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Take a Wise 360 Decision for Your Organization

A single wise decision can take your organization to great heights. You can always make sure that your business grows and prospers. You can introduce some concepts and methods in your organization that are effective professional, dynamic and most importantly well-organized. There are many tools and instruments that can be employed to make sure that your business grows significantly.

Wise 360 Decision for Your Organization

Talking about one such tool called 360 performance appraisals, there are amazing benefits attached to it.  It can significantly impact leadership, teams, and even the entire organization immediately. When an organization takes a decision to launch a 360 degree feedback program for the foremost time, some leaders are unwilling to take part. Great leaders might have a bias towards action, and in case you want something that can form results starting by the time you end up reading this piece of write up; nothing could be more tried and true than employing 360 degree feedback in your organization. It would definitely get you a vision and insight and you would get to know a lot more about your organization and the employees working therein.

It is not necessary to tell that 360 degree feedback surveys will benefit leadership, teams, and the whole organization right away. It does so by providing a safe, intimate, and reliable way for colleagues to cater feedback.  With the help of this tool, a business can gain valuable insight into present day leadership, teams, and entire health of the organization. This feedback surveys caters the heads and leaders with robust knowledge and feedback into what is working and what is not really.  Once you use the data provided by this instrument correctly, you can swiftly take action, by helping staff members improve and become better contributors and leaders in the company. Of course, once you work on the weaknesses, they turn out to be strengths.

Ah, it is unfortunate that even today, when an organization takes a decision to launch a 360 degree feedback program, there is that bunch of individuals who is reluctant to participate. They say that they have heard it all:  and further keep their point like why do they need feedback? Can’t they just ask others instead of taking a complete survey” these people simply say they know what they are doing and they don’t want to know what others have to say.  It is equally true that such are not bad responses, but they are not wonderful either. The reality is that the future is feedback. Gone are the days where working as per   gut instinct and good feelings are satisfactory. And while employee insights aren’t perfect pointers of the truth of the matter, they are one of the most valued bits of feedback a staff member or leader can get.

But fetching honest feedback about performance is difficult. As employees move up in the organization, frank feedback about their performance or leadership style actually gets down. Many people are often afraid of displeasing individuals in leadership positions and might give less than candid feedback on the performance when asked face to face. The point is that when the name of the person giving the feedback is open and known; feedbacks get painted.  But when the names of the feedback givers are not known, everybody gives a fair feedback.

Remember a 360 degree feedback program offers others a chance to give heads, leader’s accurate and helpful feedback in a proper, constructive and confidential manner. In a 360 feedback program, the leader and a bunch of other raters give answer to specific questions about the performance of the employee. These raters are picked from those with whom an employee or head of the department or leader works day-to-day and characteristically encompass supervisors, direct reports, customers and peers. In this way, there remains proper procedure of feedback beyond partiality or fear. If you carry out the program of 360 degree feedback: properly, you can real excellent benefits like:

Self-awareness

Self-awareness simply means understanding your personality, encompassing your strengths, beliefs, weaknesses, motivations, thoughts, and even emotions. And self-awareness is mainly vital when talking about leadership. If you carry out this program on your leaders or department heads; it would reap you even deeper benefits. Leading people needs a careful balance of competing primacies. Various leaders having good intentions might make mistakes because they make continuing improvements in the wrong direction.

Everybody thinks they have a great handle on how other individuals see them. But there has been research that shows people usually score themselves lower than their manager and their proper reports score them. Don’t you feel it would be great to know individuals think higher of you than you think of yourself?  It would certainly give a person more confidence.

Get to know about behaviors

When you carry out a feedback program, you get to know what type of behavior a person has and what is expected from him.  The feedbacks would allow the individuals to know if the tasks they are performing are actually the way they should have been performed. What their behavior is or how it can be changed.  Once there is feedback, one can know which type of behavior is required and how they are performing.  Now if a person asks you what behaviors went into forming a great leader, would you be in a position to write down even ten behaviors off the top of your head?  Well, when these behaviors are asked in a feedback system, a lot of behaviors come to picture.

 Dialogues

Dialogue is the foremost step in moving from measurement to enhancement. Self-awareness, explained behavior, and process feedback blend to provide a natural chance for dialogue. In an ideal manner such a dialogue starts with a warm discussion between the program administrator and the surveyed leader wherein strengths are highlighted and weaknesses are discovered.  The point is once there is a dialogue, there begins a procedure of improvement.

Thus, you can try out this program of 360 and you would definitely relish the outcomes it has to offer.  Whether you are a SME or a huge multinational organization, these feedbacks are absolutely effective and productive.

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SCHOOL CLIMATE—THE POSSIBLE REASON FOR EDUCATIONAL STRESS OF AIDED SCHOOL STUDENTS OF KERALA

JENY RAPHEAL

school climate

             The National School Climate Center (NSCC) (1996) defines school climate as the quality and character of school life. School climate constitutes patterns of students’, parents ‘and school personnel’s experience of school life and reflects norms, goals, values, interpersonal relationships, teaching and learning practices, and organizational structures. Schools differ in their climate and this climate has definite role in determining the well-being and happiness of students. When we notice considerable difference in the educational stress levels of students studying in government, aided and public schools there is enough reason to trace for its causes in the school climate of those schools.

     A survey was made in two Aided, two Government and two Private schools of Thrissur district in Kerala state. 261 higher secondary school students participated in the survey.

Aided Aleemul islam higher Secondary school, 43
Chaldean Syrian Higher secondary School, 56
Private Nirmalamatha Central School CBSE, 41
Sandeepany Vidhya Niketan ICSE, 21
Government Anchery Govt Higher Secondary School, 48
Government Model Boy’s School, 52

            Contrary to the usual norm prevailing among parents and teachers, private school students exhibited comparatively lower levels of stress than their counterparts in Aided and Government Schools. Aided school students had highest level of stress.

            The survey which conducted during September-October 2017 probed five dimensions of educational stress namely   pressure from study, workload factor, worry about grades, self-expectation and despondency. The standardized tool used for the study was a five point Likert scale developed by a group of educational researchers presided by Jiandong Sun in 2011. Before the survey it was translated into Malayalam and all statistical procedures for asserting validity and reliability were duly performed.

The mean value of stress level was “above average” for the entire sample of students participated in the study. Graphical representation of school wise comparison are given below

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Why this difference?

             School climate or culture will have a serious role in the educational stress of adolescents. Research findings back this perspective. At the same time socio-economic status of parents is another major factor affecting the educational stress of students. For example, there are studies showing academic anxiety is significantly low among students whose parents have higher educational qualification. Also academic stress and examination anxiety of students usually exhibit an inverse relationship with educational and income levels of their parents. Findings of researches going on in many parts of India keep on reiterating this claim.

Socio-economic status of parents is more or less same

             In Kerala, private schools are where students from high socio economic status flock. In search of better avenues for excellence both in life and education the creamy layer of society opt for CBSE or ICSE syllabus for their wards. At the same time, lately, there is a trend for this group to shift into Kerala syllabus thanks to the differences in the criteria with which the grades scored by students following two syllabuses—Kerala and Central— are estimated at the time of admission for various courses for higher studies. Due to this, affluent parents too are willing to send their wards to aided schools provided; these schools maintain a reputation for their pass percentage. For this reason, one may consider that the socio economic back ground of students studying in aided and private schools are more or less same.

            So there is enough reason to assume that increased stress levels noticed in the students of aided educational institutions is not exclusively due to socio-economic status and related individual differences. It might be due to some peculiarities constituting the very culture or clime of those schools.

School climate can be the reason

 

            School climate has the potential to permeate into overall well-being of the students. For a student, school climate enters into his psychological makeup through teacher-student interactions, peer interactions, class room experiences, parent-teacher communications etc. All these interactions will be laden with the ethos for which school stands for. Educational vision/mission of the institution determines the very texture of all experiences students meet within the school. So difference in educational stress can be a difference in the educational attitude schools foster.

            An in-depth enquiry into the matter will uncover the facts. Educational ministry of Kerala which is hell-bent on raising the standard of educational institutions cannot avoid this angle of exploration. Educational stress among students can jeopardize any well crafted educational policy.

            In all the five indicators of educational stress, aided school scored highest which included pressure from study and worry of grades. The competition among schools to secure 100% pass in board exams and teachers pressurizing the students to meet this end is one of the salient features of working culture of teaching professionals of schools of Kerala. So whenever dealing with student educational stress the role of school climate in it must be probed into.

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