Written by Daniel J. Booth, Ed.D.


The answer to the importance of 360’s comes from these three dynamics: the general need for feedback, the challenges of higher positions, and one more that is the topic for another article, the growing isolation of senior leaders.

Millenials, the youngest cohort at work today, are sometimes described as the unmentored generation. According to some members of earlier generations, they suffer from a belief that everything they say and do is just great. After all, their critics say, since birth all they’ve heard is that self-esteem is more important than achievement and they have the smiley-face stickers to prove it.

The relevant point is their great need for feedback and not just cheerleading. And what’s encouraging about them is their openness to feedback and coaching, two characteristics that are not as common among their elders who hold most of the leadership positions.

Yes, it is our experience that the same need for feedback and coaching is just as great, if less openly acknowledged, by Generation Y, X, Boomers, and even my own ‘Silent’ generation (which clearly I take issue with). Let me share an anecdote.

In the early 70s when I was just getting started in the survey/feedback business, Shell Oil sent me to a gas field near Liberal, Kansas. One of my coaching clients was a 60 year-old supervisor, one year away from retirement. At half his age I wondered what I could possibly offer this person. I didn’t have to worry as I sat across from him in his dusty tin-roofed field office. With a welcoming smile on his weatherworn face, he thanked me even before we started his review. He said that this was his last year and it was going to be his best, and darned if he didn’t wish he’d had this sort of thing 36 years ago when he was first made “gang pusher” (supervisor)! He quickly picked up on what his feedback told him about his need for collaboration and delegation and was sketching out an action plan before our hour was over.

The changing workforce is creating an even greater need for more periodic feedback. Few people are in the same position within an organization or even at the same organization for more than two or three years. Their stakeholders are changing just as rapidly. When people’s roles change they need new skills and more sophisticated and complex versions of those skills to stay relevant. For example, setting goals for a tactical team of individual contributors is far less complex than creating a vision for the entire enterprise.

The well-known management and leadership pipeline concept relates very well to this approach. Managers and leaders simply need a different 360 assessment at every turn in their upward journey. Those aspiring to the first level of leadership are assessed by measures of interpersonal relations and self-management. Once they make the next turn, front-line supervision, it becomes necessary to measure their skills at managing the flow of work within a team, keeping the team together and inspiring commitment to the goals. The need for feedback never ends. Without it, every performer is at risk of losing that competitive edge.