360 feedback questions ask the people around someone, their manager, peers, direct reports and the person themselves, what it's like to work with them. A rating scale and “great to work with” tell that person nothing they can act on. Under every question below is the follow-up Spoke asks to get to the last time it happened.
Peers rely on her calm under pressure; direct reports want the feedback she saves for review time, sooner.
An example of the line the Agent Results Brief leads with.Under every question is the follow-up Spoke asks when the first answer is vague. That second question is where the real answer usually is.
How does [name] explain a decision or a plan to you?
Think of the last one they explained. What did you still have questions about afterward?
What happens when you bring [name] a problem?
What did they do with the last problem you brought them?
How does [name] listen when you're the one talking?
What's something you told them recently that they acted on?
How well do you know where [name]'s work stands at any point?
Think of their current piece of work. What do you know about where it stands right now?
What happens when someone pushes back on one of [name]'s ideas?
What happened the last time you pushed back on one?
What does [name] bring to a piece of work you do together?
Think of the last piece of work you shared. What did they do that you'd want again?
How does [name] respond when someone needs help?
What happened the last time you asked them for help?
What, if anything, does [name] do that makes working together harder?
What happened the last time that got in the way?
How does [name] talk about other people's contributions?
Think of the last thing that went well. How did they describe who did what?
What have you seen in how [name] works with people outside their own team?
What did the last of those cross-team moments look like?
How does [name] set direction for the people around them?
How would you describe what they're aiming for this quarter, in your own words?
How does [name] make decisions that affect you?
Think of the last one. How did you find out about it?
What does [name] do when things go wrong?
What happened the last time something they were leading slipped?
How does [name] help the people around them grow?
What's something you learned because of them?
How much do people trust [name] to say what's really going on?
When did they last tell you something that was hard to hear?
How does [name]'s work hold up once it's out of their hands?
What's the last thing they delivered that you relied on?
How does [name] handle deadlines?
What happened the last time one was at risk?
What is the quality of [name]'s work like, in the parts you see?
What's one piece of their work from the last few months that stands out, for better or worse?
How does [name] decide what to work on first?
What did they put aside recently to make room for something else?
Where, if anywhere, does [name]'s work tend to slow down?
What was the last thing of theirs that took longer than expected?
What would make [name] more effective in the next year?
What's the smallest change that would show up in your day-to-day?
Which one habit of [name]'s would you change if you could?
What happened the last time it came up?
Where has [name] grown since you started working together?
What did they do differently the last time compared with the first time?
What role would you like to see [name] play that they aren't playing now?
What's in the way of them doing some of it now?
What does [name] do better than most people you've worked with?
When did that last make a difference to your work?
Which of [name]'s habits would you protect if the team were reorganized?
What would you lose if they stopped?
What would be harder for you if [name] changed teams?
What's the first thing you'd have to cover yourself?
What have you learned from watching [name] work?
What did you copy from them?
Every person gets interviewed, not surveyed. Spoke asks, listens, and follows up on what that person actually said. Here's an example.
Read the answer, not the transcripts: themes ranked by how many people raised them, the quotes behind each, and the places where two groups disagree.
Everyone who works with her sees the same strength: she stays calm when something breaks, and people bring her problems because of it. Direct reports and peers disagree about how she handles work that gets dropped. Peers see her picking it up; her reports see the interesting work going to her instead of them. The one thing to change first: her reports hear what she thinks of their work at review time, not during it.
An example Agent Results Brief. The counts, themes and quotes are illustrative, not from a real survey.
A 360 built from rating scales gives the person a chart. A 360 built from open questions gives them “great to work with,” which is kind and useless. Spoke asks one more question about the last time it happened. One example per rater; examples, not real people.
“Great to work with” means one thing here: he plans for failure before it happens. That's a strength the person can name and keep.
Supportive means pleasant, not developing. The rating would have been a four out of five, and she would never have learned this.
Reliable, and quiet about risk until it's late. The thing to change is not the work, it's when he raises the flag.
Self and manager agree on the fact and not the timing; that's the coaching conversation.
A 360 works because nobody sees the whole person. The manager sees the outcomes; peers see the collaboration; direct reports see the leadership; the person sees their intent. Send each rater the groups they can answer from what they saw, not the whole list.
| Rater | What they can see | Questions to send them |
|---|---|---|
| Manager | Outcomes, deadlines, how the work holds up, how they handle pressure from above | Delivery, Leadership, Growth, Strengths to keep |
| Peers | Day-to-day collaboration, handoffs, credit, what they're like in the middle of a project | Collaboration, Communication, Strengths to keep |
| Direct reports | How they set direction, make decisions, give feedback, and behave when things go wrong | Leadership, Communication, Growth |
| Self | Their own intent, and how they think it lands | The same groups as their raters, so the two views can be laid side by side |
Customers or partners can be a fifth rater for people who work outside the company; send them the collaboration and communication groups. The peer feedback and manager feedback pages go deeper on those two views.
One person can run this for one colleague in an afternoon. HR can run it for a whole cohort the same way, one survey per person.
Peers and direct reports answer differently when they think the person will know who said what. Here is what ScatterSpoke does, and what you should tell raters before they start.
On paid plans, you choose anonymous response collection for each survey. The person and their manager read what raters said, not who said it. A 360 is usually one survey per person, so you set it each time.
There's one manager, so their answers are theirs however the survey is set. The manager's view is usually treated as named and the peer and direct-report views as anonymous. Say which is which up front.
On the Free plan, raters verify their email before answering a classic survey, so answers are tied to them. Don't call a 360 anonymous just because nobody has to sign in.
Two direct reports can often tell whose answer is whose, hidden names or not. Say so honestly, and leave out questions that narrow it down, such as how long they've reported to the person.
Add topics to the survey's off-limits list, such as health, pay or a named third person, and Spoke steers away from them. Anything serious belongs with a person, not a survey.
More on neutral wording in biased and leading questions.
A four out of five on “communicates effectively” gives the person a number and no idea what to do differently on Monday.
A peer can't judge how someone leads their reports. Sending the whole list to everyone gets guesses in the middle of the scale.
A 360 that only asks what to improve produces a defensive reader. Ask what to keep first, and mean it.
“Great to work with” and “supportive” are where the useful answer starts. Ask about the last time.
What do you want to learn, and who's answering?
Drafted it. Four groups of raters, so should I send each group its own set, or one set with the questions that fit them?
Open questions about how someone communicates, collaborates, leads and delivers, asked of their manager, peers, direct reports and themselves: “What does [name] bring to a piece of work you do together?”, “How does [name] make decisions that affect you?”, “Which of [name]'s habits would you protect if the team were reorganized?” Each rater gets the groups they can answer from what they've seen.
One that a rater can answer with a moment they saw, not a trait they guess at. “How does [name] handle deadlines?” is good; “Is [name] reliable?” is a yes or no. The best ones carry a follow-up for a vague answer: “What happened the last time one was at risk?”
Usually for peers and direct reports, and rarely for the manager, since there's only one. In ScatterSpoke, anonymous responses are a setting you choose per survey on paid plans. Tell raters which views are anonymous before they start, and don't promise anonymity to a group of two.
Fewer than you think: about eight to twelve per rater, drawn from the groups that rater can see. In common practice the raters are the manager, three to five peers and three to five direct reports, plus the person themselves. With follow-ups, each question gets a specific answer, so the survey can be short; set a time budget of ten or fifteen minutes per rater.
Describe a moment you saw and what it made possible or cost, not the person's character, whoever they are to you. To a peer: “The rollback plan you wrote before the migration is why midnight was a list, not a panic.” To a manager: “Hearing on Friday afternoon that the deadline had moved cost the weekend; Wednesday would have changed the plan.” One thing to keep, one to change.
A performance review is one person's judgment, usually the manager's, tied to pay or promotion. A 360 collects how several people experience working with someone, and works best as development input, kept separate from pay decisions so raters answer honestly.
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