360 Degree Feedback

360 Degree Feedback.

According to research from Affinity Health at Work and the Health and Safety Executive employees that feel free to speak their minds about their managers abilities are more likely to feel happy, healthy and stress free at work. The study which was presented at the British Psychological Society's conference in January, found that the most commonly reported cause of stress in the workplace is the relationship between an employee and their line manager. In companies where staff are involved in rating and giving feedback on their line manager's performance, stress is reduced.

No matter how open we are as managers most of our people will  find providing face to face feedback difficult. One mechanism that provides a safer environment is 360 degree feedback which has the benefit of providing wider feedback. This is a process that is structured and can be run by an external organisation which collates responses.  As a  manager you provide details of  the person you report to, people who are your peers in your organisation and people who report to you. This covers your working relationships up, down and sideways, hence the 360 degree term. Typically this also results in feedback from 8-12 people and so is reasonably comprehensive.  The collated results can give a manager a real insight into how their colleagues perceive them and provide very useful feedback without damaging relationships.   Some specialist organisations  provide these as web based questionnaires which reduces the administration and speeds up the process.


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Management Training Continues

Management attitudes to training:


76% of Canadian senior executives say their training budgets are unchanged – or increased – from 2008

An article appearing in the August 13 edition of Canadian business development publication Exchange magazine claims that while 23% of executives admit that training budgets have been reduced this year, 45% of senior execs claim their training budgets are unchanged, while 21% say their development budget has “expanded somewhat” or has “expanded significantly” (reported by 10% of survey respondents).

Selected Management Training/ Leadership Quotes:

“Knowledge is like a garden; if it is not cultivated, it cannot be harvested.” - African Proverb

“In this economy, you need to take advantage of every available resource to propel your career. Finding a mentor – and preferably a network of mentors – is an easy and smart way to get started.” – Source: An article titled “Pile on Mentors in Tough Times” published in The Wall Street Journal, October 6, 2009


Topics relevant to this article include: leadership development, management training, training budgets, training, mentoring


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Middle Management

When storms hit, middle managers stand in the gap

Why is it important to grow the leadership and management skills of middle managers and aspiring, young leaders?  We see this question answered beautifully in a September 19 Wall Street Journal column by Carol Hymowitz just a few years ago.

When Hurricane Katrina caused a five-mile stretch of railroad tracks connecting New Orleans and Slidell, La. to fall into Lake Pontchartrain, Norfolk Southern couldn’t transport badly needed products from the East Coast to the Pacific. 

And it wasn’t a CEO who saved the day.

Before the storm hit, Jeff McCracken, a chief engineer in Atlanta, prepared the materials he thought he might need for repairs and he readied 100 employees to help. After the storm, the team responded quickly, removing 5,000 trees from roads.  Then, when he discovered that the railroad tracks had fallen into the lake, McCracken gathered 365 engineers, machine operators and other workers and devised a creative plan to rescue the fallen tracks from the lake, rather than wait several weeks to build new tracks. The crew even slept in campers on site and worked in shifts around the clock to restore the rail line. Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit, the damaged tracks were repaired and returned to full service.

“CEOs who feel under particular pressure from investors these days need to relinquish their imperious status or they'll end up having power taken away from them,” claims the article. “CEOs who don't want upheaval among their rank and file should take note of one big change in the job market. Ambitious and talented middle managers have more opportunities to land new positions now than they've had in the past five years. Retaining them may require giving up some big corner-office compensation increases to improve their salaries.”

It would seem that growing and training middle managers when the business climate is good helps to ensure that they’ll be prepared to weather the storms when they inevitably hit. And investing in the development of middle management is also a terrific way for executives to ensure that the storms that hit aren’t caused by their own doing.

Leadership, middle management, management training

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