No leadership role impacts a startup’s trajectory more than the founder’s. While self-awareness is crucial, candid feedback often becomes a rare commodity, making it hard to know if you’re knocking it out of the park or succumbing to blindspots. 

“Direct feedback is the most efficient way to grow as a leader,” says Kimberly Randle, Founder and CEO of Fair Supply. A large part of my role involves ensuring that Fair Supply’s leadership team is equipped and supported to lead and aggressively grow their business unit. To try and execute that function without direct and honest feedback would limit the speed at which my team could achieve those goals.”

This is where a 360 review (for the Founder or CEO) comes in handy: a structured process designed to illuminate strengths, spotlight areas for growth and provide a comprehensive view of an individual’s impact. It can be a game changer for bridging the feedback gap, ensuring continuous development and supporting the founder to steer the ship in the right direction by creating and maintaining alignment amongst their team.

“One of the main jobs of the CEO is creating alignment in the team," says Shane Brunette, Co-founder and CEO of CryptoTaxCalculator. "The 360 review adds a valuable new dimension to developing this alignment from a perspective you wouldn’t otherwise have."

We’ve designed this guide to cater to both founders interested in participating and those facilitating the 360 review. We’ve included a template to use as a starting point for getting the process underway, which can easily be iterated on to align with existing performance review frameworks, company values and culture.

How to implement a Founder 360

Step 1: Design the approach

Most founders don’t have a job description, making it hard to measure performance against a blank slate. But sharpening self-awareness around what they’re doing well and where there’s room for improvement becomes critical, especially when hierarchy starts to take shape and upward feedback dwindles to a mere trickle. 

360 reviews are a great tool for solving these challenges. If a startup already has a performance review process in place, a 360 exercise can build upon that with specific goals focused on closing the feedback gap for founders/CEOs. 

With that in mind, the goals of a 360 review are to:

• Expand awareness of performance and work style as a founder.
• Identify areas to maintain and opportunities for growth to establish a baseline for further development.
• Highlight recurring feedback and identify important themes and urgent action items.
• Explore how leadership style impacts the team and its ability to execute.

What is the assessment criteria?

If a startup already has a performance review process in place, a 360 exercise can build upon that.

Typically, the founder will be assessed against the following:

Who will participate?

Collecting feedback from a range of stakeholders provides a volume of insights where themes and commonalities will naturally surface for the facilitator to share back to the founder. 

Those stakeholders might include:

• Founder (self-assessment)
• Board members
• Executive leadership team
• Others (Co-founder, Executive Assistant, Chief of Staff, past reports)

Who will implement the approach?

360s can be a sensitive topic, so it's key to use an appropriate methodology and keep the information confidential. There are a range of options for how you can achieve this.

Option 1: Independent external facilitator

Pros:

✅Objectivity, expertise, confidentiality, fresh perspectives and efficiency.

An independent external facilitator brings objectivity and is free from internal biases or vested interests. Their expertise guarantees a thorough, best-practice process while maintaining confidentiality and encouraging honest feedback. They’ll also manage the entire process from survey design to feedback delivery, allowing internal teams to focus on core responsibilities. 

Cons:

❌Lack of organisation context, cost and limited relationship-building opportunities.‍

An external facilitator may lack a nuanced understanding of the company’s culture, limiting the contextual relevance of their insights. The cost can be prohibitive for smaller startups, and the absence of a pre-existing relationship with the founder and key stakeholders may affect rapport and the depth of their understanding developed during the process.

Option 2: A sub-committee of the board or a member of the board

Pros:

✅Independence, objectivity and strategic alignment.‍

Having a board member facilitate the 360 incorporates an independent perspective, ensuring an unbiased assessment aligned with the company’s strategic direction. The board’s oversight of long-term goals makes them well-positioned to evaluate the founder’s performance.

Cons:

❌Limited understanding of day-to-day operations and a potential conflict of interest.‍

Board members often lack day-to-day insights into the founder’s activities, which can lead to a surface-level understanding of performance issues. Additionally, if they have a personal or professional relationship with the founder, a conflict of interest may impact the integrity of the process and evaluation. 

Option 3: Company HR

Pros:

✅Organisation context, access, efficiency, relationships and rapport.‍

Involving the HR department leverages their deep understanding of the company’s culture and internal dynamics, enhancing the relevance of feedback. HR’s direct access to internal systems facilitates an efficient review process, and its existing relationships with executives can foster trust and open communication. 

‍Cons:

❌Bias risk, confidentiality concerns and limited expertise.‍

HR’s proximity to senior leadership might compromise objectivity and introduce bias into the process. Employees may doubt HR’s ability to maintain confidentiality, inhibiting honest feedback. Furthermore, the HR team may not have the specialised expertise required for executive assessments, potentially affecting the review's comprehensiveness and quality.

Step 2: Collect data and analyse the feedback

To set a 360 up for success, you need to give participants the tools to a) offer great feedback and b) receive great feedback, advises Lorena Healey, an Independent Consultant and Organisational Development Practitioner. 

“Giving feedback is all about constructive feedback that can be actioned and avoiding selecting a negative rating without providing explanation or commentary,” says Lorena. 

“Receiving feedback is all about helping participants find the themes in the feedback, avoiding identifying who said what and instead refocusing their attention on what people are trying to convey, whether they agree or not.”

The facilitator can draw out richer insights by gathering examples to further understand the impact of a person’s behaviour. Lorena suggests digging deeper in interviews to get more context on the examples provided, such as whether this is something that occurs frequently or was a once off, and what the impact is when that happens. 

“This sets the recipient up for success rather than leaving them scratching their head trying to understand what the feedback refers to or means,” says Lorena. 

Each facilitator will have their own approach and preferred methodology for data collection and feedback analysis. We’ve put together a V1 you can download based on experience and best practice we’ve seen in the market to give facilitators a starting point to iterate on.

Best practice principles to consider in data collection and analysis:

• Anonymity and confidentiality: Guaranteeing confidentiality fosters trust and increases the likelihood of obtaining valuable insights. 
• Candid and constructive: Encourage honest responses; this is the only way to help improve. Provide guidelines on how participants should provide feedback, emphasising the importance of being constructive, respectful and candid.
• Multiple data sources and methods: Collect feedback from a diverse range of stakeholders (e.g. board members, senior executives, peers and direct reports) using a range of methods (e.g. surveys, interviews, metrics) to ensure a comprehensive and well-rounded assessment of the founder’s performance. ‍
• Align to the company’s goals and internal practices: Build on the company’s existing performance markers and review processes and incorporate company values and culture.

Step 3: Playback the results

When it comes to sharing the results from a 360 review, setting the scene–simple things like enough time (so there’s no need to rush) and space (so there are no interruptions)–is crucial for a productive and constructive conversation. 

What’s paramount is the delivery of the feedback. Many founders, by nature, are high-performing chronic overachievers who can’t always hear the positive in what’s being said and can easily be derailed in these conversations. In these scenarios, a simple rule of thumb for a facilitator to follow is to focus 80% of the feedback on the person’s strengths to “buy” the individual space to work on their weaknesses and the things they may not be doing perfectly. 

“A powerful insight from the 360 was that your biggest strength is also your biggest weakness. Identifying where and how this plays out in the business was a great opportunity for growth and maximising where my particular style of leadership had a positive impact and addressing areas where it didn’t add value,” says Kim.

In advance of the discussion, the facilitator should aggregate the feedback to pull out key themes, strengths and areas for improvements, rather than reading responses verbatim. Winging it isn’t the right approach here and it pays to be thoughtful about the sequence of the conversation, how to frame it as a two-way discussion and creating space for self-reflection. 

The performance review should remain strictly confidential to the board and the founder, with copies of the review retained by the Chair/Board only.

Step 4: Next steps

You can’t treat the 360 review conversation as the end, when really it’s only the beginning of the process. The facilitator and founder should work together to create an action plan with dedicated check-in times for accountability. 

It’s tempting to try and solve all the things, but a better starting point is an eye-wateringly simple (no esoteric themes!) “Stop, Start, Continue” to productise the experience for the founder. From there, you can build in a few action items that are the most critical issues affecting performance and organisational success and make those the priority (tied to goals, KPIs or initiatives) for the next six months, or whatever time horizon makes the most sense. 

“The most important part here is to commit and decide on the very next step they will take to turn the commitment into tangible actions,” says Lorena. 

It’s a sentiment Shane shares. “I now have a better understanding of what is and isn’t working within the team. The 360 review highlighted opportunities to employ new techniques as the team scales.”

Schedule a regular check-in that’s distinguishable from other BAU meetings. Use this time to review milestones, assess outcomes and make adjustments as needed based on evolving circumstances or feedback. 

A 360 can impact more than just the founder; it can also catalyse broader changes across teams within the business.

“Since the review, the entire leadership team has operationalised a radical candour communication style whereby we prioritise thematic and candid communication with each other,” says Kim. 

As most startups have a vanilla feedback setup where it’s just between the manager and their direct report, there’s also an opportunity to embed and reinforce a 360 culture as the next step. It’s relatively easy to bring in peer feedback and this gives all team members the best shot at growth and development, ultimately driving the business forward.