Self-Assessment and Leadership Development in Organizations

Introduction

The modern organizational environment must keep pace with changes that are occurring at a historically unprecedented rate. Many of these changes are driven by technology and require that leaders continually learn new skills in order to stay abreast of evolving skill requirements. It is often the case that a leader will have difficulty obtaining performance feedback from superiors because leaders generally do not work in close contact with supervisors and, in some cases, may not have one at all. Therefore, a leader must rely primarily on self-assessments to further develop the skill set that will allow them to help their organization create or maintain a competitive advantage.

360-Degree Feedback and Self-Evaluation

Evaluation is an important component of any organization. The use of an evaluation program has been shown to reduce employees' levels of stress and to lower their intentions to quit, thereby reducing turnover rates (Avey et al., 2009). However, it is difficult to offer effective evaluations to many members of an organization, especially leaders. The top-down approach to feedback has been shown to be inadequate for leaders in many circumstances because many leaders operate with substantial autonomy. For example, the supervisor of many leadership positions may not actually spend much time working alongside their subordinate and thus can generally offer only a limited amount of insightful information for effective feedback.

Many researchers have tried to address this problem, and one model of evaluation — the 360-degree feedback model — attempts to solve it from a different angle. The feedback that a leader can gain in this system is far more comprehensive than in the traditional model. Not only does the leader receive the same top-down evaluation found in more traditional systems, but they also receive evaluations from peers, subordinates, customers, or whoever else can offer a meaningful perspective on the leader's performance. This feedback then serves as the basis for a self-evaluation, which is also commonly included in the system. The model works by gathering feedback from all the people who surround an individual on an organizational chart — forming a circle — hence the term "360-degree" was applied to the system's name.

An effective evaluation system that provides opportunities for career development can serve as a valuable tool for attraction, retention, and motivation (Becker et al., 2011). Many people in leadership positions actively seek to develop their careers, and receiving timely and appropriate feedback can help advance their personal ambitions. Because feedback comes from multiple angles, it also creates an incentive to maintain consistent performance across all situations, since evaluation may come from any direction. It additionally provides greater depth of feedback, as leaders gain a sense of how they are viewed from different perspectives. This feedback can serve as a foundation for a self-evaluation that considers many viewpoints, including one's own.

One of the major drawbacks for leaders implementing a 360-degree feedback system is that it is time-consuming, complex in nature, and requires a significant investment of organizational resources (Lepsinger & Lucia, 2009). As a result, it is generally reserved for positions higher up on the organizational hierarchy. There are also considerable questions about the reliability of such a system. For example, in a team environment, social arrangements and interpersonal styles have been shown to influence a rater's level of bias toward their team members (May & Gueldenzoph, 2006).

Conclusion

Informal learning is also closely associated with organizational culture. Many leading organizations actively work to build a learning culture. Some larger organizations embed formal onboarding training with concepts related to self-assessment and informal learning, equipping new members with the tools necessary to become active participants in their own development. Although not all members will fully utilize these tools, leaders and aspiring leaders are likely to possess the level of motivation needed to take advantage of resources that can advance their careers.

The challenge for today's organizations is to foster a learning culture as much as feasibly possible, since the external environment is often evolving so quickly. Employees — and especially leaders — must continually adapt in order to maintain a competitive advantage. This dynamic environment means that embedding a culture of learning represents the ideal position for achieving organizational competitiveness (Alipour et al., 2011). Such an organization can provide the tools necessary for leaders to use self-assessments to develop their own careers without the need to rely solely on formal training programs. Research in leadership development consistently supports the view that self-directed growth, when grounded in honest self-evaluation, is one of the most sustainable pathways to long-term organizational effectiveness.

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