Forms · Glossary

What is 360 degree feedback?

360 degree feedback is a structured review in which one person is rated on the same set of behaviours by several groups who see their work from different angles: their manager, their peers, the people who report to them, and usually themselves. The ratings are combined into one report, with comments grouped by the kind of rater.

The value lies in the gaps between what a manager sees, what peers see and what the person believes about themselves. Those gaps only show up honestly when every rater trusts that their own answers will stay out of view.

Indunil Asanka · Co-founder

6 min read · Published 13 September 2026

Who rates in a 360 review, and what each group can and cannot see
Rater	Best placed to judge	Usually cannot see	How answers are reported
Self	Intentions, effort and the context behind decisions	How the behaviour lands on other people	By name, beside everyone else's averages
Manager	Results, priorities and judgement on the big calls	Day to day collaboration inside the team	Usually by name, because there is only one
Peers	Reliability, sharing credit, working across teams	Pressure coming from above	Averaged, and only when enough peers answer
Direct reports	Delegation, listening and how feedback is given	The wider demands of the role	Averaged, with a minimum group size
Internal clients or other teams	Responsiveness and whether commitments are kept	Work inside the person's own team	Averaged, or left out if too few respond

How a review cycle runs

A cycle starts with the behaviours rather than the raters. Somebody decides what good looks like in the role, writes it as observable behaviour, and keeps the list short: guidance from Qualtrics suggests no more than 8 to 10 competencies and 30 to 40 items in total. The person being reviewed, often with their manager, then nominates raters from each group, choosing people who have worked with them for six months or more so the observations have something to rest on. Everybody gets the same questions, including the person themselves. Once the answers are in, they are combined into a report that sets the self rating beside each group's view, and the report is talked through with a manager or a coach rather than simply emailed.

Development, not pay

The strongest advice in the field is also the most ignored. Qualtrics puts it bluntly: a 360 review should never be used to decide pay, performance ratings or promotion, because it is a development tool. The reason is behavioural. Once the ratings carry consequences, peers start managing the outcome, softening scores for friends and sharpening them for rivals, and the person being reviewed nominates allies. The data stops describing behaviour and starts describing relationships. Kept to development, the report can be read as information: here is where your view of yourself and other people's view of you diverge, and here is one thing to work on before the next cycle. If the organisation also needs a performance rating, run it through a separate process with its own evidence and keep the 360 report out of that file. Mixing the two even once teaches raters that the development promise was not real, and the next cycle's answers will show it.

Anonymity and the small group problem

A group of two direct reports is not anonymous, and a manager never is. Reports usually deal with this by showing a group's average only when enough people in it have answered, and by folding a small group into a wider one rather than printing it. Comments are harder, because a specific example or a turn of phrase can identify the writer even when the name is gone. The Australian privacy regulator describes information as identifying when a person is reasonably identifiable from it together with whatever else the reader already knows, and in a team of eight the reader knows a great deal. Tell raters before they start exactly what the person will see: averages or individual scores, comments verbatim or summarised.

Writing items that can be rated

Good 360 items describe something a colleague could actually watch happen. Listens properly before answering can be observed; is a strong communicator cannot, because it asks for a verdict rather than an observation. A frequency scale, how often do you see this, suits behaviour better than an agreement scale, and every item needs a way to say the rater has not seen it, otherwise people guess. Keep each item to one behaviour so a middling score means one thing. Group related items under a heading and ask them as a grid on one shared scale, which is faster for the rater and keeps the scale consistent. Two open questions at the end, what to keep doing and what to change, usually produce the most useful part of the report.

Building a 360 form

A conversational form suits raters who are doing a favour for a colleague: one question per screen, the relationship question first, then the behaviours as rating grids, then the open questions. A rating matrix is rows by columns with one answer per row, and in the CSV export it arrives as one column with each statement and answer joined, so plan to split it before charting. The stored response holds the answers, the time submitted and the version number, with no IP address, browser details or account attached, so anonymity depends on the questions. A rater who answers I manage them to the relationship question has identified themselves if the person has one manager, which is worth deciding on purpose rather than by accident.

Questions people ask

How many raters does a 360 review need?

Enough in each group that no single answer can be picked out of the average, which usually means several peers and several direct reports rather than one or two. Past a certain point extra raters add effort without adding insight, because the same themes repeat. A person with only two direct reports is better served by folding them into a wider group than by printing a group of two.

Should the person choose their own raters?

They should nominate, and somebody else should approve. Letting people pick freely tends to produce a list of friends, while choosing for them removes the sense of ownership that makes the report land. A common compromise is that the person proposes a list, the manager adds one or two names the person might have left out, and nobody is told who was added.

What if self ratings are much higher than everyone else's?

That gap is the most useful finding in the report, not a failure of the process. It usually means the person judges themselves on intentions while others judge them on what they see. The debrief should explore a specific item where the gap is widest, with examples from the comments, rather than argue about the average. A lower self rating than others give is just as worth discussing.

How often should a 360 review run?

Once a year is common, and more often rarely helps, because behaviour takes months to change and raters tire of long forms. Running the same items each cycle lets the person see movement on the thing they chose to work on. If the items change between cycles, the comparison with last year's report no longer holds, so settle the behaviours before the first round.

Who should see the full report?

The person reviewed, and whoever runs the debrief with them. Sharing the full report more widely, including with the manager when the review is meant for development, changes how raters answer the next time. If a summary goes further, agree its contents with the person first and say so in the invitation, so raters know the audience before they write anything.

Should comments be edited before the person sees them?

Edit only to remove details that identify a rater or remarks that are abusive, and tell raters in advance that this will happen. Rewriting comments to soften them removes the signal the review exists to collect. Grouping comments by theme rather than by rater group is another way to protect writers in small groups without changing what they actually said.

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Sources

Written and checked by the OneCraft team. Last checked 13 September 2026.