Insights went back to the drawing board and created a whole new 360 experience...
Traditional 360s, where learners compare their self perception to how others (usually supervisors and peers) perceive them, have always had good intentions.
No other system can empower focused development like a 360, so by the 2000s, they had become a corporate staple.
But somewhere among unprepared peers providing low-value feedback and outdated notions of competency-based best-in-class profiling, the true intention of the 360-feedback system was lost.
As a result, the corporate world stepped back from the 360 in the 2010s.
But hindsight is 20/20, and today we can see that, as an industry, we may have thrown the baby out with the bathwater...
After all, the insights gained from a well-executed 360 process are invaluable and to date, there’s been nothing that can replicate that incredible depth of feedback.
Until now.
How Insights fixed the 360 with a totally
different approach
At Insights, we’re in the business of helping people understand themselves and others. And if anyone could reconsider and revitalise the 360 assessment – recognising its power to enhance team dynamics and improve collaboration – it was us.
In 2024, we set out to do exactly that.
Our goal: Develop a full-circle feedback system that, rather than filling learners with apprehension, inspired them with curiosity, affirmation and even excitement. This system had to glean valuable results from an L&D perspective, and it had to feel good for people to experience.
We knew, intuitively, that if we wanted people to begin the journey of accepting open feedback, we needed to pave the road with psychological safety. That idea became our North Star.
The solution
At Insights, we don’t “assess”, and we don’t look at competencies; we look at personality types.
Insights Discovery Full Circle’s approach explores how a learner perceives their own personality-based preferences and compares that to how others perceive the learner’s personality-based preferences.
Personality preferences do not come with judgment. All personality types are capable, competent and valued in the workplace, and knowing what people value is an important part of collaborating well.
Organisations must ‘be ready’ to use Discovery Full Circle (it’s not a given)
Feedback is valuable and powerful, but it’s easy to forget that as humans, we are all sensitive to what others think of us. And feedback, when given in an unsafe environment, is fraught with apprehension.
That’s why accredited Insights Discovery and Discovery Full Circle facilitators must complete a readiness assessment on organisations. This looks at the organisation’s ability to create the right conditions of empathy and psychological safety before the programme begins.
Those organisations that have already experienced Insights Discovery likely enjoy the right conditions to introduce Discovery Full Circle. But for those using Insights for the first time, a little leg work might be necessary to ensure the right levels of awareness and understanding are present.
This step protects the integrity of the programme and creates the psychological safety necessary for an effective full-circle feedback process that fully engages and empowers people.
