This year create a strategy using your 360 feedback (it saved me a year in my promotion)
Transform feedback into actions 🚀
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When I joined Amazon, the yearly 360 process happened in my 4-month mark
The feedback confirmed I was doing good in my onboarding.
While encouraging, when I turned 8-month tenure, the feedback didn’t apply anymore.
I would need to wait 8 months to get an useful signal.
I wanted to get a clear direction on my next steps.
So I arranged with my manager an informal 360.
He would ask people and provide me with their feedback anonymously.
I identified clearly what were my next steps for growth.
By the time I received the next formal 360 feedback 8 months later, I was already promoted to the next level.
It’s not only about receiving feedback. Most companies I know have a yearly 360 process
It’s about taking action on the feedback.
In this article, you’ll learn:
How to identify real signals in your feedback blurbs
The 3 types of signals to obtain from your 360 feedback
How to take action on these signals
First, understand the feedback
From free-text blurbs to data
With different people writing about different topics, it’s easy to get lost.
If your company has some role guidelines, tag each feedback with the criteria it’s talking about.
If the blurb is all over the place and you can’t identify any, just ignore it. You don’t have to take a learning from every feedback.
Strong and weak signals
Imagine you receive 10 feedbacks.
If 7 out of 10 highlights a weakness and potential improvement in your verbal communication, that’s a strong signal you should take action on.
If only 1 out of 10 talks about the level of your code deliveries, then you should better ignore it.
Weak signals are not your priority. You can improve any area for sure, but take the action with highest return on investment.
The 3 signal types
1 - Strengths
If a kid is strong in maths and weak in English, parents would put the kid in English classes instead of finding opportunities to develop that math talent.
We won’t do this. We’ll make sure the kid studies a STEM career.
2 - Weaknesses
We won’t aim to become top performers in those areas, but won’t leave them unattended dragging us down.
Our goal is to be average on them
3 - Potential opportunities
Both low-hanging fruits and the grand vision of what you can achieve in your career.
In the usual positive/negative feedback, structure you may find this signal in both.
In the positive, new ways to apply your strengths.
In the negative, people may call out a recommendation. Something to work towards in the future to minimize the downside of weaknesses.