Top 360 Feedback Questions to Enhance Your Reviews

Unlike traditional employee performance reviews which just share manager feedback, 360-degree reviews incorporate anonymous feedback from an individual’s coworkers, direct reports, and senior leaders. But, to collect helpful feedback — and gain actionable information for your employees and valuable insights for your company — you must begin by asking the right questions.

Here’s a detailed look at what makes a good question for a 360 feedback survey, how to write your own survey questions, and best practices for designing and formatting surveys. We also share examples of the types of questions you should be asking, discuss how to analyze survey feedback, and offer tips on acting on feedback, post-survey.

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What is 360 feedback?

As its name suggests, ‍360-degree feedback is commentary that comes from every angle, including from colleagues, managers, and even customers. While 360 feedback can be part of a company’s continuous feedback model, it is often collected during 360-degree performance reviews.

360 feedback has a dual purpose: to provide a balanced view of employee performance and to support the personal and professional development of the recipient. 

What are 360-degree reviews?

360-degree performance reviews aim to provide a comprehensive assessment of an employee’s job performance and specific competencies to evaluate success while also identifying strengths and weaknesses. By leveraging feedback from many sources, 360 reviews can provide well-rounded commentary and help uncover blind spots limiting employees’ growth.

With honest commentary from peers, managers, direct reports, and more, 360 feedback helps employees discover how their performance and mannerisms are perceived — knowledge that can foster improved self-awareness, lead to better teamwork, and aid professional development.

Feedback from colleagues also helps foster a culture of teamwork, trust, transparency, and accountability. Receiving thoughtful, honest feedback from colleagues can strengthen peer relationships, and employees are more likely to take their coworkers’ comments seriously the more they trust them — a reciprocal action of feedback and trust that ultimately leads to deeper professional relationships and supports culture across the team. 

Of course, to get the most out of a 360-degree feedback review, you need to ask good questions. “Questions that are framed properly will lead to better clarity. The questions need to be crafted in a very specific way that elicits valuable feedback,” said Julie Lamothe-Jensen, founder and principal at Moxie HR Strategies, an HR consulting firm. 

‍What makes a good 360-degree review question?

To provide both qualitative data and quantitative insights into an employee’s performance, most companies use a mix of two types of questions: open- and closed-ended. 

Open-Ended Questions

Open-ended questions can’t be answered with a “yes” or “no” response. Instead, they require the respondent to answer the question in their own words, which can allow for more thorough feedback but may also take respondents longer to complete.

Open-ended questions are effective at providing qualitative feedback and are often used to evaluate soft skills like adaptability, critical thinking, and communication skills.

Closed-Ended Questions

Closed-ended questions are answered by selecting from a set of predetermined responses. One common way of structuring closed-ended questions is with a rating scale like the Likert scale, which has respondents indicate their level of agreement on a given statement by selecting from a list of five responses ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.”

Closed-ended questions provide quantitative feedback that can help measure employee performance and improvement over time, especially with hard skills like coding or copywriting.

Soliciting Feedback

Regardless of what form your questions take, they should all be intentional and aim to solicit constructive feedback and actionable insights from raters. Remember, overly general or all-positive feedback won’t do much good for employees. Rather, you want them to hear detailed comments on how they can improve their performance.

“A good 360-degree review question helps the person receiving feedback know what action to take,” explained Megan Leasher, PhD, director and strategic talent leader at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. “For example, each question’s answer should specify whether the respondent wants the [employee being reviewed] to stop, start, maintain, or replace a behavior. This feedback is critical to providing prescriptive guidance so the [employee being reviewed] knows exactly how to take action.”

Framing ‍Questions

To craft neutral and unbiased questions, avoid leading questions that direct respondents toward a specific answer. Rather, phrase queries to allow reviewers’ true perceptions to surface. 

Use simple, jargon-free language so all 360 feedback participants clearly understand the questions, regardless of their role or background. Additionally, read and revise the questions periodically to ensure they remain relevant and effective in representing organizational goals and team dynamics. This approach helps capture accurate and meaningful feedback, fostering a more authentic and valuable response collection.

Considerations for Non-Performance Attributes

It’s not just hitting performance metrics like KPIs or OKRs that make an employee successful. Behaviors and interpersonal skills are key non-performance attributes that support an employee’s success, often by indicating an individual’s ability to contribute to a team or organization’s culture. 

In your next questionnaire, include questions that assess soft skills like communication, teamwork, conflict resolution, and adaptability — all crucial for collaborative work environments and thriving workplace cultures. The responses to these questions will allow HR to gauge the strength of an employee’s non-performance attributes while helping the reviewee identify key areas for personal and professional development.

Developing Comprehensive Questionnaires

Keep your questionnaires long enough to collect actionable feedback, but short enough that your raters don’t abandon the survey before completion.

According to Elise Cangemi, operations specialist at media buying agency Good Apple, “Managers should ask reviewers to complete between seven and 10 questions per review. Any fewer and you won’t get enough feedback on the employee, and any more you start to see the quality of responses slip.”

For help crafting your own 360-degree review questionnaire, start with the following questions.

10 Closed-Ended 360-Degree Feedback Questions

It helps to have a balance of quantifiable data for performance insight and qualitative responses for additional context. Closed-ended questions work best for gathering quantifiable data.

Using the following options from the Likert scale — “strongly disagree,” “disagree,” “neutral,” “agree,” and “strongly agree” — have your respondents indicate their level of agreement or disagreement with any of the following statements:

1. This employee prioritizes their workload effectively and meets deadlines.
2. This person communicates clearly and effectively with me and other colleagues.
3. This person exhibits strong leadership skills.
4. This employee has strong interpersonal skills and helps everyone feel welcome on the team.
5. This team member strongly embodies our company values.
6. This person is always timely and efficient at providing feedback.
7. This employee prioritizes teamwork above all else.
8. This person finds creative solutions and takes initiative when problem-solving.
9. This employee is always open to receiving both negative and positive feedback.
10. This person values diverse perspectives, even if they are different from their own.

10 Open-Ended 360-Degree Feedback Questions

To elicit the qualitative information you’ll want to gather, it’s important to include a number of questions that touch on an employee’s strengths, as well as their areas for improvement. This can help managers ensure that each 360-degree review shares a balance of positive and constructive feedback. It can also help your employees be more receptive to the results.

Here are ten open-ended 360-degree review questions you can use for your feedback questionnaire:

1. What would you say are this person’s strengths?
2. What is one thing this employee should start doing?
3. What is one thing this employee should continue doing?
4. What is one thing this employee should stop doing?
5. How well does this person manage their time and workload?
6. Share an example of a company value this person has brought to life.
7. What are three or four words you would use to describe this employee?
8. If you were this leader, what would be the first action you would take?
9. How well does this individual adapt to changing priorities?
10. What’s an area you’d like to see this employee improve?

Strategic Placement of Open-Ended Questions for Detailed Insights

Position open-ended questions after closed-ended questions to allow respondents to add color and context to their previous answers. Consider including a brief line of instruction that encourages reviewers to use the open-ended questions to clarify particularly high or low ratings from the prior section. 

5 Core Competency 360-Degree Feedback Questions

360-degree performance appraisals should also include questions that aim to evaluate how well employees are delivering on add-on and core competencies.

Add-on competencies are role-specific behaviors and actions that are required for success in a given position. For example, software engineers should be detail-oriented and have well-developed logical reasoning skills. Executives must be strong in strategic planning, while sales team members need people skills. You’ll want to include questions that assess these job competencies, yet they’ll be tightly tailored to the role, which makes providing example questions challenging.

Core competencies are the skills and qualities that all employees need to succeed in their roles, like communication skills, the ability to prioritize to meet deadlines, and project management.

Here are five sample questions that can be used to measure performance in core competencies:

1. How often does this employee meet deadlines?
2. What three hard skills is this employee most successful with?
3. How effectively does this individual communicate progress on team goals and projects?
4. What skills could help this person become better at decision-making?
5. How well does this employee manage multiple projects?

How to Write 360-Degree Feedback Questions

Once you’ve determined the right types of questions to include in your survey, it’s time to craft the questions themselves. To do so, first determine your goals. Then, write specific, intentional questions in line with those goals.

Determine your goals.

When writing your 360-degree feedback survey questions, keep your goal in mind. If you’re using a 360-degree review to evaluate employee performance, opt for a universal set of questions that apply to every employee at a specific job level or managerial role, so you can accurately rate employees, establish a performance benchmark, and compare competencies and skills.

On the other hand, if you’re using a 360-degree feedback process mainly for employee development, you have the freedom to cater questions to each individual. For example, you might include questions on leadership, communication, and strategy for employees in leadership roles, whereas you might focus more on time management, collaboration, and technical skills for individual contributors since they aren’t responsible for leading a team.

Write specific, intentional questions.

You can tailor questions toward a specific employee’s well-known strengths, weaknesses, and core competencies, but try to include other questions so you and your employee can both gain a comprehensive view of their performance. This way, their peers and other respondents can help identify growth opportunities that might not have surfaced before.

Remember, every question should be specific, clear, and intentional. You need to ask respondents to explain how or why they feel a certain way to collect more effective feedback for your team members.

Best Practices for Survey Design to Enhance User Experience

Keep the following best practices in mind to create an effective survey that’s optimized for users: 

• Use a logical flow. Group similar topics together and sequence questions in a way that feels natural for respondents to answer. Doing so ensures a smoother and more intuitive user experience.
• Include instructions and definitions. Provide clear instructions and be sure to define any technical terms or less familiar concepts. This helps respondents understand how to answer effectively and reduces confusion.
• Optimize for mobile devices. Ensure the survey is accessible and easy to complete on various devices, including smartphones and tablets. Mobile-friendly surveys will support participation rates and help you get responses from as many people as possible.

How to Analyze and Use Feedback

Once you’ve selected your survey questions, designed the survey layout, and sent off requests for feedback, it’s time to analyze the feedback results. Be sure to:

• Use mixed methods for analysis. Combine quantitative analysis for closed-ended questions with qualitative analysis for open-ended responses. This approach provides a comprehensive understanding of the feedback, capturing both numerical data and detailed, qualitative insights.
• Look for patterns and themes. Identify similarities across different feedback sources to pinpoint an employee’s strengths and weaknesses. Recognizing these patterns helps in developing targeted strategies for personal and professional growth. 
• Consider feedback from multiple stakeholders. Employee performance should be considered holistically. Feedback from direct reports, managers, and peers should all factor into your analysis. This approach ensures a more well-rounded understanding of performance and helps combat bias.

You’ll also want to implement strategies to ensure employees are addressing feedback. In addition to formal mid-year and annual reviews, train managers on how to identify and measure progress at informal touch points throughout the year. 

Feedback Follow-Up Best Practices

With any feedback request in the workplace, it’s what happens after surveys are proctored that often matters more. When employees see that feedback is being addressed and acted on, they’re more likely to participate authentically in future requests for their perspective.

To encourage all team members to continue bringing their fully engaged selves to their 360 reviews, help your employees act on the feedback they received with a clear plan for action.

Steps to Take Post-Feedback

Before sharing results with the employee, review all feedback for consistency and clarity. Then, schedule a feedback session with each employee to discuss the results and implications in a constructive manner. During this session, facilitate a discussion to help the employee understand and accept the feedback, emphasizing growth and opportunities rather than focusing on failures or shortcomings. This approach encourages a positive and productive dialogue, fostering an environment conducive to development and improvement.

Set Development Goals and Track Progress

Partner with the employee to set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals based on areas that need improvement. Next, develop an action plan that includes learning resources, training sessions, and possibly mentoring to support the employee’s development. Additionally, establish regular check-ins to monitor progress, adjust goals as necessary, and provide ongoing support and motivation. This structured approach ensures continuous development and helps the employee stay on track toward achieving their goals.

Technology and 360-Degree Feedback

If you’re gathering 360-degree insights, leveraging technology streamlines the process, making it easier to collect, store, and analyze the feedback. Using a platform also reduces errors. Since the platform automates everything from requesting feedback to aggregating data, it reduces the need for manual data entry and minimizes human error. As an added plus, automation also ensures that feedback is collected in a timely and organized manner.

Technology helps protect employee anonymity and confidentiality — essentials for obtaining honest and useful feedback. When participants feel assured of confidentiality, they’re encouraged to provide more candid and constructive feedback, improving the overall quality of the insights gathered.

Lattice Performance offers extensive customization options, allowing organizations to tailor questionnaires to suit different roles, competencies, and feedback goals. This flexibility ensures that the feedback collected is relevant and specific to each individual’s performance and development needs.

What’s more, employee performance platforms enable real-time feedback and offer powerful analytics capabilities. Platforms like Lattice provide immediate insights and the ability to track changes and improvements over time, creating an ongoing feedback loop that enables employees and managers to address issues promptly and regularly monitor progress.

Lattice’s mobile-friendly interface is designed to boost participation rates by allowing employees to complete feedback when and where they like. This accessibility ensures that more employees can engage in the feedback process, leading to a more comprehensive and representative set of data.

Develop effective 360-degree feedback questionnaires with Lattice.

One of the biggest benefits of 360-degree reviews is that they enable managers and human resources teams to share more balanced, comprehensive, and constructive feedback with their employees. These reviews, when used as part of your broader performance management cycle, can provide a more holistic picture of performance and help your business identify and develop your organization’s future leaders.

Start taking a more holistic approach to employee performance and give individuals a better understanding of how their work is valued. By incorporating the questions provided here into your 360-degree review process, you will be set up to conduct an efficient and successful review that delivers valuable information and insights for employees, managers, and your organization.

Check out our 360 performance review template for more sample questions you can use for peer, direct report, and manager reviews, as well as self-evaluations. And for even more support with your performance management processes, book a Lattice product demo today.