What is 360-degree feedback?

Asking for 360-degree feedback means asking several different people for feedback. These can be colleagues or your manager, but also external people such as customers or suppliers. Asking for 360-degree feedback matters because it gives you targeted input from a range of perspectives that you can use to develop yourself.

How does 360-degree feedback work?

The easiest approach is to draw up a questionnaire or feedback form with questions about your development. A 360-degree feedback form or questionnaire like this is very simple to create and send through the Treams online feedback tool. The tool lets you ask internal and external people for 360-degree feedback with ease. Need help formulating those questions? We have put together a number of example questions to give you a sense of what 360-degree feedback looks like. Working with a 360-degree feedback form for the first time can of course feel daunting. You may even be used only to 180-degree feedback, which involves just you and your manager. Curious what 360-degree feedback is, what example answers look like or what it means? Then you are in the right place. Read on to learn more about 360-degree feedback and a dedicated 360 feedback tool.

When do you ask for this feedback?

To make asking for 360-degree feedback a success, you have to decide as an organisation what the purpose of feedback is and when it will be used. You could choose to ask for it at fixed moments, for example after finishing a project or at the end of the year ahead of the performance appraisal. Organisations are doing the latter more and more often. After all, who knows better how you are performing than the people you are working with at that moment? That means moving away from the 180-degree feedback questionnaire, form or method.

How do you ask for feedback through a tool, and what is 360-degree feedback used for?

Asking for 360-degree feedback is nothing new. Organisations have been asking for feedback for years, but it used to be done on an offline form. Today it is far easier to draw up a 360-degree questionnaire and send it through an online feedback tool. One click sends the form to a range of people, and all the feedback from those different perspectives is collected in one place. The application works on mobile and desktop devices and for people inside and outside your organisation. A tool like Treams also helps you ask the right feedback questions through a range of example questions. Use the Treams feedback tool as the basis for your 360 feedback form and you are guaranteed interesting insights.

Tips for introducing 360-degree feedback

There are of course various feedback forms and ways to implement the Treams 360 feedback tool. Here are a few tips for getting to know the 360-degree feedback tool and the 360-degree method as a whole.

Make giving feedback easy People are generally open to giving each other feedback. So it is important to make the whole process of asking for and giving 360-degree feedback as easy as possible. A mobile feedback app or desktop application works well for this, letting you send a feedback form or give feedback at any time of day, from wherever you are. Start by asking for feedback Giving feedback is daunting, because we would rather do everything right. The fear of feedback can be removed very easily by focusing on asking for feedback rather than giving it. Help people ask the right question Asking for feedback is nerve-racking, because it is about you. That makes it hard to ask the right questions. Help your people with it. Explain when to ask for feedback, that they can ask questions starting with how, what, why, where, who or when, and tell them it is always good to open a conversation. Treams helps you ask the right question with more than 100 example questions.

Example feedback questions to ask

Asking for 360-degree feedback is not always easy. To give you a hand, here are some examples of questions you could ask.

Do you feel you can share all your ideas and thoughts with me? Why, or why not? Do you feel my goals contribute to the company's goals and strategy? Why, or why not? Why is my work important to the organisation, its goals and its strategy? What did you think was best about [event X / presentation Y]? Do I give you enough safety to disagree with me? Why, or why not?

Want more example questions for 360-degree feedback? Download our example feedback questionnaire. Or you can get started right away with the Treams feedback tool.