This book focuses on providing you with the information you need to make the best possible decisions about the following:

The Right Approach for Collecting and Presenting Feedback in Your Organization. You will need to consider which skills, knowledge, and styles are relevant in order to decide what the focus of the information-gathering process should be—whether you want to gather feedback through questionnaires, one-on-one interviews, or some combination of the two; whether to purchase a questionnaire, if one is to be used, or to develop it in-house; how to find the best questionnaire for your purposes, if the decision is to purchase; and whether to present the feedback in one-on-one meetings or in group settings.

Generating Enthusiasm and Commitment Among Key Decision-Makers in the Organization. Widespread support is important for getting the green light for a 360-degree feedback process and for ensuring its ultimate success. In particular, the support of senior managers should be enlisted as early in the process as possible. Such support can best be generated by linking the 360-degree process with specific business initiatives and clarifying the cost and benefits to both the organization and individual employees. When key decision-makers understand that the feedback has a role to play within the context of larger organizational goals, they are more likely to become advocates for the process. And once senior managers are committed to the idea, they can communicate their enthusiasm to those at lower levels of the organization.

Ensuring That the Data Collected Are Useful and of High Quality. You will want to design the process to increase the likelihood that participants will receive useful data in a nonthreatening form and environment. Issues to be addressed include how to protect the confidentiality of raters, how to select and ensure a sufficient number of respondents, how to present the feedback in the most effective way possible, and how to make it clear to participants the ways in which the feedback can help them increase their job effectiveness.

Providing Meaningful Training, Development, and Follow-Up Activities. You will need to consider what kind of individual counseling and monitoring should be provided during and after the implementation of 360 feedback, what sort of training courses will be most useful and how to make them available, how best to ensure that people formulate relevant, realistic development goals, and how to monitor participants’ progress toward reaching their goals.