A widely used tool for 360-degree feedback can encourage unethical leadership

While 360-feedback tools claim scientific credibility and are widely used in leadership development, the expectations they convey to aspiring leaders may foster unethical leadership. Suze Wilson, Nancy Harding, Jackie Ford, and Hugh Lee analyse a widely used tool for 360-degree feedback that claims to measure transformational leadership, a model advocating that leaders can and should transform their followers to achieve outstanding results. They find that the tool encourages leaders to regard themselves as superior to others and to undermine followers’ moral autonomy to choose what kind of person they want to be—implying paternalism by leaders at best and domination at worst.

 
Leadership development is big business. It’s estimated many billions are spent each year on leadership development programmes aiming to improve the performance of those in leadership roles.

It’s far from certain this is money well spent, given Gallup’s global survey reports that only around 1 in 5 employees feel engaged at work. Thorough evaluation of these programmes is the exception, rather than the norm. However, our recent study sought to address a more fundamental issue: do these programmes foster ethical leadership? What we found disturbed us greatly, our primary concern being the 360-degree feedback tools widely used in leadership development.

How these tools work is as follows: the leader undergoing development, along with their manager, direct reports, and peers, all fill out a survey rating that leader against criteria said to be important for effective leadership. Scores are collated, feedback is given, and the leader concerned is then expected to focus on changing their behaviours to address any gaps identified. Chances are many readers will have used such tools as they are commonplace, despite the fact they involve ‘intense, comprehensive scrutiny’, which can be deeply unsettling.

The precise criteria measured varies amongst different 360 tools, so we selected an especially influential one for close analysis– the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ). This claims to measure transformational leadership, a popular, heroic model advocating that leaders can and should transform their followers, and by so doing achieve outstanding results.

Here’s where things became tricky, though. The full set of survey questions can’t be seen without paying a fee to the company that runs the MLQ – and even then it’s not permitted to reveal those questions when reporting our research findings. This is due to intellectual property rights – remember, leadership development is BIG business. So, we instead had to trace back to the core concepts in transformational leadership theory to analyse the kinds of expectations or norms it – and therefore the MLQ – creates for how leaders should and should not act. Our interest was to understand the ethical characteristics and implications of those norms.

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Πηγή: blogs.lse.ac.uk