When money is short, leadership development is one of the easiest things to cut, and often that’s the right call. Plenty of what gets spent on senior leaders is hard to justify even in a good year: generic programs, conferences that change nothing, offsites remembered mainly for the venue. If a tight budget forces an organisation to stop paying for those, it’s no great loss.
The false economy is cutting everything, including the few things that actually change how leaders behave. Of those, a well-run 360° Feedback Survey is one of the things I’d be reluctant to cut.
It’s relatively inexpensive, asks little of anyone’s time, and tells senior leaders what they’re least likely to hear otherwise: how they come across to the people who work with them. Seniority insulates people from candid feedback. Many executives are working from a view of their own impact that nobody has seriously challenged in years.
That said, a lot of 360° Feedback Surveys are a waste of money, and usually for the same few reasons.
The debrief is the best investment
A 360° Feedback report on its own changes very little. Leaders read it, fixate on the one comment that stung, explain it away and put it in a drawer. The difference comes from a proper conversation with someone experienced enough to help them see the patterns, explore the uncomfortable parts and decide what they’ll actually do differently. If budget pressure means choosing between a 360 with a good debrief and one without, I’d rather an organisation didn’t run it at all. The report is the cheap part.
The executive team should go first
It’s common for an executive team to commission 360° Feedback Surveys for the managers below them while quietly excusing themselves. Bad move – and people notice. It tells the organisation that feedback is something that happens to other people, and it undermines the exercise before it starts. If the budget only stretches to one group, there’s a strong case for that group being the executive team. They have the most influence on the culture, and they’re the least likely to be getting honest feedback anywhere else.
The usual objections
“We did one a few years ago and nothing changed.” That’s often true, and it’s rarely the fault of the 360. When nothing changes, it’s usually because the debrief was rushed or non-existent. Perhaps nobody asked about it again, including the leader’s own manager, so there was no accountability for action. The answer is to plan the follow-up before running the survey, not to skip the survey.
“Our HR system already has a 360 function.” Some of those are fine for a light check-in or pulse survey. For senior leaders, I’d be wary. Home-grown questions make it easy for a leader to dismiss the results. And a report produced by the same system that runs their performance review may not feel confidential to anyone who’s rating them. An external instrument based on sound leadership competencies is much harder to argue with.
“People have survey fatigue.” They often do, but a 360° Feedback Survey is a different request from an engagement survey. It asks a handful of people who work closely with a leader to spend a short time giving considered feedback about that person. Raters tend to take it seriously when they can see the leader will.
“Now isn’t the right time.” Sometimes that’s correct. In the middle of a restructure, or where people doubt their answers will stay anonymous, you’ll get guarded data and it’s better to wait. But “not now” has a habit of becoming “not this year”, and a tight year is exactly when leaders’ habits under pressure can matter the most.
The individual reports aren’t the whole story
There’s one more benefit that gets far less attention than it should. When a group of leaders go through a 360° Feedback Survey at the same time, the patterns across the group say a good deal about the organisation.
If most of a leadership layer is rated poorly on delegation, or on dealing with underperformance, that’s unlikely to be a coincidence of individuals. It tells you something about what the organisation rewards and tolerates. For a CEO or HR Director, that collective view can be worth more than any of the individual reports, and it costs very little extra to produce.
So if the budget is tight, by all means cut the things that are not bang for the buck. But keep the 360, and pay properly for the debrief. And if you’re deciding who goes first, start at the top.
If you’re weighing up a 360° Feedback Survey for your own leadership team, we’re happy to talk it through.
