INTRO:

Hello it’s Julie and welcome to the podcast.
Today I want to discuss HOW to prepare for your 360 report, because if you’re climbing the corporate ladder, you’ll likely have to one 360 at some point in your career. In this episode I want to explain how they can be really powerful and encourage you to do one sooner rather than later….
First off, I should explain exactly what they are, bc this might be a new concept for some of you. When we talk about a 360, we mean a 360 degree assessment, where information is collected anonymously through an online assessment tool and presented back to you in a comprehensive report. It includes feedback from your manager, your direct reports, your peers and other stakeholders.
We sometimes include your skip level leader, and sometimes also include external stakeholders like clients and partners, if it’s relevant.
The objective here is to receive multiple dimensions of feedback from many different levels of people that you work with. And beyond just feedback on your performance, we collect data on different dimensions, such as your self-awareness, authenticity, leadership, communication, empathy, resiliency, interpersonal skills and how you impact others.

And this is different from when we typically receive feedback in a performance review, from our manager, in that scenario they outline what we’re doing well and what our growth areas are. This type of feedback is valuable, but it is limited or one dimensional in scope. It shows one side of your leadership, but we want the complete picture. As a coach, this is one of the most powerful tools that we use as coaches.
However, I also think it is really commonly misunderstood by many people.
And I also see participants make a lot of mistakes with them.

So buckle up, bc this episode is chock full of tough love, wisdom [ahem] and a few confessions that will help you avoid the biggest landmines that happen in a 360. You will learn how to mentally prepare, avoid the common pitfalls, and also get the most out of yours.
Here’s a look at what you’re going to learn today:
1) First, I’m going to explain the mindset I want you to have going into this
2) In the 2^nd segment I’ll share my personal failure story
3) Third segment I’ll outline the biggest mistakes people make with their 360
4) In the 4^th segment I’ll share key tips to really get the most out of yours!
So get out of your head and into your heart and let’s dive right in shall we.

SEGMENT 1:
The most important thing you can do to prepare for your 360 is to get in the right mindset for what you are stepping into.
I want you to understand what a 360 is, and what this isn’t.
Let’s start with what it isn’t.

It isn’t a personality or profiling tool.
And as a coach, it’s a little confusing because there are hundreds of tools out there and every team and company seems to favour a different one, and I’m certified in some of them, but not all of them. They’re all valuable, they’re just different

When we use a personality or profiling tool, our goal is to help you understand yourself better. To get to know your preferences, who you are and what makes you tick.
A 360 is a different depth of understanding.
Here’s a few scenarios that will prompt a 360:

1 – you’re moving in to a higher stakes leadership situation, and we want to make sure you get it right.

2 – your boss thinks you have potential for a higher stakes role and wants to set you up for success
3 – We also use it with leaders when they have a blind spot, there’s something in their leadership that needs some work, and they’re just not seeing it.
4 – Another common scenario is to expand someone’s range –to step up their executive presence, be more confident or understand how to have more influence with their peers or other stakeholders.
5 – and lastly, we sometimes do 360s with an entire team when we initiate a team development engagement, or sometimes we sell it as part of a coaching package, bc it gets everyone collectively aware of where they stand and how they impact others.
And to be crystal clear here a 360 is NOT, I repeat NOT a tool we use when you’re a low performer and your boss wants to flag you as such.

It’s just not.

So don’t think for a second that an invitation to do a 360 is calling you out as an underperformer.
It is an expensive process, and typically involves bringing in a coach or consultant, and as a general rule coaches are never given to underperformers, only high performers and high potentials, which is, as an aside, why I love my job so much, because I get to work with amazing people all day long.
So if I give you a single message about a 360 review it would be this:
– It is a learning tool that reveals your blind spots,
it is NOT a feel-good tool to prove that you’re already a perfect leader.   It’s just not.
– It is a learning tool that reveals your blind spots,
If you want a perfect leadership report card, go talk to a friend and ask them to tell you how great you are. Ask your Mom, ask your partner, they’ll all give you glowing recommendation… I hope.

So the mindset that I want you to take into this process is to LEARN and grow.
Be prepared to learn about yourself and your blind spots.
Be prepared for a punch in the gut.
Cause you’re likely going to find out things about yourself that sting a little bit.
Things you didn’t actually know about…. That’s what makes them blind spots.
And this is a good time to remind you about something. When you first start out as a leader, no one is actually expecting you to be PERFECT at what you’re doing.  You’re going to make mistakes, and we hope that you learn from those mistakes.
Think about it, when you first step into a leadership position, you’ve technically never actually lead anyone before, so how could you possibly be good at it???

And yeah, you might have read all the leadership books
and know about all the great theories of leadership, but let’s be crystal clear about something…. READING about leadership as a concept or about different theories is completely different from actually being able to lead a team and make the right decision when you’re under pressure

You might own one of Julia child’s cookbooks, but that certainly doesn’t qualify you to be a great chef. Cooking, just like leadership is a long journey from theory to practice

– A 360 review is a learning tool to reveal your blind spots,
it is NOT a feel-good tool to prove that you’re already a perfect leader.  
Cause hey, that would be boring.

SEGMENT 2:
So I want to share a story with you today.
it’s the story of a 360 that I had done on me as a leader.
And here’s how I want to tell the story… 

Once Upon a time, long before I started this business, I had MY 360 review done.

And I was SO excited to go through this process because at the time I thought I was… an amazing leader
And when I receive my report it revealed that I was a perfect leader.
I was inspirational and resilient and great at listening and great at asking for help.
My team loved me, my peers loved me. I was a model leader.
And we all lived Happily Ever after.

The End. 
Mmmhh.  Hmmm.
[Sigh]

Now, if you believe a single word of that BS fairytale story that I just told, well I don’t think you’ve been paying attention very carefully, and you should go back to the start of this episode and take a do over.

Especially to that part where I said:
A 360 review is a learning tool to reveal your blind spots,
it is NOT a feel-good tool to prove that you’re already a perfect leader.   

The only part of it that was remotely true, is the part where I thought I was an amazing leader.

My report was a punch in the gut
The 2 things that stung the most were the words:
Autocratic and Controlling
Me? Controlling?

Yup, that was a bit hard to swallow.

And it stung so much, because deep down inside I knew they were true.
And here’s the thing that makes this easier to understand.
Just because you have bad qualities as a leader, doesn’t mean you are a bad person, or that you’re intentionally doing harm to others. That’s why we call them blind spots.

In revealing our blind spots we start to understand the unintended impact of our actions.

You see, with every action we take there is an intended impact and an unintended impact.
And I learned many things after debriefing the report, but I want to share one specific thing I learned which will demonstrate what I’m talking about.
In debriefing with my team, I realized that my intended behaviour of trying to protect and shield my team from too many requests and new projects, I was having the unintended impact of them thinking I was trying to control them or that I didn’t trust that they were capable of handing things themself.
I didn’t sit down every day and say, OK my goal today is to be as controlling as I can possibly be. How can I make sure I’m successful at this. What are some controlling things I could do today to make everyone’s life difficult. Nooooo, it doesn’t work like that. This is why we call them blind spots. With every action we take there is an intended impact and an unintended impact.
And wow, looking back on all this, I am SO glad that I had all that revealed to me way back then.
And its easy for me to reflect back on all this with ease.
But let me tell you, at the time, it was not easy, I was embarrassed and full of shame and it really was a massive punch in the gut.
I thought I was being a great leader, because I wanted to be a great leader and I’d studied and read all the great leadership book, and I was still making mistakes.

This is why I say all the time, leadership is hard.
Managing people is hard

We’re not good at it right away, it takes time and a lot of trial and error, and we have to be humble and ask for forgiveness, bc we are going to screw up.

And here’s the thing – when we find out things about ourself that we didn’t know, we need to be grateful and hold a lens of curiosity, which looks like this.

Oh – I didn’t know this about myself, this is new information, I’m glad I know this now, and will look into how this is showing up in my behaviour.

Because when blind spots are revealed, our instant human reaction is to be defensive. Welcome to being human.

And as you know, Defensiveness is a close neighbour to the truth.
Again, Defensiveness is a close neighbour to the truth
When you notice yourself reacting with defensives, do me a solid here, and just own it with curiousity and wonder, this will help you save face later on.

Cause here’s the thing:
If someone said something untrue about us, and we knew with 100% of our being that it wasn’t true, we would just laugh it off. We wouldn’t think twice about it.
If someone told me, Julie you aren’t passionate and don’t really love the word you do, I would laugh that off and never think twice about it. Because I know there is absolutely no truth in that at all.

On my whole Control thing. I know there’s a 2% truth in that. This is part of my shadow leadership and I’m fully aware of this now, and it surfaces every once in a while and I try to manage it, and presence it to people when I’m working with them – I tell them, Hey – my Stickler just showed up and really wants us to do it this way.
Understanding your Shadow Leadership Qualities and how to work with them is SO incredibly powerful, I’d love to do an entire episode just on Shadow Leadership sometime. I think you’d really love this work.
But for right now, trust me – defensiveness is a close neighbour to the truth.
When you get defensive – truth is present – do your best to own it – and don’t try to defend your way out of it, bc it will just be even messier to clean up later on.

So like I said before, it’s important to go into your 360 with the right mindset,

And what I want you to know is this:
A 360 is NOT a feel-good tool to prove that you’re already a perfect leader.  
It is a learning tool to reveal your blind spots,
And when we hear things we don’t like, we need to really, really pay attention because
defensiveness is a close neighbour to the truth.

SEGMENT 3:
OK, in this segment I want to share some of the common mistakes that are made in 360s

1 – Mistake #1 – we stack the deck and only invite people to participate who we get along with and we know are going to say positive things about us. WRONG. Don’t weed out the people who you have contentious relationships with, lean into them. This is the time to get ALL the feedback from ALL the people. Remember this is about learning and revealing our blind spots, right?

2 – Mistake #2 – Not Communicating and giving context in advance. If you want to really be successful in collecting feedback from people, you’ll go through the process of educating and inviting people to participate, far in advance. Make sure they know why you’re inviting them, and give them a deadline. Don’t just load their email and hope that they respond. People are busy, make sure they prioritize this. Give them some context and purpose (for example, you’re working with a coach to improve your leadership) this is a good honest way to explain what you’re doing.
3 – Mistake #3 – Getting stuck in resistance and defensiveness. When we get our report we need to be curious about what we can learn, rather than take it as a personal attack and try to hypothesize who made what comments and why they said it. Now you’re laughing at this one, but I see it all the time, we’re human and we want to try and dissect whose comments were whose. You see most 360’s are completely anonymous, with the exception of your manager, you’ll likely know which feedback came from your manager, but the rest of the feedback and ranking is anonymous, that’s the promise we make when we invite people to participate. So we have to honour that. Once I had a leader who was so upset by his results, he contacted IT and wanted them to try and track down the IP address of the person who submitted the responses. You see, they collected their feedback via google forms. Not a good idea for anonymity. I talked him out of it, and this is exactly why I insist on using an external tool now, so everything stays completely confidential and nothing can be tracked or traced. Trust me, I’ve seen it all.
4 – Mistake #4 – Focusing only on the negative.  this is the opposite of the previous mistake where you resist anything negative. This mistake is when we zoom in on only the negative things that were mentioned and we skip over all the positive aspects of our leadership.  This tip goes out to all my hyper achievers. You might have 19 things that you ranked really high on and are doing really well, but you just can’t get your mind off those 2 things that were ranked low, and you’re so bothered by them that you skip right over appreciating all the good things you are doing.
5 – Mistake #5 – Is not circling back with the participants about your results. Think about it. You’ve asked someone to take 30 mins to an hour out of their day to reflect on you and your strengths and weaknesses. Participants have taken time to craft responses and think about what you really need to know. They fill out the assessment questions, and usually there are some quantitative questions too, which take time. They hit submit, then they get crickets. They never hear back from you. Well, this isn’t great leadership, is it? Especially with your direct reports and your manager. At a minimum, I’d like you to plan on circling back to your manager and direct reports with results of your 360. I don’t suggest you send out the report, for a variety of reasons, most importantly it is just too much data. When I work with clients, I ask them to pick the 2 -3 key themes from the report and then together we create a few goals and cascade action items to them. This is an excellent starting point to have a dialogue with your team about areas you’ll be focusing on. And WOW – what amazing leadership are you modelling to them, showing them that leadership is a constant journey and you are 100% open to evolving and growing. Sharing data with other key stakeholders and other peers, that is completely up to you. I think it is a nice to have thing, a sign of respect to share a high level of what you’ll be working on. The only awkward thing here is, you might not know who exactly completed the report and who didn’t.  
6 – Mistake #6 – this mistake I’ve seen made by participants who are contributing their feedback to the 360. And it doesn’t happen a lot, but I have seen happen. Sometimes the anonymity of the assessment gives people permission to go to town on a particular person and really hit below the belt with their feedback. It’s rare, but it is really disappointing. It’s always a sign of a bigger problem to deal with. The good news is, rogue feedback like this always shows up like an outlier and you can quickly pick it out when you go through the individual respondents.
7 – Mistake #7 this last mistake is actually one made on behalf of the organization. I believe it is a colossal mistake to link results from a 360 report to compensation – either raises, bonuses, promotions, etc.  Here’s how this plays out. When it’s time to select who you include to give you feedback, people tend to be very selective about who they include to give them feedback. Think about it, if you know your annual bonus was tied to the feedback you were going to get in your report, would you really include Gary from sales who you just had a big disagreement with? I don’t think so. Tying your 360 to compensation encourages people to game the process, and then they don’t receive the feedback they really need to hear. And it just ends up being a big waste of time.

OK let’s recap those 7 mistakes

Mistake #1 – we stack the deck and only invite people to participate who we get along with
Mistake #2 – Not Communicating and giving context to participants in advance.

3 – Mistake #3 – Getting stuck in resistance and defensiveness.
We learned earlier that defensiveness is a close neighbour to the truth, when we hear something we don’t like, we need to smile, be curious, put our Sherlock hat out and figure out what exactly we’re doing
4 – Mistake #4 – Zooming in on the negative aspects, and ignoring the positive 

5 – Mistake #5 – Is not circling back with the participants about your results. Big one.
And remember, if you don’t circle back, you could be doing more harm than good.
6 – Mistake #6 – Participants take advantage of the anonymity of the assessment and go to town with their feedback. Not cool. But if it happens, it happens for a reason and it really shouldn’t be a surprise, should it?
And lastly, Mistake #7 – link results from a 360 report to raises, bonuses, promotions, etc.  

SEGMENT 4:

OK here are a few tips to help you ROCK your 360. Ready?
#1 – go into it with an incredible mindset. 

Remember, A 360 is NOT a feel-good tool to prove that you’re already a perfect leader.  
It is a learning tool to reveal your blind spots,
Remember – defensiveness is a close neighbour to the truth.
When you get defensive – truth is present – do your best to own it – and don’t try to defend your way out of it, bc it will just be even messier to clean up later on.
Mindset here is everything
#2 – Communicate – before
Give people a heads up that you’re going through this process. If you really want to get their involvement, make sure you’ve taken the effort to invite them, not just a generic form email, ask them live, send them a Slack or DM, or pick up the phone and ask them. Be sure to tell them what you’re doing and ask for their help…. Say the report will be going out next Monday, and I’d like you to complete it by, x – and be specific with the date. Actually use these words, “Can I count on you to complete it”

#3 – Communicate – after
Summarize the key insights from the assessments and create an action plan for how you want to grow and what you want to change. 
Feedback is a gift afterall, so If someone sends you a giant present, be sure to send them a thank you card, right?
Remember, this isn’t just about data, this is an opportunity to build relationships with others as you go through this process, you have a huge opportunity to build social capital, AND I guarantee you’re going to inspire someone along the way to initiate their 360, or at least planting a seed for down the road when they might want to have theirs done. 
And it’s important to create your action plan for communication as you’re setting up the report.
Too often we wait to get the data before we decide to share it
and once our ego is bruised, we might think twice about sharing this information with others.
So talk to your coach or your team about what you intend to do with the data.

#4 – Don’t delay

Earlier in the episode, I mentioned that you’ll want to do it sooner, rather than later in your career. Here’s why. Since we’re going to reveal your blind spots in the assessment, wouldn’t you want to know WHAT your blind spots are ASAP, so you can start working on them, rather than continuing with the blind spots and really entrench that bad behaviour, and then 10 years from now find out what your unintended impact is. It’s like walking around with spinach in your teeth all day long, and everyone saw it, but no one told you about it, and you realized when you went to brush your teeth. Sooner, rather than later.
#5 – Be inclusive in the process
Don’t try to game this process. Invite everyone you know you should invite. And this includes relationships where you have a hot spot. Trust the process and the learning.

WRAP UP:
OK it’s time to start wrapping up this episode.

Thank you for listening to this episode and really reflecting on how to prepare for your 360
to improve your leadership
Remember, A 360 is NOT a feel-good tool to prove that you’re already a perfect leader.  
It is a learning tool to reveal your blind spots,
If you are inspired by this episode today and you want to find out more about doing your 360 or maybe with your team, I would love to help you with this process. It’s a sign of great leadership and I would highly recommend you do it.

You can find me at thecorporateyogi.com 

I would love to help you out and walk you through the process.
And when I say, trust me I’ve been there

Trust me, I have literally been there.

You’ve heard my story, it wasn’t sunshine and lollipops
It was tough, AND I am so grateful that I went through it and revealed my blind spots,
And as always, I am a work in progress, we’re always Under construction.

Thanks for tuning in today
Go easy on yourself

You’re not supposed to know how to do everything when you first start out, even if you have read all the books and all the podcasts and share all the memes and sayings.
When it comes to leadership, the more you learn, the less you know.
Leadership is truly a lifelong process, not a destination.