What Is a 360-Degree Feedback Review and How It Works
Bradford R. GlaserTraditional performance reviews only capture a fraction of what's actually happening with an employee on a day-to-day basis. When a single manager takes care of all of the evaluations, it's pretty easy for important details to slip through the cracks. Most supervisors don't get to see how well their employees collaborate with the rest of the team, how they manage and mentor the team members underneath them, or what customers think about the quality of service they receive. Annual reviews like this usually zoom in on just one narrow perspective of someone's general performance at work, and it means you wind up missing plenty of valuable information about how that person actually operates in their role.
Plenty of businesses have turned to multi-source feedback as a way to address these challenges, and roughly 90% of Fortune 500 organizations already use some version of it. The basic idea is to collect input from a few different sources in your professional world (your manager, your peers, anyone who reports to you and in some cases even your customers) to build what's usually referred to as a 360-degree view. These groups work with you in a different capacity, and that means every one of them picks up on different parts of your performance. Research from the Society for Human Resource Management showed that organizations that use this type of feedback saw workforce performance jump by an average of 14.9% across the board!
Different working relationships show you something different about each employee. Peers are usually the best ones to comment on teamwork and collaboration because they work alongside one another every day. Direct reports can speak to leadership skills in ways that coworkers just can't. Customers are great at picking up on service skills and how they deal with pressure, and that's usually something that others inside the company only hear about second-hand. When you pull all these different views together, you wind up with a much fuller picture of how an employee is performing right now and what they'd be capable of doing later. Multi-source feedback does take a bit more effort to set up than a traditional performance review. But most businesses find that the added information makes it worthwhile when they actually care about growing their team members long-term.
Here's how 360-degree feedback works and why it matters for your entire team!
- Identify personal leadership styles
- Capitalize on style strengths
- Know how to minimize style trouble spots
Table of Contents
How Multi-Source Feedback Actually Works
Most businesses still take care of their performance reviews the same old way - as a one-way conversation. Your manager will pull you aside once or twice a year, share what they think about your work and then you move on. There's not much room for genuine dialogue, and there's definitely not much opportunity for you to share feedback in the other direction.
A 360-degree review works differently because it pulls feedback from a few sources instead of just one. Your supervisor will still review your performance, of course - that part hasn't changed. But you'll also get input from your peers, meaning colleagues who work at your level and see you in action every day. Some businesses will even go a step further and ask clients or customers for their feedback as well, especially if those clients work with you on a consistent basis.
Each group around you gets to see a different side of how you actually perform at work. Your manager is usually going to look at the big picture aspects - are you hitting your targets and staying in line with what the company is trying to accomplish? Peers at your same level are in the best position to tell you about aspects like cross-departmental collaboration, or if you're the type of person who helps out when a teammate gets stuck on a problem. And your direct reports, they already know if you're effective at coaching and growing their skills, or if the way you delegate tasks actually makes sense to follow through on.
Multi-rater feedback has plenty of research behind it, and the findings are positive time after time. When you collect input from a few different colleagues that work with you (instead of just your direct manager), the feedback tends to be a lot more accurate and well-rounded. A single manager only sees a fraction of what you do each week. But colleagues, direct reports and cross-functional team members all pick up on different parts of your work. It'll give you a much more accurate view of your actual performance.
Sometimes your boss isn't in the room when a crisis hits during a tight deadline. Your coworkers usually aren't around to see you guide a junior employee through a tough conversation with a client, and each working relationship tends to show different strengths and can also expose gaps in your skills that you didn't even know existed.
The whole point of this exercise is to give you a sense of which skills you've already got down and which ones still need some attention. When feedback is this specific, it's much easier to act on it in a helpful way - and also much harder to just brush off or rationalize away.
The Four Groups Who Give Feedback
A 360-degree feedback review pulls in input from four different groups of reviewers, and each group sees a different side of how that employee actually does their job. Supervisors are usually going to look at the higher-level performance areas when they sit down to write their feedback. They want to know if the employee can deliver on their goals and if they're capable of working through tough problems without needing help every step of the way. Most managers also want to review if their team members plan ahead well and take ownership of the work they're responsible for.
Coworkers are the ones who witness the small, day-to-day interactions that usually slip past a supervisor's radar. They can tell if this person communicates well with the rest of the team and if they're easy to work with on an everyday basis. Peer feedback can answer questions like this because coworkers experience it all firsthand. Peers are right there in the meetings, work together on projects and have the informal conversations that happen throughout the day.
Direct reports have a different view of their manager that most other colleagues in the company just don't get to see. They're the ones who have to live with their boss's management style day in and day out. They can tell if they get the support and resources that they need for their job. If a team functions well or struggles on a regular basis, then direct reports can tell you what's behind it.
Customer feedback gives you another important layer on top of the internal reviews. Customers get to experience your service quality firsthand, and they can see how long it takes to hear back when problems or questions come up. What your customers tell you fills in the missing pieces about how well an employee actually performs when they represent your business to the outside world.
Most businesses want at least three or four reviewers from each category. The reason for that number is anonymity - if you want honest feedback, you need enough answers that nobody can tell who said what. The best way to pick reviewers is to choose colleagues who work with the employee on a frequent basis and know them well enough to comment. If a colleague barely works with them throughout the year, they're not going to have much useful feedback to share. What usually happens is that the employee will put together their own list of reviewers first, and then the manager looks it over to make sure that there's a balanced set of different perspectives and work relationships.
Why Development Is Better Than Performance
The way you set up 360-degree feedback in your organization is going to affect the results you see from it. The most successful programs position feedback as a development tool (something that helps employees learn and grow over time), not as something that determines their next raise or promotion. This positioning changes how honest team members are willing to be when they share feedback about one another.
Feedback attached to compensation hardly ever gets you honest answers. When your comments about a colleague could affect their bonus or block their next promotion, employees tend to hold back. The criticism gets softened, the problems get glossed over, or the hard conversations just don't happen at all. Development-focused feedback changes this completely. Programs that are designed to help employees grow and improve their skills create an environment where team members feel comfortable being direct. The financial pressure disappears, and suddenly, the feedback gets a lot more constructive. Multiple studies are showing this pattern - systems that are built around professional development time and again produce more candid feedback, and the long-term benefits far exceed what you get from tying reviews to paychecks.
Some organizations combine their 360 reviews with annual performance reviews. But it tends to backfire, and the reason is pretty simple. Once the feedback gets linked to compensation or promotions, the whole dynamic changes. Everyone either starts to game the results or they become overly careful and only share safe, watered-down opinions.
The choice you make here is going to shape every part of your program. Your questions have to be focused on learning and development - not on judging or ranking employees. How you share the results matters just as much - it should show where they can improve and grow. But it shouldn't make them feel judged or criticized. Coaching conversations that happen after the review will be different as well if development is what you're actually after. At the end of a 360 review, everyone should leave with a few concrete areas to work on and to improve, not a score that's going to set their paycheck for the next year.
Start Your First 360-Degree Program
The smartest move when rolling out 360-degree feedback at your company is to start out small with a pilot group before going all-in. Your leadership makes a great test group, though volunteers from across the different departments can work just as well, and it does something that helps with adoption rates down the line - it lets everyone else in the organization watch their leaders go through the process first. When employees see that their managers and executives are willing to receive feedback from all directions (even from their own direct reports), it removes a lot of the anxiety and skepticism that tends to show up when you bring in a new feedback system. A smaller pilot group also buys you the time that you'll need to work through any problems with the process. Maybe some of the questions don't quite work the way you thought they would, or the way you share the results could use some tweaks - and you'll figure that out during this phase.
Before you get to any of this, make sure that you spend enough time on communication. Your entire group also needs training on how to actually give feedback that's going to be useful. Effective feedback should point to specific actions and behaviors and should never feel like a personal attack on someone's character. Those who receive it are also going to need some support after the fact. I'd recommend scheduling coaching sessions or one-on-one action planning meetings to help them work through everything that they just learned.
Most pilot programs will run for about 6 to 12 months before you're ready to roll them out across your entire company. What you mainly want to watch for during this time is whether your entire group actually trusts the system and whether they feel like the information they're receiving is actually useful and worth their time.
Run a More Effective Team
Feedback from multiple employees at different levels gives you a much better chance to grow and improve compared to a standard annual review. When your manager, your coworkers and those who report to you all point out the same behaviors or habits, it gets very hard to dismiss what they're saying or make excuses for it.
Self-awareness from this type of all-around input gives you something concrete to work with if you want to make genuine changes, and that's a big reason why organizations continue to put resources into these programs even when they take lots of extra coordination and planning to pull off successfully.
Your organization will have some big decisions to make once you're ready to bring this type of review system in. The first one usually is about what you want to get out of it - are you going to use this as a way to help employees grow and develop, or do you want to tie the feedback directly to performance ratings and pay? You'll also need to choose a technology platform that fits with your entire team size and budget, and then create a rollout plan that helps everyone feel comfortable with the new system (not nervous or worried about it). It'll shape how the members of your entire team feel about the feedback and what they actually do with it.
A multi-source review program takes more effort than a traditional manager-only evaluation system. You'll need better coordination across teams, more frequent communication with everyone involved, and you'll have to dedicate extra time to collect the feedback and to process what it means. Most organizations find that the extra work is worth it, though, because the feedback they get is usually deeper, more specific and far more helpful compared to what a single manager can give. Employees walk away with a much clearer picture of how their coworkers actually perceive them during day-to-day interactions. That level of self-awareness gives you a solid foundation for some meaningful development conversations that drive improvement.
For your first round, focus on development instead of evaluation - it works so much better. Self-assessment tools are a great addition to this type of feedback because they help you see your natural tendencies and blind spots at an even deeper level. The "What's My Leadership Style" assessment is a perfect example of this. This tool walks you through the four different leadership styles and helps you figure out where your preferences lie. After you finish it, the results will show your natural strengths and teach you how to adjust how you lead depending on who you're working with on your entire team!
