Leadership and Employee Development are not just buzz-terms used in today’s workplace. These terminologies refer to the notion that development can and will improve performance. Regardless of your organization’s size, taking the time and effort to focus on the development of your workforce will prove to raise productivity, morale, and trust within the organization.

Development is a way to set the direction of the work being done by employees at every level of the organization. Leadership is not necessarily about the scope of your position or the size of your paycheck but rather about building skill in various competencies and demonstrating certain behaviors that chart a path to true personal and professional success.

One key way an organization can develop their employees, current leaders or future leaders is to gather candid feedback on how individuals are performing against competencies and, more particularly, what perceptions exist around the behaviors linked to those competencies. Development assessments are an inexpensive and comprehensive way to achieve this goal. More specifically, gathering feedback from multiple individuals such as your manager, subordinates, peers and external customers can prove to give you a well-rounded view of how you are perceived in your role. Collective feedback such as this is commonly known as a 360 feedback assessment. This is because you are obtaining feedback from everybody circling around each individual. Many organizations today have a formal performance assessment of some sort, but 360 feedback is about regular, informal feedback that leads to enhanced performance through behavior. For an organization, it is as imperative to understand HOW people achieve their goals as it is to know WHAT goals have been achieved. A development assessment is a tool that allow us to understand how others perceive behaviors at work.

While development initiatives can certainly exist without the gift of feedback, receiving timely and specific feedback allows individuals and the organization to map leadership and employee development to strategic initiatives and allows for a more robust and actionable development plan in the end. Studies indicate that when people receive regular feedback, it helps them feel motivated, empowered and involved with the success of the organization.