5 things we’ve learnt about running 360 feedback
Every 6 months, I read out a list of positive feedback I’ve had from the team, and a list of constructive feedback. Then Laurence (my co-founder) does the same. And then every single person in the team reads theirs, whether they’ve been with us for three weeks or three years.
We started this at our first team retreat (summer 2017) when there were just five of us and not only has it become a cornerstone of our culture, but Laurence and I have become dependent on it to know how to improve.
We’ve now run 360 feedback five times. You can read about how we run it in our handbook, but we wanted to share our five biggest learnings
1. Feedback should be confidential, but not anonymous
We use 360 feedback to support someone’s self-driven development, not to review their performance. We’re worried that the latter creates weird incentives to not give constructive feedback. We want people to be as open as possible, so we don’t see any of the feedback that people give each other — it’s completely confidential.
We learnt how important this is when we tried to streamline the numerous feedback emails going round, and instead got everyone to fill in a Google Form, with a field for each person. Logistically this worked wonderfully (you just send everyone the column with their feedback), but when we ran feedback on the feedback session, some people were unsure of whether Laurence and I were reading all the feedback. Instead of focusing on writing useful feedback, people were spending time thinking about how the feedback they’re giving might be construed by us, and what we’ll think of the feedback they’ve received. So now people manage their own Google Form — I’m sure there’s some SaaS out there to do this for us as we grow!
But whilst feedback should be confidential, everyone should know who has given them a piece of feedback. Often people need some clarification on what is meant, or want help from the person giving feedback to improve. We don’t think you should be giving feedback that you wouldn’t be comfortable saying to someone.
2. Sharing feedback needs a lot of trust
Before joining accuRx nobody had shared constructive feedback they received with their entire team. We’ve found three things help build the trust required.
- We block out protected time for sending feedback to others, reviewing the feedback received and sharing the key themes with the team. This means that everyone takes it seriously and isn’t distracted
- We do it all at the same time. People write their feedback in advance, but send it at the start of the session, partly to avoid feedback they’ve received influencing the feedback they give.
- Laurence and I go first. If we can’t be really open about the areas we need to improve on, how can we expect anyone else to be?
It’s also important to share and celebrate positive feedback, rather than just focusing on the constructive stuff.
3. It’s really hard doing it for the first time
Many people hadn’t experienced 360 feedback before joining our team. And those who had, had done so in different settings and weren’t quite sure how to give feedback. We’ve found it really helpful to give prompts and examples of real feedback. Once people have done 360 once with us, they have a much better idea of what to expect and how to approach it the next time. We used to say ‘aim to give 3 positive and 3 constructive points’ but this became a lot as the team grew, so we leave it vague now — people write more for people they’ve worked closely with.
4. People want to act on their feedback in different ways
One of the reasons we like sharing our constructive feedback, is to get support on improving from the rest of the team. If I’ve shared feedback that I need to stop bottlenecking decisions being made, I want the team to point it out if I do this again. But we’ve found people want to action their feedback differently. Some want to discuss it in their next 1:1 with their line manager, some want to incorporate it in their personal development plan, some want to get support from a specific team member.
We learnt this when we tried getting everyone to share one behaviour that they want others to point out. We put a sheet up on the wall called ‘Call me out on…’ with a list of the team on it and the behaviour they wanted to change. Some people didn’t like this approach at all — it was very public when people visited the office, and focused on small, easy-to-spot behaviours (e.g. being on a phone in a meeting, or being verbose).
5. Don’t rush it
The first time we did 360, we got people to write feedback during the session, and it overran by over an hour. Ever since, we get people to prepare feedback in advance — it took me about 3 hours to write feedback for 14 people last time. We then allow half an hour to process the feedback received, and around 2–3 minutes per person (but we don’t time it) to share their main themes. If a lot of people are sharing and the energy dips, we take a quick break.
Every time we run 360, we learn more and tweak the process. we’d love to hear what’s worked for you in your teams…
