360° feedback questionnaire: Develop a relevant, focused and change-sensitive tool

The 360° feedback questionnaire makes the difference:

Develop a relevant, focused and change-sensitive instrument

360° feedback evaluation interviews are essential for the success of the method!

As a 360° feedback user, you first have to decide whether you want to use an existing and scientifically based 360° questionnaire or whether you prefer to develop your own questionnaire adapted to your corporate culture and strategy. For generic demands, e.g. for managers, it may be legitimate to use appropriate standard instruments. If possible, however, we are convinced that company-specific developments (or adjustments) are preferable.

In this article you will learn about what you should pay attention to when formulating items (statements) and how the design of the questionnaire (keyword: feedback triad) can generate a particularly large number of concrete and useful tips for the respective feedback recipients. We also point out that 360° feedback must be repeated regularly in order to achieve the desired positive effects. Both positive and negative developments should be presented over time in the context of processing the results.

According to Church, Fleenor, Bracken and Rose (Handbook of Strategic 360 Feedback, 2019), the following evidence-based recommendations for questionnaire development can be summarised

8 tips for developing a 360° feedback questionnaire

Relation to the job
The items of the questionnaire should have a strong relation to the concrete activities of the feedback recipients. It may be useful to develop several questionnaire variants for different target groups.
Comprehensibility
The items must be formulated clearly and comprehensibly. In practice, we often find statements that combine several behavioural aspects in one item, which complicates their answering.
Matching the corporate culture
The items should be formulated in the “language of the company”.
Observability
The items should relate to observable behaviour, because these are the examples where feedback recipients can change things most easily and quickly. The statements should therefore be formulated as specifically as possible and not generically.
Relevance
Items must be as closely related to work performance as possible so that their relevance is easily recognised by all those involved.
Internal consistency at dimension level
The questionnaire must have a suitable factor structure (with sufficient internal consistency within the dimensions). Only if this requirement is given, it is justified to combine individual questionnaire areas into so-called behavioural areas/dimensions.
Modifiability
The behaviour patterns described in the form of items should be influenceable and fundamentally changeable by the feedback recipients, because the goal of most 360° feedback is clearly personnel development.
Change sensitivity
Items must be formulated in such a way that changes in behaviour are actually measured when the 360° feedback is carried out a second time. This can be achieved, for example, by asking for assessments at shorter intervals or by explicitly asking for perceived changes.

The feedback triad

In order to obtain as many relevant and helpful tips as possible in the form of free text comments, we have developed a multi-step process, the so-called “feedback triad”, which has a highly positive influence on the acceptance of the result and the recipient’s motivation for change.

1. Quantify feedback:

In the first step, the feedback providers evaluate all items on the basis of the applied scale.

2. Prioritise feedback:

In the second step, the feedback providers are asked to mark exactly those behaviours that they consider to be of particular relevance. These can be both outstanding strengths and opportunities for improvement on the part of the recipient. Prioritisation makes it easier for the feedback recipient to recognise on which topics – from the point of view of the feedback providers – he or she should preferably work towards change.

3. Explain feedback:

In a third step, the feedback providers formulate concrete, free text suggestions for the selected priorities. The following example is an instruction to generate maximum helpful hints for the derivation of individual activities in the result report.

Exemplary instruction

“What is particularly important to you…” is what you specified on the previous page. Please take your time now and think of an answer to each of the following two questions.

What do you think John Doe should change in the future? This can be your desire for “more of it” or “less of it”. Be as specific as possible.
What positive effects would a corresponding change in behaviour have on you or on others?

Note: Your texts will be included unchanged in the results report.

Making changes visible

Repeated performance of the 360° feedback is important because people need regular feedback. There are different opinions about the “right” length of time between sessions. Recently, there has been an increasing number of approaches proposing very high frequency surveys in response to the demands of the “VUCA working world” (Volatility | Uncertainty | Complexity | Ambiguity). In Crews & Captains we call these feedback modes Ongoing Feedback, Always-on Feedback or Feedback Loops. In this article, however, we will deal with traditional 360° feedback, which is rarely repeated more often than every two years.

Changes in this time window must be visualized accordingly in the result preparation. We use the form of visualization shown below. The white dots represent the values of the 360° feedback of the previous survey, the colored filled in dots symbolize values of the current survey. Improvements are marked with green arrows, deteriorations with red arrows.