Why the Executive 360 Assessment Matters

Every year, the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) releases a State of the Workplace Study that helps uncovers priorities and challenges facing America’s workplaces. Maintaining employee morale and engagement was the highest priority in 2022, but survey takers, who included HR professionals and the U.S. workers themselves, ranked their organizations’ ability to do that well nowhere near the top. Oops.

Of course, there are plenty of factors that can help or harm employee morale and engagement, but we can’t really think of a bigger one than the quality of leadership. A great leader can boost employee morale and engagement; a bad leader can do the opposite.

Problem is, it can be lonely at the top. It can be difficult for workers to give negative upward feedback to their leaders. Looking in a mirror doesn’t always reveal them, either.

So, what can an organization do to make sure the quality of the leadership is helping, not hurting employee morale and engagement? 360 feedback is a commonly used tool to identify workers’ skills and opportunities for growth. But even in organizations that use 360 feedback, it’s not always used to detect issues at the top.

Enter the executive 360 assessment, which is exactly what it sounds like—a process that collects feedback from an executive’s peers, colleagues, subordinates, even themselves. When compiled, this feedback can draw attention to a leader’s strengths (keep doing these things), a leader’s weaknesses (stop doing these things), and even a leader’s blind spots about the way they lead and the impact it has on employee morale and engagement.

In reality, identifying the opportunities for growth and development doesn’t necessarily lead to growth and development. For that to happen, busy leaders and executives need their 360 feedback to be easy to understand and actionable, so that it can actually serve as a catalyst for personal and professional development.

And that’s why executive 360 assessments like the G360 Senior Leader Survey matter. Our survey was designed to measure the competencies that are most important for effective leadership; the survey report (see sample report here) was designed to be easy to understand and even easier to act upon.

Organizations are facing enough challenges in their pursuit of employee morale of engagement—don’t let bad leadership be one of them. Get started with our executive 360 assessment today.