360 Degree Leadership Assessments - Emerging Nurse Leader

By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN

Would you feel insecure about a 360 degree assessment on your leadership? If yes, you are not alone. I am currently working with a non-healthcare organization that is conducting 360 degree leadership assessments on all staff in director level or above roles. My role will be to do the leadership development coaching after the assessments are completed. They have chosen to use Kouzes and Posners 360 Degree Leadership Practices Inventory which is available online. As an introduction to the project, I was asked to explain what a 360 degree leadership assessment is and the potential benefits from the feedback that they would receive. None of the ten leaders had ever had a 360 degree assessment despite their average tenure of 10+ years in leadership roles. They expressed anxiety about the process and concern about what might be said about them.

These reactions are not uncommon if you have never had this type of assessment. While 360 degree assessments are routinely used in leadership development programs or executive coaching agreements, most organizations don’t make the investment of doing them with their leadership staff. This may be to avoid confusion about the differences between these assessments and performance evaluations. 360 degree leadership assessments are usually intended to be a developmental tool. Unlike a performance evaluation which is very tailored to specific job expectations, most 360 degree assessments are based on best practices in leadership. Feedback is described as 360 because it involves assessments from your supervisor, your peers, your direct reports, other observers and your own evaluation of yourself.

On the 360 degree Leadership Practices Inventory this organization is using, there are 30 best practices in leadership drawn from 40 years of research done by Kouzes and Posner in their work The Leadership Challenge. In addition to these 30 questions, there are also five open-ended questions that organizations can choose to ask. Five I like include are the following:

What is this leader’s key strength?
What should this leader do more of to increase their effectiveness?
What should this leader do less of to increase their effectiveness?
What should they continue doing in their leadership practice?
Is there one thing that this leader could do in order to support you to more effectively do your job to the best of your ability?

Once the process is completed, the leader receives aggregated scores. The intent is that they should be confidential. Especially important in a 360 degree assessment are the recurring themes from the ratings, and how closely aligned the self-rating is to the ratings of others. I once heard an executive coach use the metaphor of a movie theater. The leader is the movie and the supervisor, the leader’s staff and peers are the audience. Some people will really like the movie – others not so much but everyone probably has an opinion. It is the aggregated opinion that is most revealing. As one of my colleagues reflected after receiving her first 360 degree assessment – “this is like a social mirror for me”.

One of the best ways to grow as a leader is to receive a 360 assessment about your strengths and opportunities in leadership. The evidence indicates that, contrary to popular belief, asking for feedback from others in the organization is strongly correlated to a leader’s overall effectiveness. If you have the opportunity to do a 360 degree assessment, embrace it as a gift that can ultimately lead you to a much higher level of development and possibly success in the future.

Read to Lead

Kouzes J.M. & Posner, B.Z. (2017). 360 Degree Leadership Practices Inventory Online.