360° feedback – How we learn from each other
Feedback is a gift: For employees it is the basis for individual development, for a company it is the prerequisite to foster and use its employees’ full potential at best.
There is no doubt about the significance of feedback- However, bringing a feedback culture to life often fails. How do you achieve that everybody appreciates feedback? How do you ensure that people actively ask for feedback? And how do you enable your employees to give valuable feedback?
First, it is important to have the right basic understanding: Feedback serves primarily as basis for individual development and not for performance appraisal, evaluation or rankings. Hence, it should not only be given by line managers to their staff but coming from different perspectives. A proven concept is the 360° feedback: A manager collects feedback for an employee from four different perspectives: clients, colleagues, other managers and the employee itself. Particularly in agile working modes with employees working more team-oriented and to a larger extent on their own responsibility , feedback should come from more than one perspective. A (semi-) annual feedback discussion is not sufficient. Instead, feedback should be given on a continuous basis or at least whenever an important milestone has been reached. In this way, it is far easier for the feedback providers to illustrate constructive feedback by specific examples. The point to be made becomes clearer and ideas for individual development become more tangible. This requires the feedback receiver to be willing to accept the feedback and to reflect on his own actions.
At acondas we live the 360° feedback from day to day. Each employee gets an individual picture of strengths and areas for improvement, namely for working methods, fields of expertise and professional manner. In line with our company value “openness”, we provide feedback in a direct, transparent and honest way.. Each employee receives regularly feedback from his project manager, colleagues and clients and reflects it with his mentor. In return, they provide feedback to their superiors both in consulting projects and acondas-internal tasks. During regular discussions with their mentors on individual development, our employees reflect their self-assessment with collected feedback form the other three angles (clients, colleagues, managers) to derive and drive their individual development plans.
If you have any questions about acondas or our way of working, please contact us at: info@acondas.com.