Two recent articles supported our own experience over the first 4 months of this year, which is that the use of 360 Degree Feedback is on the rise.

The first cited a recent CIPD survey, "War on Talent?..", which highlighted Leadership Skills as one of the most important skills in meeting business objectives in the coming years (81%).

Despite the fact that L & D budgets are being curtailed, we are still seeing a firm committment to Leadership Development Programmes, as organisations realise that they must allocate their training spend carefully and ensure that they nuture the talent that will navigate them out of the downturn.

A natural precursor to any leadership development is 360 Degree Feedback; it offers an excellent way to get anecdotal evidence of performance and behaviours both pre- and post-programme, and to assess any changes that may have happened as a consequence of the training.

Certainly an article on senior management development at Cable & Wireless in the latest 'Human Resources Magazine' makes reference to this; they use 360 Degree Feedback in combination with the training and various ongoing interventions such as coaching and one-to-ones.

With limited budgets and leadership top of the agenda, it becomes increasingly important to measure the success of any initiative, particularly one where the very future success of the organisation is at stake.

John