360 feedback questions, with a downloadable guide
By Deibson Silva · Reviewed on
360 feedback questions describe behaviours the person answering has been able to observe, with one idea per question, a frequency scale and the option to say they have not seen it. Here are the criteria for wording them and a downloadable guide with 36 questions grouped by competency, three open ones and a checklist.
What makes a good 360 question?
That two people who have worked with the person being reviewed can answer it with the same thing in mind. For that it has to meet four conditions.
It describes a behaviour, something you can see or hear. 'Gives early warning when a deadline is at risk' has either been seen or it has not. 'Is responsible' depends on what each person takes responsible to mean.
It contains a single idea. 'Communicates clearly and listens to others' is two questions; whoever does one well and the other badly does not know what to mark.
It is about work. What the person does outside, what they think or what they are like stays out.
And whoever receives it can answer it. A colleague from another area does not know how a manager shares out work inside their team; the manager's direct reports do.
Which questions should you avoid?
Those that ask for a verdict on the person. 'Are they a good leader?' gets liking or disliking. Any question with 'is' followed by an adjective can usually be swapped for a behaviour.
Those that use words each person measures differently: 'enough', 'appropriate', 'proactive'. And double negatives, which have to be read twice to work out what marking 'almost never' means.
Those that touch on private life. In Spain, Article 4.2.e of the Workers' Statute recognises the right to respect for privacy and to due regard for dignity, and Article 2.1 of Act 15/2022 lists the grounds on which nobody may be discriminated against, among them age, sex, religion, beliefs or state of health. No 360 question should come near them. Other jurisdictions protect similar grounds.
And those that are surplus. Article 5 of the GDPR limits data to what the purpose needs. If a question will not serve the development conversation or any decision, it is not asked.
Which questions should you use for each competency?
The table gives one example per competency and says who can usually answer it. The downloadable guide brings four questions for each, 36 in all.
| Competency | Example question | Who can answer |
|---|---|---|
| Delivering results | Gives early warning when a deadline is at risk. | Manager, peers and direct reports |
| Quality of work | What they hand over can be used without correction. | Manager, peers and direct reports |
| Communication | Puts what was agreed in a meeting in writing. | Everyone |
| Collaboration | Shares the information others need for their work. | Everyone |
| Customer focus | Asks what the customer needs before proposing a solution. | Manager and peers |
| Organisation and priorities | Says no, or asks to postpone, when they cannot take something on. | Manager and peers |
| Problem solving | Gathers the facts before pointing to the cause of a problem. | Everyone |
| Learning and adapting | Admits mistakes and says what they learned from them. | Everyone |
| People leadership | Makes clear what they expect from each person in the team. | Manager and direct reports |
Which scale should you use?
A frequency scale of five points, with a label on each: almost never, seldom, sometimes, often, almost always. Frequency is answered by recalling situations. An agreement scale, of the 'strongly agree' kind, asks for an opinion and is closer to a vote.
Always add the option 'I have not observed this', and make sure it does not count. Without it, whoever has not seen the behaviour marks the middle point or the lowest, and the person's average falls because of something nobody saw.
Avoid ten-point scales. Nobody can tell a six from a seven in a behaviour, and the labels become impossible to write.
Who answers what?
Each group sees one part of the work. The manager sees results and priorities. Peers see day-to-day collaboration and communication. Direct reports are the only ones who can speak about how someone manages. And the person themselves answers everything, for comparison afterwards.
That is why not everyone receives the same questionnaire. The leadership questions go only to people with a team, and are answered by their team and their manager. Asking a peer to assess what they have not seen fills the result with answers at random.
The guide marks, question by question, which groups can usually answer. Adjust it to your company before launch.
How many questions, and how many open ones?
No more than thirty scored ones per person reviewed. That is five or six competencies with four or five questions each. Whoever has to assess six colleagues is grateful for every question you take out.
Choose the competencies by role. The 36 questions in the guide are a bank to pick from, and nobody should receive all of them.
Open ones, two or three. What they do well and should keep doing, what one thing they should start doing or do differently, and an example that explains the answers. Asking for a single thing to change forces a choice about what matters most.
What does data protection ask for?
That whoever answers cannot be identified by whoever receives the report. Answers from peers and direct reports are shown aggregated, and only when there is a minimum number of them.
Written comments are the weak point, because style gives people away. With few responses it is better to summarise the themes than to copy the sentences.
The person reviewed has the right to access their data. Article 15(4) of the GDPR specifies that the right to obtain a copy shall not adversely affect the rights of others, and those others include the people who answered.
And assessments of performance, personality and behaviour fall under the first criterion on the Spanish data protection authority's list of processing that may require an impact assessment. Check this before the first cycle.
How do you move the guide into a tool?
In four steps. Mark in the guide the competencies and the questions you are going to use. Decide the groups and the minimum number of responses for showing results. Trial the questionnaire with one team and ask what was not understood. And launch the cycle with the calibration and hand-back dates already set.
The trial with one team prevents the most common mistake: finding out, with the answers already collected, that a question could be read two ways.
Sources
- Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR), Articles 5 and 15 (EUR-Lex)
- Spanish Workers' Statute, Article 4.2.e (BOE-A-2015-11430, in Spanish)
- Spanish Act 15/2022 on equal treatment and non-discrimination, Article 2.1 (BOE-A-2022-11589, in Spanish)
- AEPD: list of types of processing that require a data protection impact assessment (Article 35(4), in Spanish)
Frequently asked questions
- How many questions should a 360 review have?
- Up to thirty scored ones and two or three open ones per person reviewed. If someone has to assess many colleagues, stay below that.
- Do the same questions work for every role?
- Some competencies are common, such as collaboration or delivering results. Others depend on the role, and the leadership ones only apply to people who manage a team.
- Can you add questions of your own?
- Yes, as long as they meet the same conditions: an observable behaviour, a single idea and something the person answering has been able to see.
- What if someone has not worked enough with the person?
- That is what the option 'I have not observed this' is for. And if they do not know the person at all, it is better that they take no part in that review.
- Are the open questions anonymous?
- They need more care than the scored ones, because the way someone writes identifies them. With few responses, the prudent course is to show a summary by theme.