3 Reasons Your High-Potential Employees Need 360-Degree Feedback
A 360-degree feedback process is a great leadership development tool that allows leaders and emerging leaders to receive feedback about their performance on key leadership competencies from the stakeholder groups most important to their success: their boss, direct reports, peers, customers and any other major stakeholder groups they interact with in their role.
360-degree feedback isn’t a performance review. Performance reviews look backwards at past performance and are completed by employees’ managers. 360-feedback is about the future and involves feedback from people at different levels in and out of the organization. It provides snapshots of where high-potential employees are developmentally on both current critical competencies as well those that will be important to their future success.
The 360-feedback process should also focus on how to best help high-potential employees grow in critical competencies so they can make larger contributions and be better leaders in the future. It’s a proactive strategy that can help your high-potential employees and emerging leaders continue to look and move forward in their career development.
Here’s a look at the three reasons your high-potential employees need 360-degree feedback.
To Better Understand the Importance of Competencies in Leadership Development
The first benefit of providing 360-degree feedback to your high-potentials is it increases their awareness of competencies in general and helps them gain understanding of which competencies are important at each stage of their careers.
Understanding the competency model and how competencies affect their careers and successes will help your high-potential employees take a proactive approach to their careers and futures within the organization.
Start by introducing your high-potentials to “‘The Big 8’ Leadership Competencies,” those competencies that are in high demand and low supply. If your employees can begin to understand the role these eight competencies play in achieving success in higher level leadership positions, they can begin to work on developing them sooner rather than later in their careers. This type of proactive development can help your high-potentials achieve higher levels of career success than they might have otherwise.
To Build Self-Awareness
Self- awareness is critical for leaders at all levels. When employees receive 360-degree feedback, they’re receiving a more complete picture of their strengths, weakness and challenges than they would from traditional types of feedback that only include input from one or two managers. A major benefit of this comprehensive feedback is it helps employees increase their self-awareness. In other words, they’re able to see exactly where they are in their development and where they need to improve.
When your high-potentials become aware of which competencies they need to improve on, they can start working toward proactively growing them. As a manager, you must remember it’s not just about helping your employees perform well in their current roles; it’s also about determining which competencies they’ll need to develop before they can move up in the organization.
To Create a Robust Development Plan for Growth
Self-awareness is important, but it won’t help your high-potentials be better leaders and more successful contributors if it isn’t accompanied by development plans with concrete actions and experiences that will promote growth and development in the skills and competencies they need to make increased contributions or succeed in next-level roles.
With 360-degree feedback, you can help your high-potentials think beyond their current roles and start preparing them to make a larger contribution to your organization. 360-feedback processes are great for the engagement, development and retention of your high potentials and that is great for performance and succession planning for your business.
Need help developing your high-potential employees? Contact Success Labs for assistance and executive coaching.
Success Labs is a full-service, strategic organizational and leadership development company located in Baton Rouge, La. For more than 25 years, our expert team of consultants has worked with hundreds of companies to explore their business potential and improve their company and cultural performance. Contact us to get proactive about your people strategy.
