Most leaders who’ve gone through a 360-degree feedback assessment remember the experience one of two ways: either it was one of the most clarifying moments of their professional life, or it was a mildly uncomfortable exercise that produced feedback nobody quite knew what to do with. The difference between those two outcomes almost never comes down to the quality of the feedback. It comes down to what happened after.
Jeff Spaletta is a Phoenix-based leadership development coach with deep expertise in human capital strategy, executive coaching, and organizational growth. His coaching methodology combines evidence-based assessments, reflective practice, and personalized development planning to help leaders at every level close the gap between who they are and who their organizations need them to be. For leaders navigating complexity, building stronger teams, or stepping into new roles, Jeff brings structure and clarity to the development process.
What a 360 Actually Measures
A 360-degree feedback assessment collects input from the full circle of people a leader works with — direct feedback, peers, managers, and sometimes external stakeholders. The goal is simple in theory and genuinely difficult in practice: to show a leader how their behavior lands with the people around them, not just how it feels from the inside.
That gap is where most of the valuable information lives. Leaders tend to have a reasonably accurate picture of their technical skills. What they consistently underestimate is the impact of their communication style, their presence under stress, and the subtle ways their behavior either builds or erodes trust over time. A well-constructed 360 surfaces all of that — patterns that colleagues have often noticed for years but never had a formal channel to share.
Done right, it reveals a leader’s reputation as distinct from their self-image. And for many leaders, that distinction is the most useful thing they’ve encountered in their entire career.
What a 360 Doesn’t Tell You
Here’s what the feedback won’t do: it won’t tell you why the patterns exist, what’s driving them, or what to do about them. A 360 is a diagnostic, not a prescription. It identifies the gap. It doesn’t close it.
Jeff Spaletta is direct about this with every leader he works with. Low scores on “listens actively” or “communicates clear expectations” is a starting point, not an answer. The data tells you what people experience. It doesn’t tell you whether that’s a skill deficit, a blind spot, a stress response, or a habit so ingrained the leader doesn’t realize it’s happening. Without that deeper understanding, even the most comprehensive feedback feedback tends to sit in a drawer.
There’s also a risk of over-indexing on the numbers. Leaders who fixate on their lowest scores sometimes miss the more nuanced story the data is telling. Reading a 360 well is itself a skill, and most leaders don’t have the training to do it alone.
Why Coaching Is What Makes the Difference
The organizations that get genuine, lasting value from 360 assessments are the ones that pair them with structured coaching. Not a debrief call. Not a one-page summary of themes. Actual, ongoing coaching that uses the feedback as a foundation and builds a development plan around it.
Jeff Spaletta’s approach treats the 360 as the beginning of a conversation, not the conclusion of a process. What did the data reveal? What patterns are worth addressing first? What does the leader want to be different six months from now, and what specific behaviors need to shift to get there? Those questions require time, honesty, and a coach who knows how to ask them well.
Feedback without follow-through produces awareness without change. And awareness, while necessary, is not the same thing as growth.
Getting More Out of the Process
If you’ve been through a 360 and walked away feeling like it didn’t quite land, the issue probably wasn’t the feedback. It was the absence of what should have come next. The most valuable thing a leader can do with a 360-degree assessment is treat it as an invitation — to get honest about blind spots, to understand how they’re actually experienced by the people they lead, and to build a concrete plan for doing something about it.
That’s the work Jeff Spaletta does with leaders every day. And it starts with being willing to look clearly at the gap between how you see yourself and how the people around you do.
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