BOSS SPECIAL SHOULD YOU RATE YOUR BOSS? - I

BOSS SPECIAL SHOULD YOU RATE YOUR BOSS?

-  I 

Done well, 360º reviews can help leaders grow in key areas and build high-performing teams. Done badly, the same can create mistrust, conflict and low morale.

QUESTION 1

If you look at your peers at work, would you rate your performance in the top 10%?

Most bosses will put themselves right up there.

QUESTION 2

How would you rate the leadership skills of your boss?

A majority of employees will have a ready list of their boss’ shortcomings. As a recent TimesJobs survey of about 1,100 employees revealed, six out of every 10 employees rate the leadership skills of their bosses as poor.

Something does not quite add up in the two queries above. To plug the mismatch between a manager’s perception of himself and his team’s perception of his performance, companies often grapple with the conundrum of getting all round feedback for their leaders. The recourse they take is 360-degree feedback, an appraisal process in which an employee gets feedback—at most times confidential—from the manager, peers,

and direct reports. “The format varies, but most organisations have 360-degree reviews in some form.

This differentiated, nuanced view of a team leader is useful and helpful,” says talent management expert Abhijit Bhaduri.

So what do companies do as part of the 360-degree feedback process? While 360-degree review is an integral part of talent management at most companies, some companies also use it for evaluating performance. Some define career paths of their managers through the system while others use it as a dipstick to measure how well the company culture is shaping up.

Flipkart, the home-grown e-commerce bigwig, has been following a 360-degree feedback process for a few years now. Feedback is sought from the employee’s manager, peers, team members and key stakeholders, to provide the employee with well-rounded developmental inputs, against competencies, strengths and development needs. Peer feedback is used as an input for performance assessments. All employees in middle and senior management go through the peer feedback process. For entry and junior level roles, peer feedback applies where the role demands it.

“Peer feedback helped us identify gaps in perception between the manager and the team, stakeholders and peers. At the organisational level, it is a useful data point to check for fairness. It helps identify red flags and investigate, when there are concerning themes in the peer feedback,” says Satheesh K.V., Senior Director, HR.

At consulting major PwC, 360-degree feedback helps create multiple listening posts, says its chief people officer Jagjit Singh. “The question we often keep asking ourselves is should this feedback mechanism be included for the individual’s performance review or should it be looked at only from a development perspective? We tend to focus more on the latter, with this being the basis for the individual’s annual development plan,” he says.

However, companies often encounter roadblocks in reaching their 360-degree feedback objectives. The foremost issue: what do people do with the feedback they get.

A senior HR head, who did not wish to be named, says when negative feedback is presented to team leaders, it’s not welcome and companies encounter reactions like – “I know who would have said this about me”. Sometimes, the team leader says he appreciates the feedback but does not do anything about it. “So, companies often look at 360-degree feedback as a way for people to vent but they do not take the process seriously,” the HR head says.

Some like Bhaduri vouch for the efficacy of the system. “If you are really interested in sharpening your leadership style, this is the best tool,” he says.

The leaders who get it right share the feedback with the entire team, thus creating a culture of openness. “This requires tremendous guts but there are leaders who do it,” says Bhaduri.

The evolved response for this would be to acknowledge the feedback, come up with an action plan on the basis of the feedback, and share the action plan with the team giving feedback. This builds trust and kicks off a cycle of better sharing and higher levels of commitment to the common cause.

There are managers and leaders who may do nothing about the feedback. “It, therefore, becomes critical for organisations to link the 360 feedback process with other parts of its talent management process like leadership development, talent pipelines and succession planning,” says PwC’s Singh, adding, “Being unwilling to act on the feedback is not an option. A lack of commitment to this can impact the rating, performance evaluation and career management.”

For companies, it is also important to maintain the credibility of the process by acting on the feedback for development needs or initiate development plans for the target group. “Challenges and pitfalls are closely linked with the gap between the intent of deploying the feedback process and ability to effectively execute the development plans,” says Yuvaraj Srivastava, Group Chief HR Officer, MakeMyTrip.com.

The next big challenge for companies is getting objective, constructive feedback from employees or peers.

“I rarely give negative feedback in 360 reviews as you never know how badly that could hurt your own career,” says a mid-level manager in an IT services company. This manager is not alone. Employees fear that giving negative feedback about the team leader may come back to haunt them at the time of their performance appraisal.

Srivastava points to another pattern where one’s peer group scores could be lower than the other set of raters. This would indicate that this set of people is difficult to impress and is more demanding. “Feedback from peers and team members define and give sharper insights into the leadership and stakeholder’s management capability whereas a superior’s feedback validates insights into the leadership and other behavioural areas besides hinting at the potential assessment.”

Companies initiating the 360-degree reviews need to put checks and balances in place as a poorly executed system can lead to conflicts and lower morale among their key talent pool. For instance, in the early days of 360-degree review, Flipkart faced challenges as a few employees did not have the maturity to provide fair, objective or constructive feedback. In some cases, lack of evidence or critical incidents or context, make it hard to decipher the feedback.

In extreme cases, over-reliance on peer feedback may lead to a culture of trying to please peers versus doing the right thing for the role and organisation. HR heads assert that the true essence of peer feedback is meant to be developmental and not punitive.

The Welspun group has a multi-pronged approach to ensure employee objectivity through the design of the questionnaire, that is made sharp and focussed; quantifiable and practical so that it is a simplified output; and building a transparent, open culture.

“It has worked well for talent development. We position it transparently right from the beginning. Leadership commitment is the biggest support one needs to make this work,” says Rajesh Padmanabhan, Group CHRO, Welspun Group. “We have not taken this across the group yet but restricted to the leadership levels for now. This is extremely useful in helping us build on future leadership capabilities,” he adds.

Faced with challenges, companies often learn and tweak processes. At RPG, 360 degrees is used only for development purposes, not for determining performance rating. The group has designed the questionnaire based on the RPG capability model and behavioural indicators that it wants to see in leaders. “We have listed five values and seven capabilities against which the person needs to be judged: where he/she is good and areas for improvement. This needs to be done in a non-judgmental, professional manner; it can’t be a place to vent out your anger and frustration,” says S. Venkatesh, Group HR head, RPG Enterprises.

At RPG, the process was tweaked along the way. “For instance, when we had a five point scale, employees had the tendency to stay in the middle and play safe. That’s when we created a four point scale to give definitive feedback,” says Venkatesh.

Another challenge for organisations is to ensure there is no witch-hunt involved. This is a possibility that needs to be addressed through skip-level meetings for feedback ratification. “Finally it’s about how inclusive a work culture we are willing to evolve,” says PwC’s Singh.

By Saumya Bhattacharya & Sreeradha D. Basu

ET26MAR18