Coaching a 360 Feedback Session

Preparing for the Meeting

Give yourself at least 1 hour to go through the report

Things to consider when studying the report

•         Develop hypothesis – your own list of questions

•         What picture do I get of this person – his/her relationships, situation and the role

•         What are the discrepancies and interdependencies in the information, both top level and detail

•         The range used for the feedback scoring

•         Does this person know what competencies are important for his/her role

•         Test assumptions by considering if the detail of the information supports the top level assumptions

•         Look for consistency in the feedback

•         Look for blind spots

•         Look for different ways of interpreting the information i.e. are the discrepancies in the feedback associated with the subject or the feedback givers?

•         What are the options – the possible reasons or explanations for the particular feedback given

•         How senior / junior the subject is in the position. This could affect the range of scoring i.e.  the more senior the person is, the higher the expectations on their competence levels compared to somebody more junior.

•         Differences in how people are using the range of scores. – e.g. 1 to 5 or 2 to 4. Remember the cultural differences affecting this.

•         Read the comments.  When reading the comments, it helps to divide them to positive and developmental to help focus

•         Do not over analyse

•         Empty your head – you have not got your own agenda and pre-conceived ideas on what should be said

Running the Meeting:  Questions You Might Ask

Ask whom they have chosen to give them feedback – establish who are their peers, direct reports and managers in the report and what are their working relationships like with these people. 

Don’t give them answers; ask questions to get them to find the answers themselves.

Think about peeling an onion when asking the questions – start with the outer layer and peel.

Outer Layer Questions:

•         Have you already formed any opinions and what are they?

•         What are your overall impressions about your feedback? How do you feel about it?

•         What are the areas you would like to focus on?

•         Why do you feel you want to work on these and why is it important to you? - Gives you the choice on how you approach the rest of the report – i.e. they may just want to focus on business acumen – could go to this in the report and work back

•         Compared to your own perceptions how have the other(group)s evaluated you

•         Which areas appear to be your strengths?

•         In which areas are your ratings lower? Why?

Inner Layer Questions:

•         Why might your manager/peers/direct reports be saying this?

•         There are some differences in perception, I am very curious: How can these differences exist?

•         Why is this possible? Why that might be?

•         Can you think of a situation that might have brought this on?

•         Why did that happen? How did you feel?

•         What does this means to you?

•         Do you want to change this? How can you change this?

•         This low/high rating here, where do you think it might have come from?

•         Suppose it was your best friend saying these comments - how would you take it?

•         Why would your peers / manager / direct reports see this as a strength? What causes that?

•         Is this expected to be a strength?

•         How can you build on your areas of strength?

•         What can you do to improve your development areas?