Guide to running a Leadership Effectiveness 360 with your organisation
Running a Leadership Effectiveness 360 is a powerful way to understand your leaders' strengths and uncover opportunities for ongoing development. It’ll also give you insight into leadership capability across your organisation.
But it's not just about sending out a survey. There are things you need to do before, during and after the survey runs to ensure your leaders are properly supported and get the most out of the process.
This guide will walk you through some of the key tasks we recommend completing at each stage.
Before the survey runs
✅ Explain the process to participants and leaders
It's normal for leaders to feel anxious about participating in a 360. Being transparent about the process and the intent behind it can help with this.
We recommend reinforcing the following in your communication:
Your results are confidential. They should only be viewed by yourself (the leader) and the person you have your 1 to 1 session with. If anyone else from the organisation wants to see your results, like a manager, they need your permission.
Your 360 is about your own personal leadership journey. It's not a performance measure. The process is designed to help you identify your strengths and uncover opportunities to develop your skill set even further. Remember, the world's top leaders still undertake 360's or attend leadership coaching. There's always something to learn!
For participants, communication requirements are simpler. Make sure they're aware they might be called upon to give feedback. Let them know this will be done by survey and (with exception of Managers) their answers can't be linked back to them.
It’s also a good idea to give participants some tips on how to provide useful feedback. This can be done in the survey invitation email or welcome page.
✅ Confirm who will provide feedback for each leader
You need to confirm who will participate in each leader's 360 survey. We recommend ten or more participants per leader, where possible.
They should be people who:
have worked closely with the leader for at least three months
will provide honest and perhaps 'difficult to hear' feedback so that leaders can identify areas for improvement
are demographically diverse (e.g. consider the length of service, gender, seniority and whether they're internal or external to the organisation).
✅ Secure appropriate resource to deliver feedback
You must prioritise leader wellbeing throughout the 360 process. If a leader is particularly anxious, this may be due to negative past experiences where feedback has been poorly communicated.
As feedback from a 360 can be confronting, it's essential that an experienced professional, whether internal or external to your organisation, is selected to deliver feedback in a 1 to 1 session. This person must be able to discuss sensitive topics with respect and empathy. We recommend securing this resource early, so it’s available when you need it.
✅ Set up and schedule your leadership 360 survey
You need to log into AskYourTeam and set up your leadership survey! You can choose to gather aggregated feedback or feedback from specific groups of people: Manager, Peer, Direct Report, Other. If you have a small participant pool for a leader (like 3 or 4 participants), you may prefer to gather feedback as a single aggregated group.
While the survey is running
✅ Monitor participation rates
There must be a minimum number of responses to view results, so it’s important to monitor participation as the survey runs. If a leader hasn’t received enough responses, you might need to send an email reminder to participants or extend the end date of the survey.
You can use Participant Tracking and filter by leader to check how many participants have completed the survey.
✅ Book in 1 to 1 sessions with each leader
Get 1 to 1 sessions booked in your leaders' diaries. These sessions are guided by the experienced professional that you’ve resourced to support the process. They will discuss the leader’s results with them and any insights revealed in the feedback.
We recommend booking in these sessions well in advance of the survey closing. This means you can establish a timeline that can be shared with leaders. If they know when and who the session is with, they will feel more confident and empowered.
After the survey closes
✅ Select who can view reports
Our Leadership Effectiveness 360 survey has an added security setting that means only the person who created the survey can provide others access to view reports. We call this setting report viewer permissions.
The survey creator will give the person taking the leader(s) through their results access to the system. This gives them the option to either use the system or download a report for use in the 1 to 1 session. If you want to use your own leadership framework, we recommend exporting and editing the report to suit your needs.
✅ Complete 1 to 1 session with each leader
Each leader has their 1 to 1 session. This session may happen in person or remotely via tools like Teams or Zoom.
Each session covers:
the reports and what each one shows
free-text responses
what development opportunities might be suitable, like coaching or internal training programmes.
They usually run between 1.5 to 2 hours.
Allow time for leaders to process after the session. There is often lots to celebrate in a 360, but some feedback may be unexpected or confronting. Some leaders might want to take time after a session to consider and process what’s been discussed.
✅ Give leaders access to their results
After their session, give each leader access to their results.
You can:
email them a report (this is usually done by the Survey Administrator), or
give them access to AskYourTeam using report viewer permissions.
Leaders’ results are confidential. They should not be shared with anyone else without their permission.
✅ Plan for the next Leadership Effectiveness 360
It's important to re-run the survey to track each leader's journey and leadership capability across your organisation. This should be done at least every 12 months, but no sooner than 9 months after the last.
When you re-run the survey, your leaders can compare their past scores to their new ones using Compare feature in the left menu.