I have used 360 performance management in my organization and would have to agree with you that it has proven to be less than beneficial. The comittment from leadership was not in place which did cause the system to fail misaerably. However I think this is probably true of any system in that support and buy in needs to come from the top to be successful.

Performance management in general is tough. Performance management (as you probably already know) should be a continuous ongoing activity.

My organization used to ask a dozen questions for providing feedback on a colleague. Now it asks 2 - where has the most growth been & what needs to be improved on.

How do you get good quality feedback on 2 questions? You don't and its too bad.

We use a 360 assessment (self, direct leader, peers, direct reports, and key partners) annually on members of our System Leadership Team, which is what I guess most would consider their Executive Leadership Team. We are a 5,800 employee health system with 280 leaders, and the group I am referring to is the top 31 leaders. Each May they participate in 360 assessments which collects data on others perceptions of their level of competency to our 19 leadership competencies, with the data being tabulated and aggregated later that month. Then in June they go thru a one-one meeting to discuss the results with an OD Consultant who coaches them thru the document, the feedback, and their action plan for the next year. We purposely do the 360 in May/June so it is 6 months away from their Perfromance Appraisal as we do not want it tied to their merit, but want it tied to their developmental plan. They then discuss their action plan for improvement along with their strenghts with their leader, and the CEO does the same with the board for his results. We then do a group educational session for all of SLT where we review the aggregated data, look at our trends, compare ourselves to others, find our gaps and strengths, and work with an accountability partner to commit to their action plan for the next year. We are in our third year of this cycle and the acceptance by the SLT has been outstanding, and their committment to their action plans and their continuous development of their leadership competencies is evident thru the trended data from year to year.

A couple of years ago, my colleagues and I on the Executive Team underwent a 360 evaluation wherein we evaluated each other, had our CEO evaluate us, and then had several of our direct reports evaluate each of us. We utilized the MEPS tool, and it was administered by an external executive coach. It was not tied to compensation. Follow-up and improvement plans were developed on a one-on-one basis with the executive coach. The engagement with the executive coach could be extended for a whatever timeframe met the individuals needs. I think we all found it very helpful.

I oversaw a geographically diverse organization. Because of the complexities of the geographical region I could not physically be in every location at every time. It made evaluation of my middle management direct reports very difficult. I implemented a 360 degree feedback tool that I then was able to use in their evaluations. While the entire evaluation was not based on the outcome of the tool, I found it very helpful to identify areas where I had missed a concern, to confirm observations that I had previously made and to also reinforce arease of strength. the biggest value of the tool was to identify areas of leadership reinforcement, additional training needs and to help them set goals for continued improvement and progression. As a result of the 360 feedback I was able to better structure my mentoring and training activities with each of my reports. I found it beneficial.

We adopted the 360 assessment this past evaluation period at my hospital. We have found it to be useful for self-development. We have chosen not used it in a negative or punitive way;w think that is the best approach. We offer the manager to receive the comments and only then, share the suggested areas for improvment with their direct report. The degree that they wish to share is their choice. So , you can see, that we are using it as self developmental tool.

Pat Murtha