360 Feedback in the Florida Keys

360 | Cir­cle n.

• A group of peo­ple shar­ing an inter­est, activ­i­ty, upbring­ing, etc.
• A domain or area of activ­i­ty, inter­est, or influence
• A cir­cuit
• A process or chain of events or parts that forms a con­nect­ed whole.

“If you don’t get feed­back from your per­form­ers and your audi­ence, you’re going to be work­ing in a vac­u­um.” — Peter Maxwell Davies, Eng­lish composer

Recent­ly, I had a great meet­ing with a client com­pa­ny, in the Flori­da Keys (some­where I’d nev­er been before), at the south­ern most point of the US – lit­er­al­ly about 90 miles away from Cuba.

The real­ly inter­est­ing part was the work we did was on the dynam­ics of the exec­u­tive team. This is a very suc­cess­ful, fast-grow­ing com­pa­ny not only rapid­ly grow­ing rev­enue, but in gross mar­gin and cash as well – which is the ide­al way to grow.

As part of the com­mit­ment to make the com­pa­ny stronger, we put a lot of ener­gy into con­tin­u­al­ly mak­ing the exec­u­tive team stronger – and this meet­ing was our annu­al 360 rit­u­al. Like tra­di­tion­al 360s the team gets feed­back from their boss, their peers, and their direct reports. But we do it in a way that is not only sim­pler, but actu­al­ly more pow­er­ful: we treat 360s as a team activity.

360 feed­back as a team exercise

Here’s how it works:

A few weeks in advance of the meet­ing we gath­er feed­back through sev­en ques­tions sent to each of the exec­u­tives: ques­tions about they how live their core val­ues, about their strengths, and ways they can grow stronger as leaders.

At the meet­ing, we gath­ered out­side in the warm Flori­da evening after din­ner. Each exec­u­tive received the results of everyone’s feed­back, and then were giv­en 30 min­utes to go and read it, and come back to the group with three things:

• Any ques­tions or clar­i­fi­ca­tion they need, based on the feedback
• What they are going to keep doing — or do more of — to lever­age their exist­ing strengths
• What they will start — or stop doing — to grow stronger as a leader.

We then post­ed the 360 results on the screen, per­son by per­son, for every­one to see, to com­ment on, and to ask ques­tions — and then we talked.

Some­times the con­ver­sa­tions were easy — and some­times dif­fi­cult — depend­ing on the feed­back, and the person’s com­fort level.

It was a very, very long night but incred­i­bly pro­duc­tive because every­one got very good feed­back, and every­one com­mit­ted to what they would — or wouldn’t do — to become stronger as a leader. More than that, peo­ple knew and under­stood what every per­son was com­mit­ted to — and how they could be part of help­ing them get there.

This approach may seem uncom­fort­able or shock­ing – and tru­ly, if you don’t have a fair­ly high lev­el of trust on the team, it can be a ter­ri­fy­ing and destruc­tive process. But if you have a rea­son­able amount of trust on the team, it’s by far the most pow­er­ful way to do it.

Let’s face it: our strengths and weak­ness­es are not that secret – and usu­al­ly they are fair­ly obvi­ous – so this process brings them to the fore­front, and ulti­mate­ly cre­ates even more trust, as peo­ple are in a bet­ter posi­tion to help each oth­er win.

“Feed­back is the break­fast of cham­pi­ons.” — Ken Blan­chard, Author of The One-Minute Manager

Dif­fi­cult conversations

Here’s an exam­ple of a sen­si­tive issue we discussed:

There was a new, high­ly capa­ble mem­ber on the team, who hadn’t gelled well with a num­ber of the team mem­bers. When peo­ple invit­ed him to events or social activ­i­ties after work, he always declined because he was ded­i­cat­ed to his family.

What the per­son hadn’t real­ized was that these invi­ta­tions weren’t real­ly social – or option­al. They were about cre­at­ing per­son­al bonds. With­out them, he couldn’t be a real part of the team because in this par­tic­u­lar com­pa­ny, if you’re not in, you’re out.

A num­ber of com­ments in this person’s feed­back said they want­ed him to be a part of their team – but every time he didn’t join them, it came across as if he didn’t want to be part of the family.

Because of the 360 feed­back process, the issue got on the table — and he under­stood how impor­tant those invi­ta­tions are. From that moment, the change was imme­di­ate — and lasting.

***

In a per­fect world every per­son would trans­par­ent­ly share with their peers, boss­es and direct reports about their strengths, and how they might improve. But we’re not always good at it — and that’s why a mech­a­nism like the 360 is crit­i­cal. Some­times the tini­est bit of feed­back can make a mas­sive dif­fer­ence in help­ing peo­ple to per­form bet­ter. But if an issue is left too long with­out being addressed, it can be explo­sive and leave a lot of damage.

By the way, if you are going to do a 360 ses­sion, you need an expert to facil­i­tate the process, or it can be destruc­tive. Please call us if we can help you.