The work we often now do before any 360 degree feedback system is delivered to our clients, is designing the competency framework from which the 360 feedback questionnaire will be derived.

We will work from first principles to ensure that the competencies against which the individuals are to be assessed by adhere to some key criteria; here are 5 suggested considerations:

Tailored to the organisation in question

Although many common themes may run through a competency framework, we believe it is far better to create the behavioural statements from scratch, rather than simply lift them from a generic framework.

Derived from the business strategy

The starting point must be to understand the organisational aims and goals - the strategy highlights those competencies which will be important to the organisation going forward. In the design process we simply ask 'What is the organisation's Vision/Mission/Strategy?' and 'What behaviours does this suggest we require of our leaders?'.

Culturally congruent

Similarly, the competency framework should reflect the desired culture of the organisation; it must be informed by the values too - the behavioural statements illustrating those values in action.

Relevant to the role

A final set of questions should be asked in this design process which dig into the role of the 360 degree feedback recipient themselves, to ensure that the questionnaire is truly relevant to both the organisation and the individual. We would enquire 'What should this person be doing and how should they conduct themselves?', 'What observable behaviours distinguish individuals in this role?', 'What does 'great' look like?'.

Validated

There is often a lot of information to be collated at this stage, but carefully collected and analysed, the framework will start to appear quite organically. It's good to then have any draft framework validated by a sensible cross-representative sample of people within the organisation; ideally, some of the proposed recipients should have an opportunity to feed into the design process too.

Over the years we have realised that this stage is probably more important than the technical implementation - you have to get 'buy-in' and for that to happen people have to see the relevance of what is being asked of them.

John

www.bowlandsolutions.com