Gender and 360

Background 1     360° feedback 360° feedback, also known as 360 degree evaluation, 360 degree appraisal or multi-rater feedback, is the process of gathering feedback on employees’ performance and behaviours from ‘all around’ them: above them (their manager), below them (their direct reports), and from ‘beside’ them (from peers in their team, from peers and partners outside of their team, and sometimes from external partners such as customers or suppliers). Such feedback is normally gathered by asking each individual to assess how well the ‘focus’ of the feedback demonstrates each of a number of business-relevant behaviours….

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Background

1     360° feedback

360° feedback, also known as 360 degree evaluation, 360 degree appraisal or multi-rater feedback, is the process of gathering feedback on employees’ performance and behaviours from ‘all around’ them: above them (their manager), below them (their direct reports), and from ‘beside’ them (from peers in their team, from peers and partners outside of their team, and sometimes from external partners such as customers or suppliers).

Such feedback is normally gathered by asking each individual to assess how well the ‘focus’ of the feedback demonstrates each of a number of business-relevant behaviours. It is normal to also provide open-text forms in the questionnaire to allow the raters to comment on the individual’s strengths, areas in need of development and make other constructive points relevant to their current role and future career. The focus also completes this same questionnaire on themselves.

2    Inspiring Leader

Around 14,000 people have completed Talent Innovations’ off the shelf tool – the ‘Inspiring Leader’.

These people come from a variety of organisations and sectors, including many from the public and education sectors, though the majority were from the private sector. All but a handful of the feedbacks were gathered from organisations based in the UK.

The questionnaire consists of 107 management, leadership and business behaviours, evaluated on a five-point scale from ‘poor’ to ‘excellent’. Such ratings are gathered from the individual completing a self-assessment together with a variety of their colleagues including their manager, direct reports and peers, but often also other types of rater such as clients, suppliers and other partners, and other more senior or junior colleagues. It takes the typical survey respondent approximately 10 minutes to complete these ratings.

This tool has recently undergone an extensive psychometric review, which has resulted in the questions being reorganised into a new set of 18 competencies. Each of these competencies has been arrived at using a combination of factor analysis and reliability analysis, giving a new structure that is robust, valid, and gives us an unprecedented opportunity to understand the real dynamics of management and leadership behaviours.

All individuals, both feedback recipients and feedback givers (raters), who use our 360° feedback software have their gender stored in our database. This is done in order to allow emails and other communications to be suitably tailored (the system can print “What are his strengths” or “What are her strengths” rather than the usual “What are the individual’s strengths”). This has the useful side-effect that we can examine if there are any systematic differences in how men and women are perceived and perceive others.