Leadership development through 360-degree multi-rater feedback—An experience sharing of need, approach, roll-out, and the impact

Abstract

The organizational development (OD) interventions carried out by the assessment center identifying the competencies becomes effective only if the expectation of the stakeholders is met. A 360-degree multipurpose intervention is to assess and develop project director’s leadership capabilities and enable them to execute Mega Infrastructure Projects in India executed by Larsen and Toubro, the leading engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) players of India. Implementing such Mega Projects by maintaining time, cost, safety, and quality parameters require leadership skills of high order. To meet out this requirement implementation partner interacted with few project directors from each business verticals such as nuclear, hydel, metro, defense, special bridges and ports and harbor, to understand the role holders’ challenges and the expectations. L&T Heavy Civil Infrastructure (HCI) Leadership Competency framework was thus drafted looking into the role intensity and specific role-based challenges of the Mega Project Leaders. The questionnaires were designed to cover all dimensions and sub dimensions of 8 competencies, covering 40 behavioral Indicators. the questionnaires were hosted on the online platform to including self, supervisor, direct repartees, peers, customers, and other stakeholders. Validation to the assessment of each dimension and sub-dimensions as qualitative feedback is done with simple average scores and the range. The study found that execution leadership was the highest rated competency followed by customer engagement and talent management. The study also found that strategic orientation and decision making were rated low compared to other competencies, got validated by comments of customers as well. This is quite evident from the feedback that was taken after 9 months of the intervention. The study by using Delphi technique revealed that by providing feedback from all stakeholders supported by systematic coaching, 88% participants showed improvement in the low rated items. The study further proved that with proper feedback and coaching at an individual level with required trust and keeping development as the core agenda and without linking to any other HR processes like appraisal and promotion, majority of the participants took full ownership, interest and worked on their individual competency development showing their learning agility.