What coaches should I use?
The systemic organization should deploy systemic coaches. Systemic coaches don’t only adopt a different approach to debriefing, but they also add value over and above the feedback process itself. They are keen to share their experience of the process (while respecting confidentiality boundaries) recognising the value they can add in helping the organization gain greater insight into its own way of working.
When should we survey?
You don’t have to think systemically to recognize that people don’t like receiving lots of feedback requests at once, and that people don’t like receiving feedback requests at all at the busiest times of year. So best to avoid financial year-end and the run up to the annual sales conference.
Furthermore, recognise that if you survey around performance-review season (if you still have a performance-review season), then people will tend to rate others more kindly. Etc …
Who should we invite to do the rating?
The traditional approach assumes that people tend to behave the same way in all contexts. The emphasis is therefore on making sure we get a good mix of generous raters and less generous raters. Participants are encouraged to invite people who they don’t get along with. The systemic approach recognizes that people behave differently in different contexts, and encourages the coachee to think about which contexts are most important to them. Context then drives rater selection. The systemic coach also recognizes that people don’t invest energies in changing their behavior to please people they don’t respect. There really isn’t much point in twisting people’s arms to choose people whose views they will quickly dismiss.
How will we brief participants?
If you really want your program to fly, then consider briefing at least three stakeholder groups. It’s surprising how often participants don’t fully understand why they’re being asked to undertake feedback. Emails may get lost in the traffic (I coached someone recently with 22,000 emails in his inbox). So investing time in face-to-face briefings is usually worthwhile. Few people brief raters and line managers, but such briefings add value. Help raters understand what participants are hoping to get from the program. Help them understand how rushing through a questionnaire, marking down the middle, may result in low ratings if the data is normed. Help them understand how to write useful verbatim comments. Line managers are even more important.
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