Commitment. You are most successful if the decision-maker or stakeholder agrees with the action or decision you are taking and is proactive in supporting the initiative. Indications of commitment on the part of a decision-maker could include agreeing to fund the effort, using his or her group for a pilot, and actively working to gain the support of other key people.

Compliance. You are partially successful if the decision-maker or stakeholder agrees with the idea but makes only a lukewarm effort to support it. Indications of compliance might include not trying to block the effort but not actively enlisting the support of others, sending a few direct reports to a pilot program but not attending it personally, and acting on your requests in a timely manner but only doing exactly what was asked, without initiating any activity that supports the effort. Of course, in some cases compliance is all that is required (for example, when a specific stakeholder is not required to take any action, but a general consensus among all stakeholders is desirable). However, if fuller participation is required later, you will probably need to move the person from compliance to commitment.

Resistance. You are unsuccessful if the decision-maker or stakeholder is opposed to your request or plan and actively avoids supporting it. Indications of resistance include seeking to have the proposal nullified, arguing against it, or delaying action on it. In the worst case, a key individual may pretend to comply but will try to undermine the effort.

As you will probably have realized, it is much easier to gain people’s compliance than to secure their enthusiastic commitment. However, if you want to ensure the success of the 360-degree feedback effort, full commitment will be required from as many key people as possible. Without it, they will have little success convincing others in the organization of the worthiness of the effort, nor will they be willing to support it energetically over time.