For those completing the 360 feedback process outside of a leadership programme.
Please note that if you interested in completing the 360 feedback process, your department will need to cover the cost of this (£75). Please contact leadership-development@york.ac.uk for further details.

Guidance for managers

If an individual who reports directly to you has approached you to take part in the 360 process this guidance will help you to understand the benefit and importance of the process and your contribution to it.

Understanding the 360 process

The 360 is an important stage in part of their leadership development programme, which your colleague is currently embarking upon. The 360 is an opportunity for you to provide feedback on the individual's leadership approach against a set of pre-defined leadership principles. The online questionnaire will ask you to give a numerical agreement rating to a series of behaviours and values. There will also be the opportunity to provide open narratives to justify a particular rating choice. The questionnaire concludes with a number of open questions about how the individual may be able to adapt and improve their leadership style in the future. The feedback received via the 360 will allow the individual to understand different perceptions of their behaviour and leadership style and ultimately understand the areas in which they can strive for personal growth and development.

Anonymity

All raters invited to take part in the 360 sit within a group: manager, peers, reports or other. It is likely that you will be the only individual within the 'manager' group and consequently the feedback you provide will be directly attributed to you. As a result it is essential that there are no surprises and that you do not use this as an opportunity to raise for the first time, concerns you may have over their performance. However it is important to understand that the feedback provided by all other raters will be anonymous; this is to maximise participation and avoid the risk of individuals being singled out. The rest of the groups listed above will have an absolute minimum of two people, but will usually have more. When raters submit their questionnaire the numerical ratings of everyone in the group are combined to form averages, whilst all the open comments from the group are intermingled in one list. Therefore the feedback of the manager is unique as it is the only input that can be attributed back to the individual.

Taking part in the 360 as a Rater

The colleague taking part in the 360 process will have picked between 6 and 17 raters to provide feedback. In supporting the individual's participation in the leadership programme you will automatically be assigned as one of the raters. The individual may still approach you to formally invite you to participate and in some circumstances the individual may also seek your advice about the selection of other appropriate raters.

When participating in the 360 remember that whatever you submit will be attributable to you. Consequently the advice is that your feedback should include no surprises. At the same time it is essential that you provide feedback that is both truthful and worthwhile. Consequently if you have any concerns with the individual, which they are not already aware of, take the opportunity to have an honest face to face conversation. The feedback you submit may then reiterate the issue raised in the conversation, but it will no longer come as an unexpected shock to the individual.

Filling in the online feedback will only take 15 - 25 minutes. You will receive an automated email inviting you to login to the system and complete the questionnaire. If you would like further guidance on navigating the system please see the FAQs.

Supporting the Individual during the 360 process

As the manager, you should try and make yourself available to the individual should they have any concerns throughout the 360 process.

At the start they are most likely to require assistance when considering who to pick as their raters; so this may be an area you offer to help with if they need it. During the four weeks in which the feedback window is open, their main concern may be a low or majoritatively overdue response rate. During this time you can reassure the individual that the system sends out automatic reminders to chase up raters. You may also remind the individual that they can send out a generic email to all raters, thanking those who have already taken part and reminding those who haven't that their feedback would be gratefully appreciated.

After the 360 process

After all feedback is submitted, the individual will receive their 360 feedback report and go through it with the guidance of a coach from the Learning and Development team. The coach will help the individual to draw out the highlights of the constructive feedback as well as produce a developmental action plan.

During this session the coach will help the individual to decide if they need to have follow up conversations with any of the raters. The advice of the coach will always be that the individual should have a follow on meeting with their line manager to chat about the results. If the individual does approach you about the 360 report you are encouraged to set aside some quality time to discuss their learning from this process and their subsequent development plan. It is likely that they will value your support in applying this new learning back into the work place, so where possible, include discussion of the action plan in your regular 1 - 1 meetings.

It is important to remember that the revelations of a 360 can be a tough process for the individual. Consequently you must be sure to respect the individual's ownership of the process and the subsequent report. A member of the Learning and Development team during the feedback session will offer them advice and guidance on how to deal with the results and undertake follow up conversations, whilst you as the manager can reassure the individual that you have an open door policy on the matter. However it is completely up to the individual if, when and who they choose to discuss the report with, so you must respect their right to choose this.