Multi-rater feedback is something that all of us HR practitioners have come to hear of at some point in our professional career. It’s commonly referred to as 360-degree feedback. This feedback approach takes a more holistic approach to performance management by soliciting feedback not only from an employee’s direct manager, but also from their peers, colleagues, stakeholders, customers, clients, etc. It is premised on the notion that “two heads are better than one” and that no one individual perspective can offer a complete understanding of an individuals performance. Its overall goal is to solicit feedback that is well-rounded (hence the name 360) that will be more meaningful and accurate for employee development.
Here is a list of benefits and some of the pitfalls that we have encountered in the research:
Benefits:
Reduces potential for bias or one perspective dominating others
Reduces organizational hierarchies and silos, and promotes culture of cooperation and accountability (not only to managers or supervisors)
Encourages honest and vulnerable “conversations”
Includes all stakeholders, particularly to whom the training would matter
Encourages creativity through collaboration
Has the potential to promote high quality connections and a growth mindset
Pitfalls:
Weak empirical evidence for 360-degree feedback programs as a mechanism for competitive advantage
Feedback is largely focused on past events and thus the conversation can be negative rather than forward looking
Too much focus on incidents of past success
Emphasises areas of weakness
Potential for group-think
Employees may be reluctant to share honest criticism of their supervisors
Further, that despite our greatest efforts, feedback during performance appraisals has been somewhat ineffective in improving employees job performance. Why? A multitude of reasons, but mainly due to the negative framing of feedback (resulting in defensive behaviours that could become distracting to the actual goal of the feedback), and also that feedback has been based on an employee’s past performance. In fact, many performance-based conversations occur at the end of the year during the infamous performance reviews. That means, an entire year of poor performance has gone by only to be addressed at the end of the year, when its already too late to rectify it. Doesn’t make much sense does it? We agree.
So where does this leave us?
It leaves us, hard-working and grossly undervalued HR folks, with a need to provide moremeaningful and frequent feedback.
But what is meaningful feedback? Well for one, its feedback that isn’t provided at the year end, but delivered on a more frequent basis to allow employees the opportunity to make improvements and/or correct poor behaviour throughout the course of the year (and not when its already too late).
This brings us to the fascinating world of the Feed-forward Interview (which makes me almost as happy as this kid).
Already, just these two words draw a warmer tone to performance feedback, something that has been largely seen as an ‘uncomfortable’ conversation. But Feed-Forward tells us that it doesn’t have to be. In fact, its entire approach is rooted in positive-based dialogue. Conversations that focus on strengthsrather than weaknesses and successes rather than failures. Another unique feature of FFI is that it is both outcome and process driven.
So, Feed-Forward Interviews (FFI) incorporates the method of appreciative inquiry by seeing the best of what is in order to imagine what could be. It does so by encouraging employees to share their stories of success so that they can come to see and realize what to do in order to ‘relive’ that success, and ‘re-reach’ that high performance. Another unique feature of FFI, is that all managers receive training in performance interview techniques prior to conducting any interviews.
How to incorporate in the work-place: Step-by-Step
Step 1: Identification via Gap Analysis This typically involves a conversation between the manager and his or her employee. The manager should ask his or her employee to identify the gap between his or her current state from his or her performance goals.
Step 2: Focus on the Extraordinary
The second step involves focusing on their success story. Doing so, allows the employee to rediscover the behaviours that lead to his or her success. This also provides managers with the opportunity to identify the conditions that produced such desired behaviours, and the opportunity to ‘re-create’ those conditions.
Step 3: Active-Listening
This step is particularly important in developing that psychological safe space by demonstrating a genuine interest. Managers can do this by allowing the employee to feel heard through maintaining eye contact to convey your attention, being aware of your body language, deferring judgment. All of this can be powerful in affirming that the employee is being being listened to and understood.
Step 4: Goal Setting
The last step involves taking all of the above and create strategic goals. These goals should be clear and created in such a way that will motivate the employee and therefore drive the desired behaviours. Understanding the conditions that lead to the employee’s previous success is also important to note when creating these goals.
Feedback is not the be-all and end-all. Rather, it is part of a big and on-going process.
Further, in an effort to maximize results of feedback, managers should be coached on how to deliver feedback in constructive ways.
Feedback may serve as a tool to help close the gap and evaluate transfer of training
Helps HR practitioners to measure the success of their training programs
It may help create an image of transparency and justice, and sends a message that employees at all levels have a say in the evaluation process
Not intended as a tool of surveillance but rather of growth and development–goal should be to create a learning organization and support employees in their development.
Every year companies spend billions of dollars on programs and initiatives to train their employees. However, research has shown that the ROI on these programs is low, and that there is often poor results for transfer of training, “the effective and continued application of the knowledge and skills gained by trainees to their jobs” (Van den Bossche et al., 2010). In fact the research suggests that only 10 – 20 percent of what is learned in training is applied to the real work context. One reason suggested for such poor results is the lack of asupportive environmentto help facilitate the application of learning. A supportive organizational environment and social network are “crucial” factors influencing the application process. They have found that feedback (from more than one source), and the helpfulness of the feedback can be seen to positively impact an employees motivation to learn, and apply their learning.
In practice, constructive feedback (or better yet feed-forward) can be used as both amechanismfor, and measure of transfer of training. As a mechanism of transfer of training, feedback can play a significant role in helping to close performance gaps by providing employees with an immediate opportunity to reflect on how the application of their newly learned knowledge and skills are measuring up to the organization’s performance expectations. Having a supportive network of peers and supervisors provide feedback can help trainees to set realistic performance goals and develop multiple meaningful connections.
The feedback can also help HR leaders evaluate and measure the success of their training programs, ensuring that these efforts are not just wasted resources. Beyond focusing on the content of these programs being in alignment with the organizational strategy, HR leaders are also encouraged to direct their attention to the transfer climate, and how the environment post- training will support and motivate the employee in applying what they have learned.
Feedback may not be a significant source of competitive advantage for organizations, however, improving channels of communication, particularly in organizations that are built upon relational job design, may help to build a culture of accountability, collaboration and openness. The positive possibilities of feedback are dependent on the nature of the feedback given, who is delivering the feedback, as well as if the organization has built systems that can support the employee in realizing individual and organizational goals. This last point is particularly important. Feedback must not be seen as only a form of recourse (i.e. a means of correcting wrongs) but rather as a ritual, deeply embedded within the organization with the purposes of development and relationship building.
In the podcast series Hidden Brain, Shankar Vednatam talks with Sheila Heen, to examine how we share several common communication problemsthat could significantly be compromising the utility of the feedback we are offering, as well as our opportunity to use the feedback we are given to change our behaviour for the better.“Giving and receiving feedback can be difficult,” and often times the positive potential of feedback is lost as conversations become derailed. Each person enters the conversation with their own agenda not realizing that they are approaching from cross-purposes or talking about two different subjects. The result is that “someone gives you feedback, and your reaction to that feedback changes the subject of the feedback.” This type of communication problem is known as “Switchtracking” and is an example of a type of bias that results in the focus of the feedback to “switch” as a consequence of two people having different priorities in a conversation.
Bias hinders the productivity of feedback. Failing to recognize your bias and how it shapes your lens can result in conflict, the other person may feel that you are closed off, or not really listening to the heart of what they are trying to communicate. Daniel Kahneman’s, “Thinking fast, thinking slow,” can be useful in explaining how our bias or heuristics, the rules and “principles we use to reduce complex tasks of assessing probabilities and assigning values,” compromise the accuracy of the feedback we are delivering/receiving. Kahneman and Tversky’s seminal paper suggests that sometimes these heuristics can be helpful as they may enable us to make quick decisions during periods of uncertainty. However, our heuristics can also lead to “systematic errors,” as they often lead to judgements we have made based on data with “limited validity” (and latent bias). Consequently, when we are asked to make decisions on someone’s performance we must be mindful that our evaluations are not always dependable. Our process of making judgements and decisions impact the reliability, and validity of the feedback we are giving particularly if we are drawing on our gut or intuition.
According to the podcast, one way of the mitigating the potential for these feedback conversations from being switchtracked or derailed is by slowing these conversations d-o-w-n, and making an effort to try to extend beyond our own priorities when entering the conversation. Through a slower more calculated approach we can attempt to move beyond seeing the discussion from only our perspective and limit the effect of our bias in making an evaluation.
Other strategies they suggest is to enter the conversation assuming positive intent, open the conversation up using flattery and focusing on the positive contributions of the person to whom you will deliver the feedback( but don’t be inauthentic), listen attentively, and most importantly make yourselves a cup of tea…and enjoy this talk by Sheila Heen on how to be more open receptive to feedback…Enjoy 🙂
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