The 360-degree feedback – or multi-source assessment – is often used by corporations to plan and map specific paths in leaders’ development as they provide them with empirical data highlighting strengths and weaknesses (or ‘areas for improvement’).
If it dates back to the 1950s, it is even more relevant today as we realise that effective leaders need to have a positive self-awareness but also an appropriate dose of humility, knowing what they are good at, acknowledging they are not great at everything, and realising they can improve, too.
Zenger Folkman have defined a list of 11 components characterising a best-in-class 360° assessment. Some of those really caught my attention:
Use response scale like “Outstanding Strength, Strength, Competent, Needs Some Improvement, or Needs Significant Improvement” that avoids a false positive. Indeed, classical scales going from « Strongly agree » to « Strongly disagree » often let average performers believe they do well when items such as « Innovates », « Takes initiatives » or « Champions change » are rated « Agree » while they are just OK… and OK being not enough.
Compare scores to a high standard and not to the average of respondents, as leaders who are the best performers make an enormous difference in the performance of the company. This induces what I call the « look up » attitude.
Identify the most important competencies, especially if the survey includes many items to rate. This will help people define priorities.
Emphasize building on strengths, not only on weaknesses. It makes the experience positive, ensuring leaders identify their greatest skills. This includes the need to provide insights on how build strengths.
Focus written comments on fixing fatal flaws, not minor improvements. Asking « Is there anything this person does that might be considered a significant weakness or fatal flaw? » instead of describing areas for improvement gives a straightforward output and not a long vague list of suggestions.
Make it an efficient process, i.e. make the survey short, especially when respondents have to supply feedback for many people.
That being said, let’s keep in mind that 360-degree assessments are 100%… subjective per se. The way people evaluate a colleague is implicitely a way to say how they perform or an expression of their own competences. The scores they give reflect their perception, they are not an evaluation made by a sample of experts or by a representative sample of the population. Somehow, I consider a 360-degree evaluation as both a portrait (of the leader) and a self-portrait (of the organisation).
In this context, the coaching which should necessarily be included in the process will link measurement and emotions. Considering scores, statements and reactions from both assessed and assessing parties, it will be used as a springboard to proceed to a honest self-reflection, whatever the scores observed in the assessment could be, whatever the discrepancy between what people think about themselves and what others do.
Les gens sous-estiment systématiquement le nombre d’idées créatives qu’ils peuvent générer, comme ont pu le démontrer Brian J. Lucas (the Booth School of Business) et Loran Nordgren (the Kellogg School of Management).
Dans une de leurs études, vingt-quatre étudiants avaient dix minutes pour songer aux plats à servir lors de Thanksgiving. Ensuite, ces étudiants devaient prédire le nombre de nouvelles idées qu’ils pourraient générer s’ils continuaient à chercher durant dix minutes de plus. Il leur était alors demandé de générer de nouvelles idées durant dix autres minutes. En moyenne, les étudiants prévoyaient qu’ils pouvaient générer environ dix nouvelles idées en continuant l’exercice alors qu’en fait ils étaient capables d’en produire environ quinze.
Plusieurs études complémentaires ont produit les mêmes résultats. Les chercheurs ont aussi découvert que les idées produites dans la continuation de l’exercice étaient généralement considérées comme étant plus créatives que les idées initiales. Les auteurs concluent que nous sous-estimons les bénéfices de la persévérance parce que les challenges de type créatif nous paraissent particulièrement difficiles.
Retenons donc que persévérer n’est pas toujours – ou seulement – un comportement-réponse inconscient à un adulte référent et à son message « Fais des efforts » mais aussi un outil que nous pouvons nous approprier pour atteindre nos propres objectifs.
People consistently underestimate the number of creative ideas they can come up with, found Brian J. Lucas of the Booth School of Business and Loran Nordgren of the Kellogg School of Management.
In a study they conducted, 24 students were given 10 minutes to think of dishes to serve at Thanksgiving. Next, the students had to predict how many more ideas they could generate if they kept going for 10 more minutes. Then they were asked to try to generate ideas for another 10 minutes. On average, they predicted they could generate around 10 new ideas if they persisted — but they were actually able to come up with around 15.
Several similar follow-up studies produced the same result. The researchers also found that the ideas generated while persisting were, on average, rated more creative than those generated initially. The authors say that we underestimate the benefits of persistence because creative challenges feel difficult.
Hence let’s keep in mind that persevering is not always – or only – an unconscious behaviour-answer to an adult serving as a reference and his ‘Try hard’ injunction. It is also a tool which we can appropriate to reach our own objectives.
Leonor FINI – Yoyageurs au repos, 1978 – Huile sur toile, 73 x 92 cm
Personal growth is more than a right, it is a priority. However, considering private and professional lives as concepts between which everyone should find their own balance is not as sustainable as finding a way to integrate them with a holistic view. In such a context, coaches have a key role to play.
While the first mention of the term workaholic dates back to the 1940s, it wasn’t until the seventies that related terms began to be heard, such as burnout and work-life balance.
This balance between ones professional and private lives is still often portrayed as the manifestation of a serene, “economically stable” lifestyle where the individual is able to assign the appropriate importance and thus, the true value to each of these two fundamentally distinct entities: career and the sphere of private life. The Hudson Agency designed a typology of companies based on their wish to encourage a harmonious balance between professional and private life, demonstrating how employees who are able to attain this balance in their lives in turn add great value to their company. An illustration of this can be found in the Gallup study that reveals how an employee’s satisfaction level increases by 50% when they have a close friendship with a colleague at work.
Times are changing
For several years however, the relevance of this very concept of balance has been thrown into question, owing as much to socio-evolutionary reasons as to a progressively different and more philosophical vision of what we still call “work”.
For instance, let us begin simply with the way in which more and more people are practicing, envisaging, or even dreaming of exercising their chosen profession. We are far removed from the époque when one could, without any hesitation, establish an unequivocal connection with a type of work – a trade – a company – a workplace – a career. At present there is a progressive blurring of the line between work and private life due primarily to the necessity of moonlighting, less time-consuming and more ecologically sensible home working and home based businesses.
It is well-known that, much more than mentality, it is new technology that is sustaining this evolution. It annihilates distance and, one day, holograms may even create the perfect illusion of a physical presence in the office. Little by little, robots replace humans (one recent study suggests that 47% of all jobs in the United States will be threatened by this phenomenon within the next two decades – another states that 40% of Australian jobs are at risk of being automated within ten to fifteen years). Relationships between colleagues, clients and suppliers exist in a dimension where contact is virtual and professional activity is not linked to any specific location. And while social network is already a welcome guest at the dinner table as much as in the office, while companies have their “page” and we “like” our colleagues, the multiplication of these platforms will undoubtedly lead to a future fusion if not replacement by a dynamic mega-cloud. Sustaining personal growth in such an instable environment is no longer only a right but a priority.
It is not about nuance
Elsewhere, beyond this evolution, there is clear evidence of an inappropriate discordance between private and professional life. Wanting to establish a balance between two worlds implies they are exclusive and in competition with one another. Speaking of balance leads unavoidably to the idea of imbalance. Keeping one’s balance then, becomes a means, a tactic, rather than an end in itself. Moreover, failing to maintain this balance, or losing it altogether provokes evident stress, a devaluation of the self and, potentially dysfunction, illness, frustration, burnout, death and suicide. The Japanese actually use the term karoshi which means “death caused by an excess of work”.
If the balance between private and professional life is no longer of interest to us, what then is the contemporary approach we should consider? As emphasised by Lisa Earle McLeod and Stew Friedman, we should not henceforth view things from the perspective of a dichotomy; it is neither a question of choice nor opportunity. As much as possible, life and work should complement each other, should be sparked by the same passion, by the same values. Life and work should be congruous. The key is not a tactic then but a holistic vision. The solution is not, then, knowing how to prioritise but how to combine pleasure with raison d’être, essence and activity, fulfilment and professional endeavour. In this way development at work, at home, in the midst of one’s community and within one’s most intimate self becomes accessible and lasting.
So it is not a question of semantics. The concept of integration of private and professional lives, if not a reality, is at the very least a necessity, whether it be reactive (a concession in respect to a current professional situation) or proactive (the conception, implementation or re-orientation of a career plan).
The role of the coach
What is the role of a coach in this context? How can a coach facilitate this transition, specifically where the coach suggests a dichotomous structure in which work and pleasure are perceived as conceptually contradictory? To be precise, it is in suggesting that the structure go beyond an approach centred on time-management, task-prioritisation (or delegation) or even development of assertiveness. In effect, as useful as the teachings gleaned from sessions on these objectives may be, they can but reinforce a black and white vision, deprived of any nuance. With the client’s consent, the coach will first of all initiate an exploration of the self, followed by awareness and finally the full expression of their raison d’être.
The questions available to the coach while accompanying the client on their journey are numerous. From the classic “What is important to you?” to the more subtle “What were your childhood dreams?” and to the playful “What absorbs you to the point of forgetting to eat?” the coach is spoilt for choice in helping the coachee to find what excites them in a context involving others and to explore it calmly.
It matters little whether this raison d’être becomes a motto or a mood-board, but rather that the coachee finds a method that they will make their own, that they will take charge of and deploy in order to join the dots – around whichever sphere they may gravitate – of the things that provide a source of pleasure, that evoke enthusiasm, that represent imagined and desired development. In other words, the coach must aid the coachee to feel on an abstract level, what their true essence is. By embedding this feeling in advancement and action, the coach will enable the client to observe their own actions and points through a prism to which only they have access. The coach thus invites the client to calibrate the tool, intensifying the most useful aspects while moderating or ceasing the rest where possible, guiding them to calmly accept that which they cannot or will not throw away, becoming conscious of the tiniest contribution towards self-realisation.
For the coachee, it is not about resignation or capitulation but, acceptance, progress and self-development.
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This article has been published in International Coaching News Issue 12 (pp 50-52) on personal coaching. It was originally published here in this blog, in French.
De nos jours où la concurrence fait rage, les recruteurs recherchent non seulement les candidats les plus intelligents et les plus créatifs mais aussi ceux dont la culture épouse le mieux celle de l’entreprise. Cela dit, les interviews les plus difficiles mènent-elles aux meilleurs postes? Selon une étude menée par Glassdoor, il semble bien que oui.
Eléments clés à retenir :
Les interviews jugées plus difficiles sont statistiquement liées à davantage de satisfaction des employés, et ceci dans les six pays étudiés: Etats-Unis, Royaume-Uni, Canada, Australie, Allemagne et France.
Globalement, un processus de recrutement jugé 10% plus difficile sera associé a posteriori à une satisfaction supérieure de 2.6 points.
Ce lien a été observé dans chacun des pays étudiés: Australie (3.6 points), Canada (3.0 points), Royaume-Uni (2.9 points), Etats-Unis (2.5 points), Allemagne (2.4 points) et France (1.5 points).
Sur une échelle à cinq niveaux allant de 1=très facile à 5=très difficile, la difficulté d’interview jugée optimale à savoir celle menant à la satisfaction des employés la plus élevée se situe entre 4 et 5.
Pour conclure: de bons processus de recrutement encouragent une bonne adéquation du candidat au poste, gonflant la satisfaction des employés et, en fin de compte, la productivité. A l’inverse, les processus de recrutement mal conçus — soit trop faciles, soit trop difficiles — sont associés avec des sociétés dont la culture paraît à terme la moins saine.
Alors, candidats, tenez bon !
Source : Glassdoor.com
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Not only are hiring managers looking for the smartest and most creative candidate, but in today’s competitive hiring landscape, they are also looking for the best cultural fit. But do harder job interviews lead to better job matches? According to a study carried out by Glassdoor, it turns out, yes.
Key Findings:
More difficult job interviews are statistically linked to higher employee satisfaction across six countries they examined: U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, Germany and France.
Overall, a 10 percent more difficult job interview process is associated with 2.6 percent higher employee satisfaction later on.
We found this statistical link in all six countries we examined: Australia (3.6 percent); Canada (3.0 percent); U.K. (2.9 percent); U.S. (2.5 percent); Germany (2.4 percent); and France (1.5 percent).
On a five-point scale, the optimal or “best” interview difficulty that leads to the highest employee satisfaction is 4 out of 5. Interview difficulty ratings based on a five-point scale: 1.0=very easy, 3.0=average, 5.0=very difficult.
To conclude: good hiring processes encourage quality job matches, boosting employee satisfaction and, ultimately, worker productivity. By contrast, poorly designed interview processes—either too easy or too difficult—both are associated with less healthy company cultures over time.
“Celui ou celle qui obtient le poste n’est pas nécessairement celui qui remplira le mieux la fonction mais bien celui ou celle qui sait le mieux comment l’obtenir.”
“He or she who gets hired is not necessarily the one who can do that job best; but, the one who knows the most about how to get hired.”
Leonor FINI – Les mutantes, 1971 – Huile sur toile, 55.5 x 75.4 cm
“Si vous voulez que vos enfants soient intelligents, lisez-leur des contes de fées. Si vous voulez qu’ils soient plus intelligents, lisez leur plus de contes de fées.”
“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
