Mission Excellence asserts that traditional 360 feedback processes fail to harness the true power of the concept.
Talking to a fighter pilot about 360 feedback is likely to elicit the same level of understanding as talking in Mandarin. Asking how he or she developed the leadership skills to lead huge multinational cross-functional teams in extremely high-pressure dynamic environments is likely to receive a similarly vague response. And yet the irony is that the most important facet of the pilot’s development as a leader is his or her ability to constantly improve performance by learning from experience, and 360 feedback is an integral part of that process.
However this 360 feedback is not a one-off programme with feedback delivered anonymously; it is something which routinely happens face-to-face every day in the Debrief. Debriefing, whendone properly, is a combination of performance assessment, executive coaching and 360 feedback. It is objective assessment of the team’s performance by the team themselves. The Leader’s performance is on show the same as everybody else, is judged by the same standard as everybody else, and he or she is likely to learn as much as anybody else in the room.
Removing the security blanket of anonymity is asking a lot of both the Leader and the team, and requires the team to address certain behavioural issues in order to maintain a positive learning environment. However not only is this essential, the payback is enormous. Imagine the value of
receiving continuous high-quality objective feedback on collective and individual performance.
And with an effective system for knowledge management and learning transfer, the learning can be routinely and rapidly shared with other teams throughout the organisation.
Recently Debriefing was described by a Leader of The Red Arrows as his “single most powerful tool for achieving continual improvement”.
Put it another way: imagine not debriefing – not learning from experience; prepare to make the same mistakes again and again.
Mission Excellence believes that 360 feedback in isolation is only half the story and have integrated that concept into a powerful commercial debriefing model – LEARN – drawing directly on techniques used by fighter pilots.
To learn more about our ongoing work in this field with commercial clients, contact us on enquiries@missionexcellence.com
