5 Key Factors to ensure success with Lumina Leader 360

Setting up and running any 360 Project is fraught with challenges, so we have identified 5 key factors to ensure your success.

Before you decide to undertake a Lumina Leader 360 Project, there needs to be some careful consideration. Now more than ever, organisations are selective about how they spend their training budget, and any development intervention must deliver real, measurable results whilst ensuring a return on investment.

Lumina Leader 360 and its methods can enable your Leaders to realise any improved performance in a highly targeted way.

What is 360° Feedback?

360° Feedback is a process in which a Leader receives feedback on their performance. This feedback will come from a number of people who work closely with and know the Leader to an extent where comments can be made on the Leader’s behaviour. 360° Feedback can be used either as one component of an annual appraisal process or as part of an ongoing development programme, enabling you to tackle development and training in the most effective manner.

The Participant (the person receiving feedback) will complete a self-assessment, and then ask around 8-10 Raters (those giving feedback) to give a response using the same set of questions. Raters are split into groups depending on the relationship they have with the Participant.

Within Lumina Leader we use 4 groups:

• Boss
• Peers
• Staff
• Others

This gives the Participant an insight into the Raters’ perceptions of your leadership competencies. This is particularly useful in complex organisations where the Participant is a member of several teams or works autonomously, and the Boss may not have visibility of the contribution he/she makes (CIPD 2011).

What is Lumina Leader 360?

Lumina Leader 360 is an assessment tool that is designed to nurture leadership to its highest level. It has been researched and validated using the latest business theories. In essence, it will offer insights into leading others through the understanding of an individual’s leadership style and the needs of those they are leading.

Lumina Leader 360 focuses on four areas of leadership, with the goal of highlighting and developing your strengths in each of the four Leadership Domains:

It gathers both Self-Assessed data and Rater feedback on 16 Competencies across two Personas, providing a personalised Portrait. This personalised Portrait includes:

• Self-assessed scores
• Rater scores by group
• Highlighted development areas
• Recommendations for development of leadership capability, based on Self and Rater assessment
• Leadership Competency Blockers and Competency Overuse (Overextended Persona)
• Option for Raters and Self to make comments on each Competency

5 key factors for the successful introduction of a Lumina Leader 360 Project

1          Clarification of Purpose

The first key to a successful intervention is understanding exactly what you wish to achieve. Lumina Leader 360 is most effective when it is used to support personal development and organisational growth, offering a perspective on management and leadership behaviour that is difficult to get through any other method. The very nature of feedback that is gathered from real people -feedback that the Participant can then work with- provides key information about their behaviour in a leadership context.

Using a product such as Lumina Leader 360 will enable you to gain huge insights into an organisation’s culture, values and priorities. Thinking up-front about the level of understanding of your project and its purpose alongside how you intend to utilise the feedback will ensure you are able to prepare the Participants and the Raters in an appropriate way.

2          Planning and Data Collection

The second key to success is a well-planned project. Gathering 360 Feedback can be a daunting and exciting experience. However, for some people, it can also be an extremely uncomfortable experience. Good planning increases organisational engagement, and without this planning, the outcomes of your Lumina Leader 360 Project will be much harder to achieve.

For your project to be successful you will need two things:

To Raise Awareness of the Purpose – If Participants and Raters do not understand why Lumina Leader 360 is being done they may not fully engage with it and may even attempt to sabotage it. Acknowledging any fear and/or poor past experience of a 360 Project can help increase confidence whilst also increasing engagement.  When you consider how you will raise awareness prior to the start of your project, you will enable increased engagement and reduce any potential problems further down the line.

Preparation – Both Participants and Raters need to know the timescales of the project and what is expected of them. Remember: the average 360 Project takes around 4 weeks to get to the Portrait generation stage.

Lumina Leader 360 is web-based and email-driven, so it is easy for Participants and Raters to access and use at their convenience. It includes:

• A way of overseeing and administering your Lumina Leader 360 projects
• The opportunity to send reminders and generate your Portraits when they are ready
• Ability to include/exclude sections of the standard Portrait
• A helpdesk facility for you, your Participants, and their Raters (if needed)
• A unique login for Participants
• A Self-Assessment

There are also some additional considerations that will need to be made in the preparation stage:

• Will the organisation determine the Raters or will the Participant identify their own Raters?        There is no right or wrong answer here. This will be driven by the organisational culture. Many organisations determine the Raters for each Participant in order to avoid 360 overload (one or two people being identified as Rater for many Participants). This can also prevent Participants skewing results by identifying Raters who are more likely to give a positive response. However, some organisations leave the identification of Raters to the Participant alone.
• Who will manage the administration of the project?                                                                                           Often, requests for Raters to feedback will end up in the “I’ll get round to it” pile. TThis is not because Raters do not want to engage with the project -more so, it is because there are many other demands that occupy their time. Therefore, ensuring that one of your team members is assigned to administer the project is vital. Having someone tasked with keeping an eye on the completion levels will ensure that you have the information needed to generate the Portraits.

3          Lumina Leader 360 Portrait Reports

A clear 360° Feedback report is the third key to success. The report design and layout, as well as the feedback itself, plays a huge part in the effective use and understanding of the feedback.

The Lumina Leader 360 Portrait includes:

• A reminder of the scoring system and Rater groups
• An overview of the whole 360 Feedback, using average feedback from all Raters and average feedback from Self-Assessment
• Detailed information about each competency that provides authentic scores from each respondent, clearly identified by Rater group
• A comparison to a norm group
• Free text information from respondents for each question
• An opportunity to highlight development needs

Good feedback reports should be logical and intuitive. This will allow a skilled feedback facilitator or coach to work their way through extracting information from competency areas and different Rater groups, enabling them to use free text comments to triangulate quantitative scores.

The key to successful report interpretation is simple clear feedback data presented in an easy-to-understand, logical format.

4          Feedback Facilitation

The fourth key factor is effective individual feedback facilitation. Many 360 reports are a 5-second wonder, with the Participant reading through the report, either being pleased or frustrated with the results and taking the feedback at face value.

Whether or not the Participant is utilising the information within the report is what really makes the difference between an empowering, motivating intervention and an intervention that has a minimal -or even negative- impact. A skilled feedback facilitator with great coaching skills can make a profound difference to a Participant, fostering a sense of greater understanding and acceptance from their Lumina Leader 360 report.

In addition, many organisations combine individual feedback with a Lumina Leader workshop to add awareness and understanding of the Leadership Domains, and how these Domains can further inform their personal development plan to increase leadership capability.

5              Individual and Organisational Learning

With effective feedback facilitation there is enormous potential for individual learning. A coaching approach will ensure that the learning is embedded and accepted by each Participant, using identified actions for the Participants’ individual development plan.

This will move the Participant from intellectual acceptance of the feedback towards taking action to capitalise on personal strengths and addressing any weaknesses.

A well designed and well-run Lumina Leader 360 intervention will also provide the opportunity for significant organisational learning. By collating the 360 Feedback information it is possible to determine themes, organisational strengths, and areas for further development. Individual feedback patterns will also allow you to identify those individuals at either end of the performance spectrum, i.e.: the high potentials and those who are underperforming.

This overview enables the organisation to focus their training budget on areas where it is most needed.

Conclusion

360° Feedback is one of the most popular development tools in the corporate sector. However, it is how you use it that makes the real difference to your organisation. If you follow the five key factors outlined above, your Lumina Leader 360 project will be a success.

Interested in using Lumina Leader 360?

To find full Lumina Leader product information, download a sample portrait or get in touch, please visit our Lumina Leader product page.

Alternatively, if you wish to understand more about how Lumina Leader has been been applied then take a look at our case study where Lumina Leader was utilised alongside Lumina Spark for a UK based Niche Construction Company.