OSI has conducted over 15,000 leadership and management 360° surveys over the past several decades. We have also formed and learned from a network of senior coaches throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. This experience has provided some interesting and hopefully helpful observations as participants attempt to understand, interpret, and act on their 360 feedback. Here we list some of these observations. Some of these observations pertain specifically to our Polaris 360° survey, but most are transferable to all well developed 360° surveys - we hope you find them useful as you undoubtedly have or will have encountered 360° surveys in your career or practice.

Here are a couple of reminders we typically share with participants up front:

• It is absolutely normal to have a range of emotions in reaction to your feedback. You might experience surprise, joy, anger, denial, relief or any combination. These are natural reactions to this very comprehensive feedback - especially if it is your first 360.
• Your feedback should be strictly for your development. At OSI, we follow the best practice of using 360s for development and do not conduct 360 surveys for administrative or performance management purposes. 
• Feedback IS a gift; thank the givers. It is virtually impossible to improve without feedback (and virtually impossible to do by yourself - even feedback from a mirror only provides 50% feedback on how you look!). We encourage participants to recognize those who have given you this gift by acknowledging receipt of your feedback report. We encourage participants to go public with what they have learned -- in part to model a willingness to grow as a leader, and in part to be held accountable for continued application of strengths, and continued development in areas of needed development.
• Your feedback report is about others' perceptions of you. It may not represent your intent, or your self-perceptions, but it is important to acknowledge that, in the absence of new information or changed behavior, the scores and comments represent reality to your respondent population.

And now some food for thought when you consider your feedback:

• Our most experienced coaches have observed that there tends to be an overemphasis on perceived negative information in 360s. Participants are much more likely to list developmental needs than key strengths. They note that being clear about who you are (not who you aren't) is just as valuable for your future as setting developmental objectives. The lesson: make sure you inventory your key strengths as a result of the feedback, not just developmental areas. You should also set some positive goals to leverage your strengths - most action plans after 360 feedback deal exclusively with competency "gaps" and neglect setting goals that leverage strengths. They also suggest a third category of competencies for consideration - hidden, or masked, competencies. These are competencies you know you have, but the lower ratings of participants indicate they are somehow hidden.
• Some OSI coaches have observed that the use of normative data can be counterproductive - although, OSI typically does provide group or survey norms to help benchmark rater leniency or severity tendencies for items and competencies. However, when you run with the pack, you are defined by the pack. We have observed a trend in highly effective leaders (and the organizations they lead) for internal benchmarking - always striving for a personal best and measuring success based on continuous improvement against a constantly raising bar. One of our long-term clients, Nike, puts it this way, "There is no finish line!" The lesson: high performing leaders (and their organizations) are less concerned with beating the average than with a relentless pursuit of perfection. By the way, these leaders also tend to be students of leadership - they understand the importance of their competence as leaders and continuously study ways to become more effective.
• The context for your feedback is extremely important for interpreting and weighting your competency ratings. As the late Warren Bennis, the famous leadership guru at USC, has stated, "Text without context, is pretext!" All of the competencies measured by the 360 survey have been correlated with professional and leadership success - but some are more important for certain roles and at certain times. You must put your feedback in context - what are your current challenges, what are your short and long-term career goals? You might even ask the question ...do my results indicate I am in the right job? Answers to these questions can prioritize and re-order strengths and suggest possible developmental or career paths.
• Feedback is a necessary part of growth - but without accountability it is much less likely to lead to improvement. Different individuals hold themselves accountable with different tools or techniques. Some use coaches; others contract with their boss, peers and staff; and some set developmental goals in the context of their performance management system. Bob Power, a seasoned OSI coach, and the author of a book on personal change, offers these keys to successful change:
  • Don't overwhelm yourself. Choose one competency and a few very specific behaviors to begin with. Include leveraging your strengths.
  • Don't do it alone. Let others know what you intend to change. The lessons from dieters and smoke-enders apply: those that try to quit alone are MUCH less likely to make a change than those who involve others and get support.
  • Set specific goals, envision your preferred future behavior, list the action steps you will need to accomplish to reach your goals, identify obstacles, and MOST IMPORTANTLY identify key motivators. Why would you want to change? What is in it for you? Without an identified motivation, change will be much more difficult.

One final note of caution regarding 360s. We have noticed an occasional tendency to occasionally think of 360s as THE major component of a survey-guided development effort. Of course, they're not. They are merely the diagnostic phase of a process that might take months or years (like an x-ray or MRI at the front of a physical). We often call them 20% of the process, with the other 80% being the feedback, action planning, follow up, and re-survey to check on improvement. This sounds obvious, but we've seen major efforts fall far short of expectations as 360s are administered with very little thought to the feedback, coaching, and follow up needed to ensure understanding, ownership, and action. Let us know your thoughts on this now staple process in leadership development!