Case Assignment

Continuing on the themes of the Module 1 and 2 Case Assignments, for this module you will also be doing a self-assessment as well as applying the concepts from the module to your own organization. Make sure to thoroughly review the required background materials before starting this assignment, as you need to apply concepts from readings such as Carelli (2010) and Mukherjee (2014) as part of this assignment.

This assignment has five sections. For each section, the suggested length is one half to one full page, for a total length of four to five pages not including the title page and references. You should also make sure to cite Carelli (2010) and Mukherjee (2014) multiple times throughout the paper as well as any additional references that you find:

1. Most 360-degree surveys are not free and in fact are very expensive if you want to get a license to use them at your organization. However, there are a few free sample 360-degree surveys out there. Do a search on Google or other search engines using terms such as “free 360-degree feedback survey.” Find two or three free surveys and choose one of them that you think would be most applicable to your organization. Explain the reasoning for your choice, and try to use criteria from Carelli (2010) (such as her checklist on page 175) for selecting your survey.
2. Now take the survey that you chose in your answer to Question 2 above. Fill out the survey as a self-evaluation – that is, use the survey to evaluate your own leadership skills and other skills. Report the results of your survey. Do you think the survey was useful? What areas for improvement in your leadership skills did you find from using the survey?
3. As a next step, fill out the survey again but this time evaluate your current supervisor or a previous supervisor that you worked with. Report your results. Were the results fair to your supervisor? What are the main areas for improvement for your supervisor based on your results?
4. Now that you have taken the survey twice, what is your overall evaluation of the survey that you took? Did the survey ask the right questions necessary for you and your supervisor? Are there different or additional questions that you think should be added to this survey? Use the “Selecting a 360 System” on page 175 of Carelli (2010) as well as your own experiences filling out the survey to assess the usefulness of the survey that you took.
5. Finally, take a look at pages 153-155 of Carelli (2010) where she discusses pitfalls and potential biases of a 360-degree survey. Which pitfalls do you think would apply to your organization and the leaders you work with? How might you overcome these pitfalls if you were to lead a 360-degree survey process in your organization?

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.

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, use at least one reference from the required readings to answer the specific question. Your paper should be 2-3 pages in length:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.