Learn how you can get rich feedback as well as what to expect in your report and next steps.

The feedback process is a key feature of the 360° assessment. To get rich feedback, you will complete a self-assessment and also nominate a broad range of stakeholders to get a solid understanding about your strengths and development areas.

Process for participants completing a 360° assessment

Process 360 assessment

Completing your nomination form

Guidelines for nominating respondents

When nominating people for a category (except for ‘Manager’), you need to choose at least 3 individuals. If there are too few respondents in a category they will be allocated to a different group to preserve respondent anonymity.

There is no maximum number of respondents you can include, but bear in mind that too many nominees in a category may dilute your feedback. We recommend no more than 8-10 nominated respondents for a single category.

If you are new to a role, we recommend waiting 3-6 months before requesting 360° feedback. This ensures those giving feedback have had adequate opportunity to observe your leadership in action. If this is not possible and your current role is similar to your previous role you could consider asking for feedback from people who interacted with you in your previous role.

Relationship categories

Not all assessments will include all of these relationship categories, refer to the relationship categories listed on the form for your assessment.

Manager – the person you directly report to.

Note: If you work in a matrix style arrangement we recommend you select as ‘Manager’ the one individual who has primary responsibility for oversight and evaluation of your performance and development. This ensures feedback from that individual is clearly distinguishable in your 360° report. Your other matrix-type managers would be classified into the ‘Other Stakeholder’ category.

If your preference is to have feedback from your matrix-type managers combined in your 360 report then you can classify all such eligible individuals into the ‘Manager’ category. The choice is up to you.

Direct Report – the people who report directly to you.

Peers – the people you work with who report to the same manager as you and who are usually at the same or a similar level to you in the organisation. The best feedback for your development is likely to be from individuals who you work alongside with regularly and therefore have seen you in a wide range of work situations.

Project Team – individuals you work with on an initiative or project. 

Stakeholder – the people you work with in a professional context outside of your team. This may include people you work closely with from other government agencies, senior managers in your organisation that you interact with, suppliers, clients or other eligible individuals who are in a good position to comment on your management and leadership skills. This category of respondents is optional and may only be suitable for some roles.

Nominating respondents

Before adding people as respondents, we suggest you send a quick email to confirm they are available to complete the 20-minute survey for you. We have suggested text below you can copy and paste into an email:

Kia ora [insert name here]
I am participating in a 360° survey and would like to nominate you as a respondent. I would value your feedback on my leadership skills and capabilities. The information from my 360° report will feed into my development planning. Please let me know if you would prefer not to participate.

If you are happy to provide feedback then you will receive an email from the Leadership Development Centre outlining how to complete the 360° survey online. It will take approximately 20 minutes to complete.

Thanks in anticipation.

It is important to let your evaluators know they should expect an email with a link to the survey from LDC so they don’t disregard or accidentally delete it.

Report security

For those that would like an added layer of protection for their report we can arrange for it to be password protected. Please mention this when you submit your form and we will make sure this is set up.


As part of the feedback process for 360° assessments you must be debriefed by someone who is accredited in the use of our assessment tools. This might be a coach or a suitably accredited support person from your agency.

If you do not have someone in place to debrief you then you may want to contact the human resources (HR) team in your agency and ask whether there is an accredited person available to do this.

We also maintain a list of accredited debriefers, email 360@ldc.govt.nz for a copy of this list. Commissioning an external debriefer or coach to provide a debrief on your 360° report will incur additional charges that you will have to negotiate directly with the debriefer.


Once all your respondents have provided feedback, your personalised report will be generated. Ideally, this report will be used as a basis for 1:1 coaching between you and an accredited coach, from within your agency or from across the sector.

The first step in the coaching process is to review your report with your accredited debriefer. This session is confidential, and your coach will not divulge information from the coaching sessions to any other party without your approval.

You will then have time to reflect on the feedback you have received. During this process, you are encouraged to complete the self-reflection questions and to review the final section of the report that has tips on creating a development plan.

Once you have considered options in light of your development goals you might meet again with your coach. Regardless of whether you have an ongoing coaching relationship you should also meet with your manager and discuss a way forward. It's important they are involved as they have a large part to play in supporting your development.

You can view selected pages from an example 360° report below.
Example 360° report [PDF, 271 KB]

Confidentiality of your report

Typically, your digital PDF report is sent directly to your debriefer or coach. In some cases your report will be sent to an administrator who will send it on to your debriefer or coach.

At your feedback session, your debriefer or coach will provide you with a copy of your report (in some cases they may choose to share a copy of the report with you before the debrief). Once you have a copy of your report it is up to you to choose who else you share it with. The Leadership Development Centre and your debriefer will not share your report with anyone else without your express permission.

Only your self-assessment and your manager's responses will be explicitly identified in your 360° report. All other responses will be aggregated by respondent group for reporting.

Aggregated information from assessment reports may be used for agency and system-level analysis, however no individual is identifiable in this process. Anonymised and aggregated data may also be used to help define future leadership development.


If you have any questions email 360@ldc.govt.nz