Link the Effort to a Strategic Initiative or a Business Need. For 360-degree feedback to be effective as a stimulus for change, people need to understand its broader purpose; only then will you get their initial support and, ultimately, their commitment to the process.

Gail Howard, the senior vice president of human resources at Wilmington Trust Wealth Advisory Services (WAS), observed a difference in people’s attitudes when the use of a feedback questionnaire was specifically linked to the organization’s culture and business model. “Because we developed our own competency model and customized our questionnaire specifically to the success factors that support the values and performance expectations at WAS, it had much more meaning for people, and the level of enthusiasm rose dramatically. We have much more commitment to our development-oriented activities because we built the feedback around the success factors. In addition, knowing that the senior team participated in defining what it means to be a leader at WAS has made it much easier to get people to focus on the messages contained in the feedback.”

Sean Woodroffe of FGIC, agrees. “By showing how the 360 process would help achieve a broad business objective, we were able to demonstrate that 360 was not just about individual development. The more our senior leaders understood the relationship between the results of the 360 process, the follow-up activities, and the achievement of our strategic goals, the more support and enthusiasm we got from them. This held true as we moved the process down to the next level as well.”

Get Senior Management to Participate In and Drive the Effort. Everyone we spoke to agreed that the support of senior management was crucial to the success of the process. Management support sends the clearest message to the rest of the organization about the importance of the effort and the role it will play in individual and organizational development.

Managers who are about to receive 360-degree feedback frequently ask, “Did they do this yet?” referring to more senior people in the organization. If the feedback is seen as something the top tells the middle to do to the bottom, it is less likely to have the intended effect. The rallying cry of resistance becomes, “If it’s not required for them, why do I have to do it? They need it as much as anyone.” Rick Sawyer, director, learning and development, Fujifilm USA, is attentive to this issue. “Whenever I’ve used 360 feedback, I’ve always tried to ensure that senior people participate in the process,” he says. “A senior executive’s participation in 360-degree feedback gives the process credibility and means there will be less pushback from others in the company.”

Involvement by senior management also helps to ensure that sufficient resources will be made available to support the effort and that the organization will remain committed to the intervention until it achieves its objective. “We are fortunate to have a president who is an advocate for training and development,” says Janis Lane, senior director of human resources at Eisai, Inc. “Lonnel Coats consistently ensures that resources are allocated to people development. This reflects his personal experience, his own regard for learning, that has been an important part of his career.”

Senior management’s participation in the feedback process also helps ensure that the behaviors and competencies that are being measured will be reinforced day-to-day. As Sean Woodroffe reports, “Starting with our most senior manager was a critical first step. We wanted everyone in the organization to know that we were serious about the behavior changes we were expecting. With the senior managers’ support, we were able to drive behavior and reinforce values through all levels in our organization on a day-to-day basis.”

Emphasize Clear and Frequent Communication About the Initiative’s Purpose and Implications for Each Member of the Organization. When it comes to gaining support for the use of 360-degree feedback, all the people we spoke with agreed with the old maxim, You can’t communicate too much or too often. “Although a not widely used paper-and-pencil version was in place in the past, implementing an electronic 360 based on our core competencies is relatively new here,” says Marie-Claire Barker, executive vice president of human resources for OgilvyOne, “and we’ve just been using it the last four years or so. Because of that it was critical that we explained to the organization how the 360 feedback would be relevant to people’s day-to-day work and how confidentiality and people’s anonymity would be protected. This helped many people get on board, but we find we must continue to ‘sell’ the benefits each time we work with a new team or group of managers.”

The more people understand about why 360-degree feedback is being introduced in the organization and how the information will be used, the more likely they are to support the effort, or at least not actively resist it. “A lesson I learned early on,” says Susan Kushnir, senior vice president and director of knowledge, development, and learning at Porter Novelli, “is to communicate broadly early in the process with the various departments from which we need support. The sooner key stakeholders understand the purpose and how they and the organization will benefit from the 360 intervention the sooner you will be able to gain their support.”

Ensure That People See the Behaviors That Will Be Measured as Important and Relevant to Their Jobs. It is much easier to gain people’s commitment to the use of 360-degree feedback if they believe the behaviors that will be measured are directly related to the effective performance of their jobs. “The real power of the study we did,” says New York Life’s Vince Baglio, “was that we were able to clearly show a correlation between the effective use of specific leader behaviors and work unit performance. There is nothing that gets a manager’s attention more, especially on the sales side of the organization, than data that indicates which behaviors are more likely to produce the desired outcome.”

Joelle Marquis of Arsenal Capital Partners agrees. “We have gotten a great deal of cooperation and support for our 360 process because the competencies were developed with the participation of the principals and the organization perceives them to be relevant to our ability to sustain growth and to build a firm that will last.”

Although most people will still feel some reluctance toward receiving feedback on their performance, a clear link between the behaviors being measured and their effectiveness on the job helps people get over that hurdle. Sixty-nine percent of the line managers who participated in our survey reported that the 360 helped them understand what they needed to do to improve their performance, saying, “It provided an opportunity to improve in areas where feedback consistently pointed toward a need,” “I got validation from others of what I consider to be my strengths,” and “It provided personal development input to be more effective in my job.”

Provide Ongoing Support and Follow-Up. All the practitioners to whom we spoke felt that the most essential factor for long-term success was building in a follow-up activity or process at the outset of the project. People need clarity about what is expected of them after they receive the feedback, as well as ongoing support, if what they have learned is going to lead to action or change.

It is generally agreed that people need specific development plans for leveraging the strengths and addressing the weaknesses identified by the feedback: they must understand exactly what they are expected to do, and with whom. As Doug Trainor, director, team leader of leadership education and development at Pfizer, says, “Everyone who attends our program gets a 360. They are asked to meet with their bosses before the program to review the data and clarify their learning objectives. During the program they build out their development plans and after the program they are expected to meet with their bosses periodically for coaching and feedback on progress toward their development objectives. We have found that when the managers of our participants provide ongoing coaching and get involved in the follow-up activities, there is a greater likelihood we will see skill improvement and positive behavior change.”

The degree of follow-up and the form it takes depend on both the internal resources available and the motivation of the individual. However, as Dr. Gary Yukl, professor of leadership and organizational development at the State University of New York at Albany and the author of Leadership in Organizations, says, “Some form of follow-up is beneficial. Our current research suggests that coaching after a multi-source feedback workshop can enhance the improvement in behavior. We have also found that, as compared to managers who only attend a single feedback workshop, the managers who attend a second feedback workshop several months after the first one increased their use of effective influence tactics with direct reports and peers and received higher ratings of overall effectiveness from the boss.”

Most people we spoke with feel that a formal follow-up effort produces better results than leaving it up to the individual’s discretion whether or not to take a next step. Allan Polak, director of executive development at the Hartford Financial Services Group, who has used a more formal follow-up process when using 360 for team development, observes, “It’s critical to go back to measure the extent of the progress that has been made. Organizational dynamics and systems frequently push individuals and teams back toward the old, less effective behaviors they are trying to change. When there is no follow-up it’s hard to determine if the person or team is on track toward their development targets. The follow-up allows you to ask ‘What are you doing differently?’ to reinforce the behavior if they have improved, ‘What’s getting in the way of progress?’ if they are backsliding, and ‘What are you not doing differently?’ if they have not made any progress.”