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Imagine you have an employee-a high-level manager-who just delivered a presentation to the board. Unfortunately, his presentation went terribly wrong. It hit all the wrong notes, and you know it didn't make a good impression on anyone in the room.

As a leader, what do you do?

This happened to me early in my career as CEO. I took the person aside after the board meeting and went through why the presentation didn't meet the standard I expected. I didn't yell or criticize him personally-I just did a post mortem on everything I thought was wrong with his portion of the meeting. Unfortunately, he left that meeting looking shaken. With the benefit of hindsight, I know now that he was probably thinking I was on the verge of firing him.

That wasn't my intention at all. This was a very capable person and highly valuable to the organization. I just needed him to change up his presentation style. But that day, I gave feedback instead of feedforward and left my employee feeling lost and frustrated.

"Feedforward," as the name implies, is essentially a managerial conversation that focuses on suggestions for the future rather than on a critical assessment of the past. If you read this blog regularly, you know that we write often about focusing on the future. Coaching conversations with employees are no exception. They work much better when they're rooted in a discussion of what comes next rather than in a review of problems.

Marshall Goldsmith is a organizational behavior expert, who big proponent of the "feedforward" idea. So is Professor Avraham Kluger, writes:

Unlike feedback, which has multiple detrimental consequences, feedforward creates positive emotions, fosters bonding, builds psychological safety, and promotes the elicitation and sharing of vital new information regarding keys for personal and organizational flourishing.

After a couple of decades as CEO, I agree with this approach and wish I had used it with my employee after that board meeting. Instead of him walking out worried about his livelihood, I could've given him some practical suggestions for what to do differently.

This isn't to say that you shouldn't criticize. In fact, employees want your honest criticism of their performance. But once you've briefly outlined the problem, it's important to switch quickly into feedforward mode. Keep your employee from dwelling on their failures and instead help them see how they can improve outcomes in the future.

No matter how much you diagnose the problem, your employee can't change the past. Shifting to a feedforward approach will show employees exactly what you expect, in addition to building a growth mindset.

Another plus for you, the leader: feedforward is easier to give. Do you enjoy giving negative feedback? I didn't think so. Next time you need to deliver criticism, focus on positive future outcomes instead.

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Why "Feedforward" Works Better Than Feedback

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Imagine you have an employee-a high-level manager-who just delivered a presentation to the board. Unfortunately, his presentation went terribly wrong. It hit all the wrong notes, and you know it didn't make a good impression on anyone in the room. As a leader, what do you do?

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Replace 360 Degree Feedback with Frequent Employee Feedback

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Replace 360 Degree Feedback with Frequent Employee Feedback

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The highly respected CEB (Corporate Executive Board) released a research report in 2014 entitled Performance Management Can Be Fixed. The research concludes that modern performance management processes have typically become 'over-engineered' and have turned into a 'check-the-box exercise'. I believe that 360 degree feedback in its classic form (i.e. multiple people rating individuals once a year on a set of behaviour indicators) has become just that. In fact, it's hard to think of a better example of a 'check-the-box exercise'!

Does 360 degree feedback work?

There's no denying the appeal of 360 degree feedback. In modern day organisations, managers do not always work closely with their team members on a day-to-day basis, so it makes sense that feedback should be gleaned from the people who work most closely with the individual. And the resulting reports with their colourful charts showing where the employee excels and where they need to improve appear on the surface to be a valuable tool.

But here's the issue - there is little evidence to suggest that 360 degree feedback actually leads to improved performance, especially when used as part of a performance management or performance appraisal process. For example, research conducted by Silverman, Kerrin and Carter found that:

'The 360-degree feedback process had not been effective in changing behaviour or performance and there was some concern that it may even have caused more harm than good.'

Other researchers have reached similar conclusions.

The problem with 360 degree feedback

The main problem with the traditional form of 360 degree feedback is that it tends to happen once a year, at a time determined by the organisation. And as the CEB points out, for performance management to be effective, feedback needs to 'real-time and meaningful', rather than being given 'infrequently on a schedule'. For feedback to be meaningful and accurate, it should be given soon after a relevant event occurs, rather than potentially many months later, by which point the person giving the feedback will struggle to remember specific examples of the behaviours they are being asked to rate.

Furthermore, the feedback ratings given are likely to be influenced by the reviewer's most recent interactions with the individual being rated, as they will be most prominent in their memory. Therefore, the resulting 360 feedback report is rarely a balanced summary of the individual's performance over the past year, as it is normally assumed to be.

A second problem with the classic 'multi-rater' type of 360 degree feedback, is that the questionnaire is normally fairly time consuming to complete. Those completing the questionnaire often do not have the time to put sufficient thought into it, particularly if they are being asked to complete them for more than one person. So it can end up becoming a tick-box exercise and the results may not be particularly accurate or insightful.

The alternative: frequent feedback

Research tells us that frequent, in the moment feedback is most effective in changing behaviours and can boost performance by up to 12%. It's no surprise then that leading organisations such as IBM and General Electric have put frequent feedback at the centre of their performance management process. A study reported by Mind Gym's Reinventing Performance Management report found that getting feedback every two weeks is the optimum frequency for achieving improved performance. So how can we go about making this happen in practice? Here are three things you can do:

1. Encourage a feedback culture

Feedback won't simply happen by itself, it needs to be encouraged. As with any performance management process, this should start with obtaining buy-in from top management and getting them to lead by example. Help to develop a feedback culture by providing training and engaging videos for staff on the benefits of giving and receiving regular feedback and how to give constructive feedback.

2. Build feedback processes

JustGiving, the online fundraising website, have developed a successful process for encouraging regular feedback. At the start of each review period, each employee chooses three or four people who will be most able to give them feedback on their contribution over that period. They then share their goals for the period with them and ask them to give them regular, in-the-moment feedback, related to their progress against these goals. Since introducing this approach, JustGiving have seen a significant rise in their employee engagement measures.

3. Use technology to make it easy to give feedback

People will be more likely to give and seek feedback regularly if it is made easy for them. Whilst this could be as simple as sending someone an email with some feedback, technology can make the feedback process even more effective by providing people with a secure place where they can quickly and easily give or request feedback via their smartphone or computer. A system can also compile the feedback given over a particular period for discussion at review meetings, as well as periodically reminding employees to give feedback if they have not done so for a while.

We've built frequent feedback into the core of our Clear Review performance management software. Why not book a demo now to see how it could work for your organisation.

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Replace 360 Degree Feedback with Frequent Employee Feedback

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The highly respected CEB (Corporate Executive Board) released a research report in 2014 entitled Performance Management Can Be Fixed. The research concludes that modern performance management processes have typically become 'over-engineered' and have turned into a 'check-the-box exercise'. I believe that 360 degree feedback in its classic form (i.e.

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Why you should never use anonymous 360-degree feedback | afr.com

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Why you should never use anonymous 360-degree feedback | afr.com

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Give your feedback face-to-face, argues behaviour strategist Darren Hill. AFR

by Darren Hill

I recently found myself in a conversation that got my blood boiling. I was chatting to a top-tier executive at one of Australia's highest-profile companies. She was telling me about a recent feedback event that had left her scratching her head. She had undergone an anonymous '360 degree feedback' process.

Little did this extremely talented leader know, but she had just set the stage for me to let rip on one of my favourite soapbox topics.

Anonymous 360-degree feedback processes, put very simply, are a blight on the business landscape. They have to be eradicated- wiped off the face of the earth as soon as possible. Given I don't have a cure for war or poverty, I am going to start here.

Disclaimer: many years ago, I used to deliver 360s as part of my suite of business products as a young business consultant working with executives. I accepted what I saw as a norm. But after seeing good careers almost derailed, I quickly changed my views on the usage of a flawed feedback model. Then I realised they served a purpose for only two areas:

1.Enabling poor feedback cultures, usually from the top down

2.Being an additional revenue stream for consultants and executive coaches.

Now I don't know about you, but neither of those will help you achieve the robust and challenging feedback culture you're looking for in your workplace.

It's pretty simple, really. If you have to use the channel of anonymity to get 'real feedback' then you quite clearly have a much, much bigger problem in your feedback culture. Anonymous 360s are like putting a Band-Aid on cancer.

You might protest: 'But wait...I've had an anonymous 360 in the past, and I got heaps out of it!' To be honest, if you'd spent $16 on four cups of coffee (instead of between $500 and $3500 for a 360 report and debrief), you would've probably got a better result.

Now I'm sure there are a whole bunch of consultants and coaches who will read this article and jump into the comments section full of indignation and possibly citing evidence of 360s producing results. But the problem is they will be a) heavily biased because of the financial incentive to use these instruments and b) forgetting a fundamental principle of feedback-it's supposed to be uncomfortable.

By using anonymity as a mask for discomfort, we fly the white flag, seeking safety rather than encouraging courage. The result; we enable a continuation of underperforming and unaccountable feedback at all levels.

And the argument that anonymous 360 reviews give the downtrodden and silent few a voice when managed by an overbearing voice? Puh-leese. If you're leading, coaching or advising someone, then isn't it your job to get them uncomfortable with tough feedback rather than fire them up via someone else's comments on a report? These reviews don't give people a voice-they enable poor feedback and ultimately entrench it further.

So get back by having real conversations, not anonymous ones. It's how trust is built. Certainly, seek views from all directions-your staff, bosses, peers and customers can give you incredibly good feedback-but drop the veil of secrecy that is anonymity. Gather the info in an open, transparent and courageous manner. At the heart of great feedback rests a level of vulnerability and discomfort.

Take time to build a solid feedback culture, equip the people around you to have conversations about tough topics, and don't take the easy but ultimately destructive option that is anonymity. Today's leaders are better than that.

Darren Hill is a co-founder of motivation and behaviour strategy company Pragmatic Thinking. He has consulted and presented to Fortune 50 and ASX 20 companies such as Pepsico, Suncorp, McDonald's, Bond Uni, BlueCare, Sydney Water - and now writes exclusively for BRW. Find out more at www.darrenhill.com.au

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Why you should never use anonymous 360-degree feedback

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by Darren Hill I recently found myself in a conversation that got my blood boiling. I was chatting to a top-tier executive at one of Australia's highest-profile companies. She was telling me about a recent feedback event that had left her scratching her head. She had undergone an anonymous '360 degree feedback' process.

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360 Degree Feedback: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

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360 Degree Feedback: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

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Want to make people happy? Anxious? Care to create an uproar in your organization? Want to stir up all of the dormant fear hidden just below the surface in your organization? You think we're talking about laying off half your staff-right?

Wrong. we're talking about organizations that do a poor job of introducing and implementing 360 degree or multi-rater feedback. Indeed, we're also talking about organizations that do a good job of introducing 360-degree feedback.

Nothing raises hackles as fiercely as a change in performance feedback methods, especially when they affect compensation decisions.

What Is 360 Degree Feedback?

360 degree feedback is a method and a tool that provides each employee the opportunity to receive performance feedback from his or her supervisor and four to eight peers, reporting staff members, coworkers, and customers. Most 360 degree feedback tools are also responded to by each individual in a self-assessment.

360 degree feedback allows each individual to understand how his effectiveness as an employee, coworker or staff member is viewed by others. The most effective 360 degree feedback processes provide feedback that is based on behaviors that other employees can see.

The feedback provides insight into the skills and behaviors desired in the organization to accomplish the mission, vision, and goals and live the values. The feedback is firmly planted in behaviors needed to exceed customer expectations.

People who are chosen as raters or feedback providers, usually are selected in a shared process by both the organization and employee. These are people who generally interact routinely with the person receiving feedback.

The purpose of the 360 degree feedback is to assist each individual to understand his strengths and weaknesses and to contribute insights into aspects of his work needing professional development.

Debates of all kinds are raging in the world of organizations about how to:

Select the feedback tool and process

Choose the raters

Use the feedback

Review the feedback

Manage and integrate the process into a larger performance management system

360 degree feedback is a positive addition to your performance management system when implemented with care and training to enable people to better serve customers and develop their own careers. However, if you approach it haphazardly because everyone else is doing it, 360 feedback will create a disaster requiring months and possibly years for you to recover.

Pros of 360 Degree Feedback

360 degree feedback has many positive aspects and many proponents.

According to Jack Zenger, he has come to recognize "...the value of 360 feedback as a central part of leadership development programs. It's a practical way to get a large group of leaders in an organization to be comfortable with receiving feedback from direct reports, peers, bosses and other groups. Once leaders begin to see the huge value to be gained, in fact, we see them add other groups to their raters such as suppliers, customers, or those two levels below them in the organization."

And later, Zenger adds: "More than 85% of all the Fortune 500 companies use the 360 degree feedback process as a cornerstone of their overall leadership development process. If you are not a current user, we encourage you to take a fresh look."

Organizations that are happy with the 360 degree component of their performance management systems identify these positive features of the process that manifest in a well-managed, well-integrated 360 degree feedback processes.

Improved Feedback From More Sources: This method provides well-rounded feedback from peers, reporting staff, coworkers and supervisors and can be a definite improvement over feedback from a single individual. 360 feedback can also save managers' time in that they can spend less energy providing feedback as more people participate in the process. Coworker perception is important and the process helps people understand how other employees view their work.

Team Development: This feedback approach helps team members learn to work more effectively together. (Teams know more about how team members are performing than their supervisor.) Multi-rater feedback makes team members more accountable to each other as they share the knowledge that they will provide input on each members' performance. A well-planned process can improve communication and team development.

Personal and Organizational Performance Development: 360 degree feedback is one of the best methods for understanding personal and organizational developmental needs in your organization.

Responsibility for Career Development: For many reasons, organizations are no longer responsible for developing the careers of their employees-if they ever were. Multi-rater feedback can provide excellent information to an individual about what she needs to do to enhance her career. Additionally, many employees feel 360 degree feedback is more accurate, more reflective of their performance, and more validating than feedback from a supervisor alone. This makes the information more useful for both career and personal development.

Reduced Discrimination Risk: When feedback comes from a number of individuals in various job functions, discrimination because of race, age, gender, and so forth is reduced. The "horns and halo" effect, in which a supervisor rates performance based on her most recent interactions with the employee, is also minimized.

Improved Customer Service: Each person receives valuable feedback about the quality of his product or services, especially in feedback processes that involve the internal or external customer. This feedback should enable the individual to improve the quality, reliability, promptness, and comprehensiveness of these products and services.

Training Needs Assessment: 360 degree feedback provides comprehensive information about organization training needs and thus allows planning for classes, cross-functional responsibilities, and cross-training.

A 360 degree feedback system does have a good side. However, 360 degree feedback also has a bad side-even an ugly side.

Downside to 360 Degree Feedback

For every positive point made about 360 degree feedback systems, detractors can offer the downside. The down side is important because it gives you a road map of what to avoid when you implement a 360 feedback process.

The following are potential problems with 360 degree feedback processes and a recommended solution for each.

Exceptional Expectations for the Process: 360 degree feedback is not the same as a performance management system. It is merely a part of the feedback and development that a performance management system offers within an organization. Additionally, proponents may lead participants to expect too much from this feedback system in their efforts to obtain organizational support for its implementation. Make sure that the 360 feedback is integrated into a complete performance management system.

Design Process Downfalls: Often, a 360 degree feedback process arrives as a recommendation from the HR department or is shepherded in by an executive who learned about the process at a seminar or in a book. Just as an organization implements any planned change, the implementation of 360 degree feedback should follow effective change management guidelines. A cross-section of the people who will have to live with and utilize the process should explore and develop the process for your organization.

Failure to Connect the Process: For a 360 feedback process to work, it must be connected with the overall strategic aims of your organization. If you have identified competencies or have comprehensive job descriptions, give people feedback on their performance of the expected competencies and job duties. The system will fail if it is an add-on rather than a supporter of your organization's fundamental direction and requirements. It must function as a measure of your accomplishment of your organization's big and long-term picture.

Insufficient Information: Since 360 degree feedback processes are currently usually anonymous, people receiving feedback have no recourse if they want to further understand the feedback. They have no one to ask for clarification about unclear comments or for more information about particular ratings and their basis. Thus, developing 360 process coaches is important. Supervisors, HR staff people, interested managers, and others are taught to assist people to understand their feedback and trained to help people develop action plans based on the feedback.

Focus on Negatives and Weaknesses: At least one book, "First Break All the Rules: What The World's Greatest Managers Do Differently," advises that great managers focus on employee strengths, not weaknesses. The authors said, "People don't change that much. Don't waste time trying to put in what was left out. Try to draw out what was left in. That is hard enough."

Rater Inexperience and Ineffectiveness: In addition to the insufficient training organizations provide both people receiving feedback and people providing feedback, there are numerous ways raters go wrong. They may inflate ratings to make an employee look good. They may deflate ratings to make an individual look bad. They may informally band together to make the system artificially inflate everyone's performance. Checks and balances must exist to prevent these pitfalls.

Paperwork/Computer Data Entry Overload: In traditional 360 evaluations, multi-rater feedback upped the sheer number of people participating in the process and the subsequent time invested. Fortunately, most multi-rater feedback systems now have online entry and reporting systems. This has almost eliminated this former downside.

There are negatives with the 360 degree feedback processes, but with any performance feedback process, it can increase positive, powerful problem solving and provide you with a profoundly supportive, organization-affirming method for promoting employee growth and development.

However, in the worst case, it saps morale, destroys motivation, and enables disenfranchised employees to go for the jugular or plot revenge scenarios against people who rated their performance less than perfect.

Which scenario will your organization choose? It's all about the details. Think profoundly before you move forward, learn from the mistakes of others and assess your organization's readiness. Apply effective change management strategies to planning and implementation. Do the right things right and you will add a powerful tool to your performance management and enhancement toolkit.

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See the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly About 360 Degree Employee Feedback

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Want to make people happy? Anxious? Care to create an uproar in your organization? Want to stir up all of the dormant fear hidden just below the surface in your organization? You think we're talking about laying off half your staff-right? Wrong.

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Why Anonymous Feedback Does More Harm Than Good

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Why Anonymous Feedback Does More Harm Than Good

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What's easier to miss, though, is that that requires a two-way conversation: Not only do employees want more feedback, they also want to be heard-and see the results of it. But not all efforts to build a more open, feedback-driven culture are created equal, and while some believe employees need to be able to speak their minds anonymously, it's far from clear that that's the best approach. Here's why.

It's true that anonymity protects employees from the fear of retribution in some organizations, but that doesn't always encourage honesty.

The researchers James R. Detert and Ethan R. Burris argue in Harvard Business Review that anonymous feedback comes with three serious risks:

1. It reinforces the impression that it isn't safe to speak up openly.

2. It can set off a witch-hunt to find out who said what, leading away from the issues at hand.

3. It discourages the level of specificity that's needed to make real changes.

To take the most obvious example, when an employee complains about an abusive manager, HR needs to know the parties involved in order to investigate what's going on and make meaningful recommendations. Simply supplying that information under cover of anonymity might not cut it, and instead actually hampers a company's HR leaders from doing their job.

Anonymity protects employees from the fear of retribution in some organizations, but that doesn't always encourage honesty.

Organizational psychologist Roger Schwarz has pointed out that this dearth of actionable information is characteristic of feedback itself. A single unit of feedback-"Here's what I think needs changing," or, "I've had this troubling experience"-is just one piece of a wider conversation that needs to follow, virtually always requiring clarification or elaboration along the way.

Anonymity halts that conversation before it can even take place, which can lead swiftly to the (accurate) sense among teams that feedback isn't leading to real change.

Certainly, managers want to find innovative ideas among those who are closest to the action and learn where there's room for improvement. But that's only half the benefit to employee feedback. Managers also need to know where people have erred and where they're struggling-and why-so they can offer more than just a one-size-fits-all approach to coaching.

What's more, feedback gives a false sense of security to company leaders. Employees might be providing feedback behind the scenes, but that means they're being comparatively less transparent in personal, non-anonymous interactions. Managers won't typically realize that's created a trust deficit until those sentiments are embedded deep in the culture.

That points to the goal behind the demand we're now seeing for more open work cultures fueled by meaningful feedback: trust and accountability among everyone at the company, up and down the ladder and colleague to colleague. No matter what tone executives and managers set when it comes to transparency, permitting some of those efforts to remain anonymous risks undermining all of them.

A single unit of feedback-"Here's what I think needs changing," or, "I've had this troubling experience"-is just one piece of a wider conversation that needs to follow.

In order to help employees overcome the anxiety of speaking up openly, leaders need to take the lead and set an example. They should host regular, company-wide meetings to offer meaningful information and talk candidly about their own career experiences and mistakes. Make those instances personal and normal, not just an occasional ritual.

As Dartmouth professor of management Dr. Sydney Finkelstein recently shared with me, "Successful leaders understand that mistakes happen, and they encourage employees to speak up so that everyone can learn, adapt, and adjust in real time."

It may sound obvious, but employees need to understand that their managers are people, too-a simple reality that anonymous feedback distorts (making them into faceless powers to be addressed from under cover of darkness)-and have their own workloads in addition to their managerial duties. With that in mind, here are some tips for employees to offer open, personal feedback that doesn't have to feel risky or uncomfortable:

Get to the point and succinctly state the issue you want addressed. You can always elaborate later.

Share your concern as soon as issues arise (but after you've cooled off a bit, if need be). Letting frustrations escalate into anger can make it difficult to get to the heart of a problem.

Propose at least one solution. This sends the message that you're interested in making improvements, not just griping.

Be honest and candid, but keep your emotions in check. Even the most patient and understanding manager can have a hard time sifting through rancor for useful information.

And here are some tips managers can use in order to encourage good feedback or move ahead productively with feedback they've received:

Ask what's been going right for your employees this week, other issues notwithstanding.

Find out what obstacles your teams need help with, and what their top weekly priorities are.

Acknowledge feedback with gratitude, even if you can't take action right away. But make sure you do always follow through before your employees start to think you've forgotten.

Be specific about the changes you want to see or the advice you provide.

Provide some honest, positive feedback along with your suggestions. Morale can drop quickly when people feel like they're complete failures, or when their negative feedback is met only with reciprocal criticism.

As giving and receiving feedback becomes a more normal part of workplaces large and small, company leaders will need to build the trust to sustain it. Anonymity might appear to be a reasonable concession in the name of encouraging more open dialogue. More than likely, though, it will only undermine it.
David Hassell is the cofounder and CEO of 15Five, employee engagement software that creates an open weekly dialogue about what's most important, so that managers can react quickly to employee challenges and enhance team performance and productivity.

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Why Anonymous Feedback Does More Harm Than Good

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What's easier to miss, though, is that that requires a two-way conversation: Not only do employees want more feedback, they also want to be heard-and see the results of it. But not all efforts to build a more open, feedback-driven culture are created equal, and while some believe employees need to be able to speak their minds anonymously, it's far from clear that that's the best approach.