Chapter Four
Using Interviews to Augment 360-Degree Feedback
One of the best ways to persuade others is with your ears—by listening to them.
—Dean Rusk
We have discussed the advantages of using questionnaires to collect 360-degree feedback in earlier chapters—they are easy to administer, and the clarity and specificity of the quantitative report provide direct messages that can be the catalyst for change. Now, imagine a situation in which you are asked to complete a 360-degree feedback questionnaire on your boss. You answer each question but are left feeling somewhat dissatisfied. While the questionnaire provides the opportunity to rate how frequently your boss uses certain behaviors and how often you would like him to use them, in the end you feel you have more to say. You would have liked to give examples to help explain why you gave lower ratings on some items, and you wish you could have described when and why some of your boss’s other behaviors have had such a positive impact on you personally and on the department overall. You are concerned that your boss will not get the whole picture.
This situation illustrates the limitations of the questionnaire method—it can be difficult to reduce your perceptions of a person’s behavior to ratings on a standard set of questions targeted to a general population. This is supported by our 2008 survey of HR managers where 26 percent said they used both surveys and interviews to collect multi-rater feedback.
Questionnaire data can be augmented or enhanced in a number of ways—by adding open-ended questions to the questionnaire itself, by administering tests that measure personality or aptitude, or by conducting interviews with direct reports, colleagues, bosses, past associates, friends, and family members. And our experience has shown that organizations will opt to use the interview method alone when gathering feedback on senior-level managers or when trying to understand the use of specific behaviors that are relevant to key positions or roles. In this chapter, we will discuss the use of interviews to enrich 360-degree feedback questionnaire data or as a stand-alone approach. Topics will include the advantages and disadvantages of using the interview method at various levels of the organization; the planning required to ensure that this approach will be effective; collecting, analyzing, and interpreting the data; and presenting the feedback in a way that maximizes its constructive effects.
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