How 360 Feedback Helped One Manager Get Results

John* was a newly promoted manager with a major utility company.* With his new position, he inherited a team of 13 supervisors. Most were long-term employees, and John was much younger than most of his direct reports. Many of the supervisors thought they deserved the promotion and resented John's appointment.

He soon discovered that the performance of his supervisors was below par. He spent a lot of time working on relationships with each of them, clarifying service standards and trying to build a cohesive team.

Despite his best efforts, John encountered resistance; and performance did not improve. He knew that the supervisors were unhappy, but he couldn't get them to talk about their dissatisfaction. When he learned about 20/20 Insight, he decided to use it to ask for feedback about his leadership practices. He hoped that the information gained would provide a basis for dialogue and team building.

Working with a consultant, John selected the behaviors critical to his leadership. The consultant then met with the team and explained how the feedback would be collected. She assured everyone that their responses would be anonymous.

After the feedback was collected, the consultant met with John to help him to interpret the data and establish his priorities for action. She also coached him on how to respond to the feedback.

Over the next few weeks, John met with his direct reports individually and as a group. He asked them to clarify certain aspects of the feedback. He also explained which priority areas he planned to work on first and why he did not plan to alter some behaviors.

He saw an immediate change in his team. Resistance decreased, productivity increased and a customer service orientation began to take hold. Over time, he was able to rebuild his team of supervisors. They pulled together to become the only team to meet or exceed all established performance goals for the next quarter. They continued to perform well, and within the year John received a substantial promotion. He attributed much of his success to the feedback process and the open dialogue it produced. Based on this experience, his division obtained the 20/20 Insight system for general in-house use.

*The name of the manager has been changed to protect confidentiality

Email us • Toll-free: 800.488.6463 • Phone: 757.873.3700 • © Performance Support Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.