Your Scores Were Low. Now What?

The short version

Low scores do not mean you are a bad leader. They mean your team is telling you something specific that you can work on. The leaders who improve the most are not the ones who scored highest. They are the ones who treated the feedback as information, not judgment. This article is about how to do that.

The fixed mindset trap

Carol Dweck's research at Stanford, published in her book Mindset, draws a line between two ways of thinking about ability. A fixed mindset treats talent and skill as things you either have or you don't. A growth mindset treats them as things you can develop.

The distinction matters here because of what happens the moment you see a low score. A fixed mindset says: "This means I'm not a good leader." A growth mindset says: "This tells me where I need to get better." Same data, completely different outcomes.

Dweck's research shows that people with a growth mindset respond to negative feedback by increasing effort and changing strategy. People with a fixed mindset respond by avoiding the area where they received criticism, or by discounting the source. One response leads to improvement. The other leads to stagnation dressed up as self-protection.

What low scores actually mean

A low trust score

A trust score below 3.5 means a meaningful portion of your team does not feel confident that you have their back. That is hard to read. But trust is not a personality trait. It is the result of repeated behaviors, and every one of those behaviors is something you can change starting tomorrow.

A negative NTS

A Net Talent Score below 0 means your Sceptics outnumber your Ambassadors. Before you spiral, remember that this is one moment in time, not a permanent label. And because the feedback includes Start, Stop, and Continue responses, you know specifically what is driving the score.

Large gaps in your dimensions

If you rated yourself significantly higher than your team rated you on one or more dimensions, you have a blind spot. This is the most common finding in 360 reviews. Organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich's research found that 95% of people think they are self-aware, but only 10-15% actually are. A blind spot is not a character flaw. It is your team giving you information you could not get any other way. For a detailed guide to reading each metric, see our article "How to Interpret Your Scores."

What not to do

I have done all of these. I list them here so you do not have to make the same mistakes.

Don't explain it away

"They don't understand the pressure I'm under" or "that person has always had it out for me" are ways of making the feedback about someone else's problem. If five people independently tell you something is not working, it is not a misunderstanding. It is a pattern.

Don't try to fix everything at once

The natural response to a bad report is to overhaul everything. New communication style, new meeting cadence, new open-door policy, all announced on Monday morning. This almost never works. It overwhelms your team and it overwhelms you. Pick one thing. Work on it for 30 days. Then pick the next one.

Don't go silent

The worst thing you can do after getting low scores is pretend the 360 never happened. Your team knows you received the results. If you say nothing, they will assume one of two things: either you do not care, or you are angry. Neither builds trust.

What to do instead

Sit with it for 24 hours

Read the report. Close it. Do not make any decisions, send any messages, or have any conversations about it for a full day. Your first reaction will be emotional. Your second reaction, after the initial sting fades, will be more useful.

Find the signal in the noise

Look for where the data converges. If your trust score is low and your gap analysis shows a blind spot on Openness and your Start feedback says "share the reasoning behind decisions," that is not three separate problems. It is one problem described from three angles. That convergence is your starting point.

Use the 90-day plan

Your Summary tab includes a 90-day action plan that breaks your growth areas into twelve weekly tasks. I designed this because I know from personal experience that good intentions without structure lead nowhere. Each week has one small, specific thing to do. You check it off. You write a short reflection. And over three months, those small actions compound into visible change.

Tell your team

You do not need to share your scores. Just tell your team what you are going to work on. "I read the feedback. Thank you for being honest. Here is the one thing I am going to focus on." This does two things: it creates accountability for you, and it proves to your team that honesty leads to action. That is how trust gets rebuilt.

Tell one person outside your team

Find someone you trust outside your team, a peer, a mentor, a coach, and tell them what you learned. Not to vent. To create accountability. Dweck's research shows that people who frame challenges as learning opportunities and share that framing with others are significantly more likely to follow through. Saying "I'm working on being more open with my team about how decisions get made" out loud makes it real in a way that thinking it does not.

Six months from now

I have seen leaders go from a negative NTS to a strong positive in under a year. One leader I know had a trust score of 2.8 and an NTS of -20. Her team's feedback converged on one theme: they never understood the reasoning behind her decisions. She focused on that single behavior for 90 days, explaining the why before every major call. Six months later her trust score was 4.5 and her NTS was +35. She did not become a different person. She did one thing differently and stuck with it.

The leaders who turn low scores around are not the ones with the most natural talent. They are the ones who decided the feedback was worth acting on.

Your 360 report is not a judgment. It is the most honest snapshot you will ever get of how your leadership lands. Treating it as a starting point rather than a verdict is itself a growth mindset decision. And it is the first one that matters.

References

1. Dweck, C.S. (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Random House.
2. Eurich, T. (2018). "What Self-Awareness Really Is (and How to Cultivate It)." Harvard Business Review.