Designing a 360 feedback questionnaire isn’t a tick-box exercise; it’s a crucial step in ensuring your process drives real development. A well-crafted questionnaire helps individuals understand how their behaviours align with organisational expectations and provides clear, actionable insight to support development.
In short, a good 360 feedback questionnaire is clear, aligned with organisational goals, and structured to generate useful feedback. In this article, we explore six must-dos of effective 360 questionnaire design.
A well-designed 360 questionnaire starts with a clear purpose tied to a strategic outcome, such as developing leaders, embedding values or strengthening performance culture. The strategic purpose should then be translated into the cultural and behavioural expectations that will drive success, with these forming the backbone of the questionnaire.
For more on aligning your 360 feedback questionnaire, see our article Aligning 360 Degree Feedback with Organisational Goals.
You don’t have to start from scratch. Use a proven set of questions, such as those in the Lumus360 library or our purpose-built surveys (in this Resources section) as a reliable starting point, which you can then adapt to fit your organisational context.
A great 360 question is clear, focused and directly linked to behaviours that matter for success. Each question should:
Group the questionnaire into three or four core competency areas, each with around 10 questions. This results in approximately 40–50 questions, which is an ideal length for a 360 feedback questionnaire.
Clustering questions provides context for respondents as they complete the survey, showing how each behaviour links to a broader area. It also makes the feedback clearer, more meaningful and easier to interpretate and act on.
Add three to four open-text comment boxes across the questionnaire (e.g., after each competency) so respondents can expand on their ratings. Benefits include:
Include a final summary comment box for big-picture advice; these often surface the most valuable themes.
Before launch, ask a small group of typical respondents, and a few senior leaders to review the questionnaire. The aim is to:
Q. What makes a good 360 feedback question?
A. A good 360 feedback question focuses on a single, observable behaviour, uses clear and neutral wording, aligns with key organisational competencies, and is framed positively. It should link directly to behaviours respondents are likely to have seen, producing feedback that is both relevant and actionable.
Q. How do you design a 360 feedback questionnaire?
A. Design starts with a clear purpose tied to organisational goals. Build on proven question sets, focus each question, group them into core competency areas, include comment boxes for context, and test for face validity to ensure clarity, relevance, and alignment with strategic objectives.
