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

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.