Leadership 360s are Best When Brought into the Light
Nothing good happens in the dark. Parents of teenagers have known this for centuries. But too few managers around the globe accept this as truth. Anand Pillai is the exception.
Mr. Pillai serves as SVP for Talent Transformation for HCL Technologies, a $5.5B global IT firm. His title alone is an indication that his organization thinks differently about talent. I spoke to Pillai this week about leadership and accountability.
Pillai’s company believes trust comes from transparency. One remarkable example of transparency in their culture involves leadership 360s. For seven years, HCL has required their 12,000 managers to undergo a 360 survey of their peers, direct reports, and supervisor. All results are posted on the company’s intranet. I repeat: All results are posted on the company’s intranet.
Wait a minute. Aren’t all surveys supposed to be anonymous and confidential? At HCL, the feedback provided in 360 surveys is certainly anonymous and confidential. Managers don’t know who said what in the survey. But the reports generated for each manager are posted internally. “It’s by far the best way to ensure that senior leaders are accountable upward and downward throughout the company,” Pillai said.
In the first year, Pillai admits he faced resistance to the idea of posting 360 results for all to see. Too often 360s have been used for remedial purposes—a behavior-modification strategy for executives with strong performance but low emotional intelligence. Pillai makes it very clear their 360s are NOT a performance management tool. Instead their objective is personal development.
Resistance to transparency went away when the CEO, Vineet Nayar, author of Employees First, Customers Second, decided to lead by example. He was the first to post his 360 online.
Transparency in 360s allows managers to use their results as a blueprint for seeking mentors inside the company. A Director of Operations that learns she is below average at managing change can search the intranet for top performing leaders in that competency—and pursue one as a mentor.
Beyond radical transparency, HCL has also upped the ante on who can evaluate each leader. Unlike conventional 360s where a person receives feedback from his direct zone of control only, at HCL a leader can receive feedback from anyone who falls under his/her span of influence. That means feedback can be given by anyone in your reporting tree or reporting line, peers, and what HCL calls “Happy Feet – any manager with a professional relationship, from your extended sphere of influence to even a manager hearing about you”.
To learn more about HCL’s revolutionary approach to talent – including “Employees First, Customers Second” – visit Vineet Nayar’s blog.
Radical transparency is what we had in mind when we built the 'LeaderBoard Report', one of the enterprise reports in our leadership 360 feedback tool, LeaderGrade. Several clients -- those that have cultivated a "there are no secrets" culture -- have given all of their leaders access to our enterprise reporting suite so managers can see how they stack up, access the results of their peers, and find 'leadership mentors' to improve there leadership skills.
For a look at how Quantum Workplace has infused transparency into our leadership 360 feedback tool (called LeaderGrade), click here.
photo courtesy jsmjr under creative commons license