Your CEO Feedback shouldn’t be the same as your normal 360 process
How I imagine CEO feedback is drafted to ensure anonymity
(Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash)
Most CEOs and Founders operate with very little real feedback.
Not because people don’t have opinions. They absolutely do. But let’s face it, the position and the power that comes with it, it changes behaviour.
When you control promotions, bonuses and exits, people are going to filter their words. They say what feels survivable, rather than the truth.
If you’re the People leader and you’re using the same feedback process for your CEO as you do the rest of your team, well you’re likely perpetuating the problem.
Let’s explore why.
The Standard Approach
The Chief People Officer sits on the executive team. They work alongside the CEO daily. They are part of the same political landscape. They are also CEO’s confidante when it comes to People issues. It’s a tricky situation to manage.
Collecting confidential feedback on your own boss while protecting anonymity and maintaining trust on both sides is not straightforward.
Leaders hold back if they think comments can be traced. HR professionals can find themselves exposed between loyalty to the CEO and responsibility to the wider team.
An independent process changes that landscape. People speak more freely when there is clear confidentiality and distance from internal reporting lines
The Coach-Led 360 Approach
An independent process to gather 360 feedback adds a layer of protection into the system, for both the CEO and the People leader. The feedback is likely to be more honest, the debrief is by a neutral party and the CEO is a co-designer of the process. Already you can see why this yields better results.
Here’s what it requires:
Clear scope agreed in advance with the CEO and, if relevant, the Chair
Explicit confidentiality boundaries
Careful selection of participants
A mix of interviews and structured survey questions
Separate reporting views for the CEO and the board
A robust one to one coach-led debrief
Interviews matter. Survey’s are good for pattern recognition of themes but tone, hesitation and language all tell you something about culture and the real behaviour you need to highlight.
The reporting needs to be translated into repeated observations, the impact of that behaviour and requests for change.
And the debrief must be handled properly. This is not performance management. It is insight at a very senior level. The CEO needs space to process, challenge and decide what to act on.
Most importantly, they need to respond to the feedback afterwards to give their team confidence in what they will (and won’t) be changing.
Sometimes, the CEO won’t agree with the feedback, but that’s a story for another day. And I’m betting you’d rather have an external coach handle that conversation than do it yourself.
Get in touch if you’d like to talk about your CEO feedback process.