360 Guide 3 – Examples of 360 degree feedback surveys that work

How to design a 360 for impact The idea of “designing a 360 survey” might seem easy but, as you start to think about it, you might soon feel overwhelmed and uncertain.  What rating scale do you use?  What do you need to tell all the respondents?  What about asking for open text comments?  What else do you need to include? There are so many things to consider!  Well, it is not surprising as, in our experience, there are over 100 separate decisions to make about a 360 and that’s before you start writing the…

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How to design a 360 for impact

The idea of “designing a 360 survey” might seem easy but, as you start to think about it, you might soon feel overwhelmed and uncertain.  What rating scale do you use?  What do you need to tell all the respondents?  What about asking for open text comments?  What else do you need to include? There are so many things to consider!  Well, it is not surprising as, in our experience, there are over 100 separate decisions to make about a 360 and that’s before you start writing the questions themselves!

There are many dilemmas in 360. You might want it to be a short survey but you may want it to be a robust assessment.  You might want to use plain language everyone will understand but you also want to impress your senior leaders.  You may want to give your reviewers privacy and confidentiality so they feel comfortable speaking up but you also want your leaders to know where the feedback is coming from.  These issues are not easy to resolve so the Ti guide shows you some examples so you can make some informed choices and you are not starting from scratch.

The Ti approach to 360 assumes you are designing your survey to enable some behavioural change – at an individual, team and/or organisational level. Taking the fundamentals of good psychometric design and combining it with professional Organisation Development (OD) practice, allows us to guide the design for a result that really works.  The 13 steps you need to take are as follows: