids. To this end, ValueQuest's specialists work with those responsible to translate the leadership mission statement into concrete competencies and observable behaviors. These form the basis for the 360-degree feedback and the survey. In this way, the leadership model and competencies are not only remembered and anchored by the feedback recipients, but also by all feedback givers.

Very often, 360-degree feedback is also a touchstone for a (new) leadership mission statement/competence model. After a leadership model has been developed, 360° feedback is often carried out for the organization. This makes it possible to assess whether and how the new mission statement can be translated into concrete, understandable behaviors.