Module 3 – SLP
360-DEGREE FEEDBACK
For this assignment you will be applying the concepts from
the background readings to some specific scenarios that you might face if you
were a leadership development coach. Make sure to thoroughly review Carelli
(2010) and Mukherjee (2014) before starting on this assignment.
For each of the scenarios below, put on your “coach” hat and
use your knowledge of the background readings to diagnose what went wrong and
what might be done to improve the situation. Use at least one reference from
the required or optional background readings for each answer, and at least two
total background readings. Your paper should be 2-3 pages in length.
An organization decides that they don’t want to spend the
large amount of money to use a 360-degree survey from an established vendor and
instead decides to develop their own survey. An employee in the human resource
department is asked to create a list of 50 questions about different areas of
leadership performance. Two of the senior managers look at the questions
briefly and then send out the survey as part of a 360-degree process. Once the
results come in, there is no rhyme or reason to the results. For example, one
top performing leader in the organization gets perfect performance scores from
some employees and very negative scores from other employees. Management is not
sure if the results from the survey can be trusted or not.
A unit in one organization is having a lot of performance
issues and senior management is not sure of the reasons for this. They don’t
want to fire any employees but they do think some of the supervisors need to
improve their leadership skills. The survey is sent to five employees, which
includes two supervisors and three direct reports. They are told that the
survey will be anonymous but the results of each survey will be shared with all
five employees – only the names will be removed from each survey but they will
all be able to see the evaluation scores on each question. When senior
management sees the survey results, they find that all five employees received
almost perfect scores and no useful information from the surveys can be found.
A software company is concerned that they are losing market
share to their competitors and that their software is not as high in quality as
it used to be. In an effort to improve their competitiveness, they decide to
use a 360-degree survey process to identify areas for improvement in leadership
skills among their top supervisors in their software design department. After
searching through a few different 360-degree instruments offered by different
vendors, they find a survey that focuses on communication and teamwork skills.
The process seems to go very well as supervisors who score low on communication
or teamwork agree to go through training to improve these skills. One year
later the 360-degree process is repeated and most supervisors show greatly
improved communication and teamwork skills. However, the quality of the
company’s software does not seem to have improved at all in spite of the
improvements in communication and teamwork.
SLP Assignment Expectations
Follow the assignment instructions closely and follow all
steps listed in the instructions
Stay focused on the precise assignment questions, don’t go
off on tangents or devote a lot of space to summarizing general background
materials
List supporting references and cite sources in proper format
Use appropriate writing style in essay form (organization,
grammar, and spelling).
Include both a bibliography and in-text citations. See the
Student Guide to Writing a High-Quality Academic Paper, including pages 13-14
on in-text citations.
