How 360° Leadership Feedback Can Help You Level Up Your Skills
Leaders often find it difficult to get feedback, especially in a structured and actionable way. That’s why I started to offer 360° Leadership Feedback, where I schedule and conduct interviews with your employees and colleagues and package what I learn into an easily digestible format. I believe this will provide you with a solid basis for your self-progression journey.
But what is it really like to participate in 360° Leadership Feedback? I figured you’d like to hear directly from a past participant. Anna Chif is the co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Dialogue and we recently completed the 360° Leadership Feedback program. My blog editor Melissa Suzuno caught up with Anna to learn about her experience and help you decide whether 360° Leadership Feedback is the right option for you.
Tell us a little bit about your company, Dialogue.
Dialogue is the leading Canadian virtual care provider. We serve more than 10% of the Canadian population. We offer primary care and longer-term, mental health support. We also have an EAP (employee assistance program) and we recently launched iCBT, internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy. Our products are offered by organizations to employees and their dependents. Based on the service a user wants—whether it’s physical health, mental health, or financial health—they answer a few questions and within a few clicks, they’re able to speak to a practitioner regarding their health or wellness needs.
How did you decide to do the 360° Leadership Feedback review with Petra?
When I started working with Petra, I would choose very specific topics for us to explore in depth. Through these conversations, we decided to focus on areas where the team feels they need more depth, or perhaps I have some blind spots. It’s not just what I think I want to work on, but what the whole product organization thinks is needed the most.
How would you describe the experience?
It was amazing. I felt very lucky to participate in it. Petra contacted different folks at different levels and proximity to me so it wasn’t just my colleagues or my direct reports, but it was really a blend. Both of my co-founders participated.
It confirmed both what was working well and the areas where we’d like to do more. For example, we do user research, but what I heard from the team was that we should be doing it in a much more structured way. We have a very complex business with different types of users— providers, members, and clients. One of the main pieces of feedback was around making sure that we’re getting closer to them, being more intentional and purposeful about communicating these insights, and making sure those influence more directly what we build and what we don’t build.
I felt that the feedback I received from Petra was very well articulated and very actionable. Petra did a great job of classifying what she was hearing into themes, so even if someone expressed an idea in a very broad, abstract way, we were able to discuss the themes more concretely. Petra would regularly ask me, “What have you learned? What are you going to be working on?” And that extra step made it more actionable. Our product org is already focusing on the key ideas that came out of these discussions.
How has this experience impacted your work?
There were many things that were important to me that got confirmed. For example, challenging our assumptions and making sure we think more deeply about things and being very human, transparent, and honest are all very important to me, so I was happy to see them reflected back.
As far as areas to focus on, as I mentioned above, one theme that came up was about getting even closer to our users and being more structured in how we do it. And the other was about communicating a very simple product strategy, linking our big ambitions from the organization—how do we really make choices as a product organization? I think it’s complicated to articulate a simple product strategy in products that are highly complex like ours with multiple users and different offerings for our clients. Expressing it in simple terms is something that wasn’t there, so my VP of product and I have been working on it quite a bit so that our teams are very clear on how to make decisions about priorities as part of the products they manage.
Who do you think would benefit from participating in this program?
Anybody would benefit from a 360° review, but you need to be really open to it. Those who would benefit most would be those who choose to do it. There are things that come back that are not that much of a surprise, but there are other things that may be more of a blind spot, so it’s really important to be open to it and want to improve.
The more senior you are in your organization, there are some specific benefits to participating. First is the fact that the more senior you are, the more difficult it can be to get feedback. What’s really good about Petra’s approach is that it’s a structured way to receive feedback. I thought that was very relevant because in my capacity as the leader of the product org, I’m able to make changes right away based on what I learned. And that’s really important, especially when it’s a pain that’s felt widely.
Interested in participating in 360° Leadership Feedback yourself? Get in touch with Petra to learn more!