A widely used tool for 360-degree feedback can encourage unethical leadership

While 360-feedback tools claim scientific credibility and are widely used in leadership development, the expectations they convey to aspiring leaders may foster unethical leadership. Suze Wilson, Nancy Harding, Jackie Ford, and Hugh Lee analyse a widely used tool for 360-degree feedback that claims to measure transformational leadership, a model advocating that leaders can and should transform their followers to achieve outstanding results. They find that the tool encourages leaders to regard themselves as superior to others and to undermine followers’ moral autonomy to choose what kind of person they want to be—implying paternalism by leaders at best and domination at worst.