What 360° Free Text Boxes Can Tell Us About What An Organisation Is Thinking and Feeling

One of Predaptive’s customer offerings is to run confidential on-line 360° feedback and reviews. These are usually designed around a carefully developed questions set that is cross-referenced over time to indentify trend data.

Most 360°s contains a free text component, where responders can make additional comments. Below we have captured the most common positives and negatives and then themed them into a summary form. They make for interesting reading.

Negatives

1. Mangers that don’t walk the talk. There is a gap between what they say and what they do.
2. Inconsistency. Managers who are too moody, or change their stance on key issues without explanation.
3. Non delivery of commitments and promises.
4. Unapproachable. Managers who are too busy, whose diaries are too full and who can’t find quality time to work with their team.
5. Colleagues who are poor team players.
6. People who avoid responsibility, who won’t own issues.
7. People who ‘just don’t get it’. This usually refers to a person’s mental approach to work.
8. Unreasonable demands being placed on people. This is commented on across all layers of the hierarchy.
9. Too little visibility of senior management.
10. No leadership from the top.

As you might expect the positive comments are often the reverse of the negatives, but with a twist.

Positives

1. Managers that behave consistently.
2. Managers who demonstrate fairness and even handedness (no favourites!).
3. People who are straight talking, regardless of who in the hierarchy they are talking to.
4. Colleagues who are supportive.
5. The friendliness of fellow workers.
6. Colleagues who have real expertise they are prepared to freely share.
7. Managers who are effective coaches.
8. Visible senior people who demonstrate real leadership through their communications.
9. Managers who help simplify, prioritise and organise workloads.
10. Managers who make people feel valued.

If you would like to organise your own on-line 360° feedback mechanism, please contact us.