John Clements Hosts
360 Leadership Development Training
By Paul Catiang

John Clements sponsored a 360 Leadership Development Business Forum at the West Room of the Manila Golf Club, with Charles Harris, an international Human Resources executive based in Shanghai, China, whose expertise lies in strategic planning, startup operations, restructuring, training, recruiting, compensation & benefits, and employee relations.

According to Mr. Harris, 360 Leadership Development is an effective tool that, if used properly, can help assess an individual’s needs and assist the company and the employee in putting in place effective development actions. To put things in an organizational perspective, he named three challenges faced by the successful workforce measurement and management of organizations.

Perspective Challenges
Do all managers understand how workforce capabilities and behaviors drive strategy execution? Everything begins with perspective; having a clear view of where a company is going and knowing what its goals and values are provides an ideal starting point for any kind of execution. What competencies a company’s workforce possesses are given direction by the right perspective, and any positive behaviors reap the appropriate rewards as well.

Measurement Challenges
This begs the question, “Have we identified the right measures of workforce success, leadership and workforce behaviors, workforce competencies and workforce culture and mind-set?” Measurement gives leaders touchstones and benchmarks to watch out for in the process of execution. Standards can be set along the way, and once surpassed, new and higher benchmarks can be set to perpetuate an organization’s evolution.

Execution Challenges
Do managers have access, capability and motivation to communicate strategic activities and to monitor the workforce progress on the activities? Execution requires constant follow up and coaching, which needs to be tailored to the individual employees involved. “Choosing the right strategy is not the real challenge. The challenge is in executing that strategy,” Mr. Harris quipped.

Managers and executives at any working level in an organization will benefit from highly specific, individualized recommendations based on 360 Leadership Development Feedback. Once development needs are identified plans for concentrated coaching and training can be set in place.

For each person being rated a group of eight to 10 people will be developed to participate in the survey. This is called a 360 Multi-Raters’ Feedback, which takes feedback from everyone that has a meaningful professional relationship with the subject. These sources are:

  • Superiors: while a traditional source of performance evaluation the 360 Leadership process takes the superior through a list of questions for evaluation that are different then standard job performance evaluations;
  • Self-Assessment: The question, “How do you feel about yourself?” in this process will enable the subjects to see how others feel about them and they can compare their self-assessment to the assessment of others;
  • Peers: Peer ratings have proven to be excellent predictors of future performance. They are very useful as input for employee development;
  • Subordinates: the feedback from subordinates is particularly effective in helping to determine a supervisor’s interpersonal skills as well as perceptions of leadership and knowledge in various areas.

Thus, the survey respondents will be composed of a mixed group of people. Supervisors, Peers, Subordinates will make up the main group; this can be expanded to customers or clients depending on the individual business. These respondents are asked to assess the subject’s Current Abilities and the subject’s Desired or Expected Capabilities; survey respondents use a scale of 1 to 4. What follows next is called Gap Analysis: the gap between Current Abilities and Desired or Expected Capabilities is then identified. The item with the largest gap is the aspect of the subject that needs the most improvement, and training and development programs can be designed around this need. This process produces development plans that are tailor-fit to the capabilities and goals of the subjects of the survey.

It is important to note that the survey questions are designed with the input of the organization that wishes to avail of 360 Leadership Feedback.

The Key Success factors of 360 Leadership Development are in its   Anonymous Feedback, Confidential Feedback Report, the Ratee Ownership of Feedback and the Ratee Manager and Organizational Support for Development.

It is important that 360 Leadership is positioned as a career development tool not Performance Management tool. Although technically, it’s a way of benchmarking performance and a relevant tool for our training needs analysis, since it’s based on the concept of getting an evaluation from different levels and self to create a development plan for an individual.

Click here to download a copy of the presentation.

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Charles Harris is an international Human Resources executive based in Shanghai, China. He is an expert in strategic planning, startup operations, restructuring, training, recruiting, compensation & benefits, and employee relations. Developed and implemented HR policies for organizations throughout the U.S., Japan, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, Latin America, and Europe.

Mr. Harris is known as an innovative and energetic leader, skilled communicator and team builder, and an adept negotiator. He is also recognized as a strategic business partner to executives throughout an organization, developing and implementing HR programs that facilitate attainment of corporate growth, revenue, and profit goals.

In an executive capacity, Mr. Harris has worked for prestigious firms such as Total Talent International, Deloitte Consulting, the Unisys Corporation and IBM.

He earned his degree at the University of Miami.