Structured feedback from the people who see a leader’s behaviour day to day, gathered from managers, peers, direct reports and internal customers. Designed so the outcome is a development plan someone acts on, not a report that gets read once and filed.
Most 360 processes collect good data and then stop. The report arrives, the individual reads it once, and nothing in their working week changes. The difference sits in three places: how the questions are framed, whether the results are interpreted with the person rather than handed to them, and whether anything follows up ninety days later. Feedback only has value at the point it turns into a decision about behaviour.
Agree what the feedback is for, whether that is one leader stepping into a bigger role, a cohort moving into management, or a full leadership team. The purpose determines the questions, so it comes before any questionnaire is chosen.
Identify raters across manager, peer, direct report and internal customer groups, with enough people in each group to protect anonymity. Invitations explain why the exercise is running, which improves both completion rates and candour.
Responses are gathered confidentially and read for pattern rather than headline score. The useful signal is usually in the gaps, where self rating and rater rating diverge, or where one group sees something the others do not.
A structured one to one conversation that works through the findings with the individual and ends in a written plan. Where a cohort has been assessed, themes can be reported to the organisation without exposing any individual’s results.
360 feedback touches four components of the Chrysalis Talent Management Maturity Framework: Performance Management, Learning and Development, Talent Development and Team Competency. Run in isolation it produces a report. Run as part of a mapped talent management approach it produces evidence for succession decisions, development spend and promotion readiness. Organisations already working through the Maturity Assessment usually find 360 feedback answers the Team Competency questions the assessment raises.
Results presented by rater group and by theme, showing where self perception and the views of others align, and where they diverge.
A structured conversation that interprets the findings with the individual, rather than handing over a document and leaving them to read it alone.
Named actions with owners and dates, drawn from the feedback and agreed during the debrief rather than assigned afterwards.
Where a group has been assessed, patterns across the cohort are reported to the organisation without exposing any individual’s results.
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A structured process that gathers feedback on an individual’s behaviour at work from several perspectives at once, typically their line manager, peers, direct reports and internal customers, alongside their own self assessment. The value comes from comparing those views rather than from any single score.
[TO CONFIRM WITH VERITY: the minimum number of raters per group. Standard practice is a minimum of three per group to protect anonymity, but this has not been confirmed and must not go live as written.]
Responses from peers, direct reports and internal customers are aggregated so that no individual comment or score can be traced back to the person who gave it. Line manager feedback is usually identifiable by the nature of the group size, and raters are told this before they respond.
[TO CONFIRM WITH VERITY: is this a licensed instrument, or a bespoke questionnaire built around the Empowered Leadership Framework? This is the question HR buyers ask first, and the page is materially weaker without an answer.]
[TO CONFIRM WITH VERITY: typical elapsed time from design through to debrief.]
It can, but it works considerably better when it is not. Feedback given for development invites honesty. Feedback that feeds a rating or a pay decision invites raters to manage the outcome, and the quality of the data falls accordingly. Where both are needed, running them as separate exercises protects each of them.
Verity is a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD with more than twenty five years in HR, across Tesco, Nissan, TUI, Camelot, BRE, Lundbeck and the IET.
A short conversation establishes what the feedback is for and whether a 360 is the right instrument for it. Where it is not, that is worth knowing before anyone is invited to respond.
