This process is based on "multi-rater" feedback. This approach involves asking others who work with an individual - his/her manager, peers and team members - about their operating approach and effectiveness. Their different perceptions are integrated to provide a more comprehensive and rounded evaluation of personal strengths and limitations and help plan out future development priorities and actions.
Research has indicated the views of others provides feedback which helps individuals to understand themselves better - their strengths and limitations, and areas in which they can improve their overall effectiveness.
Is it an exercise in: curiosity (“I wonder what people think about me?”) or emotional reassurance (“I hope everything is going OK for me?”); or am I going to use feedback to look for ways of enhancing my leadership effectiveness and business performance?
What will I do with the results? Am I committed to the follow through? Will I share the overall findings with my line manager? Do I plan to debrief my team? How much time and effort will I invest in reviewing and updating my development plan?
How long have I been in this role? How well established are my working relationships, up, across and down? Are my colleagues right now able and willing to provide frank and meaningful feedback? What else is going on in the organisation that might affect the speed and quality of the feedback?
My line manager and/or a previous line manager I have recently worked for? Which mix of peers do I need to select to get a representative mix of different views – supportive and challenging? Do I include my entire team? Or, if it is a large team, who should I select for a balanced perspective? Who within the team has most insight and is prepared to say what they think?
You will then need to brief them about this exercise. It is important to emphasise:
Send through the proforma with details of your feedbackers to: . You will then receive an email with instructions to complete the questionnaire for yourself. Keep your access code and use it to check who has and hasn’t completed. And remind your colleagues to complete if they haven’t responded within a fortnight. Diarise a time for the debrief and a follow on discussion with your line manager as well as a review with your team
In the first instance please contact the individual who organised for you to participate in the feedback process. Alternatively please contact admin@amazureconsulting.com with your full contact details.
Detailed prompts will be provided in the report itself to help you understand how the feedback data is presented. Some high level themes:
Remember the pros and cons of feedback. The quality of the report depends on the maturity of your feedbackers to provide meaningful feedback. At its best, the report will:
At its worst, the report will be the outcome of:
Remember the analysis in the report is not simply about "you". It is a reflection of the context and the dynamic of your different working relationships, and the expectations of your leadership from your line manager, peers, team members and other colleagues. You will need to use your judgement to come to a balanced view of what the results are saying and not saying.
As you go through your report, try not to jump to conclusions. Take time to familiarise yourself with the contents of the report and what the report is and isn’t saying about you. Can you make sense of the presentational format to work out what the results are? Read through the report carefully to come to a balanced assessment of the positive as well as the more challenging messages.
Our advice is to take some time out to review the report, making some initial notes about the major themes that are emerging from the analysis, your strengths as well as any constraints. Highlight any areas which are either surprising or confusing. You may want to review these after further reflection. We also recommend that you discuss the results with any colleagues who could provide an alternative perspective. Your manager, peers and team members may help clarify the feedback and suggest specific areas for development. This dialogue is an important step in turning feedback into feedforward.
Compare and contrast your perceptions of yourself with those of your manager, your peers, team members and stakeholders. This will help you take stock of the impact you are currently having and to identify the specific areas where you can maximise your effectiveness in future.
How do your self perceptions match those of your work colleagues? Are your views more positive? Have you over-estimated your effectiveness; or are others being too critical? If others’ evaluations are more positive what might be the reasons? Have others tended to “pull their punches” and been overly generous in their assessment of you? Why? Or have you been particularly tough in reviewing your impact? How consistent are the views of the different feedback groups – your manager, your peers, team members and stakeholders? Does a clear pattern emerge, or are others’ perceptions very different? Why? What might be the reasons? Are the expectations of your manager, peers and staff different, or do you behave differently in different situations?
Look at the quantity and quality of the open ended comments. Is there useful “texture” to support the previous messages? Is there any ambiguous/contradictory feedback? Are positive ratings balanced by specific negative messages? Are challenging ratings “softened” by positive comments? Are there specific and practical comments that you can act on? Don’t “dwell” here and look for hidden meanings.
Which areas do you immediately recognise and identify with? Which areas are confusing, ambiguous or contradictory? Reviewing the overall set of findings, what issues stand out for you as significant? Specific strengths to protect and deploy further? Or limitations to acknowledge and tackle?
If you are struggling to make sense of the results, do email us at admin@amazureconsulting.com and we will be happy to help further.
As you work through the report, track your emotions. What is your dominant feeling:
Do not ignore this feeling. Take time to work through why the feedback might be the way it is and why you are feeling what you are feeling. In order to make best use of this exercise in developing your effectiveness as a leader it is important you maintain balance between humility (and the willingness to learn from others) and self confidence (and not being distracted by unreasonable "criticism").
What parts of the feedback have most significance for you given your role and current leadership challenges?
You should begin to distil the feedback from the report into 3 – 4 themes, the priorities that you want to follow up in further discussion with your line manager as well as other colleagues.
Having worked through the report we would recommend that you thank your feedbackers. You may not like all the messages in the report but others have taken the time to complete the feedback questionnaire. This is best done face to face, but given work realities, may have to be by telephone or email.
In the short term you should meet with your line manager within 4 weeks of receiving your report to discuss the feedback. As preparation for this meeting, you should consider the following points:
We also recommend that you debrief your team within four weeks of receiving the feedback. We do not recommend that you copy in all your team members to the full report. We would however encourage you at your next team meeting to provide a headline summary of the key messages. Peter Drucker – an influential business guru in corporate management - said “the best way to develop yourself is to develop others”. Engage your team members and their development in your own personal development.
It is important in providing an overview of the feedback exercise that your team members are not “put on the spot” or made to feel they need to justify the feedback. The aim of this exercise is to turn "feedback" into "feedforward" and agreeing actions that will help you and your team make progress.
Check that you have entered your access code properly. If you still can’t access the system, please contact us by emailing admin@amazureconsulting.com.
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If you have copied and pasted your access code, ensure that you haven’t accidentally taken an extra space or try manually typing your access code in. If that still doesn’t work, contact admin@amazureconsulting.com.
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Yes you can, your responses will be saved as you go. Just don’t forget to go back in to complete the questionnaire and to fully submit your responses. However as the questionnaire is short we would recommend you complete in one session. Please work through all the questions and remember to submit at the end.
If you are completing from outside the corporate PC standard, i.e. from home or on a laptop we can’t control how you are accessing the Internet. However, we will have captured your data up to the point where you lost the connection. Please re-enter the system and you will be able to complete the questionnaire from the point where you lost the connection. Remember to fully submit at the end.