50+ 360 feedback questions that surface useful answers

The problem with most 360 question lists is that they were written for software, not for the people who'll answer them. The questions get evaluated by how cleanly they fit into a five-point scale across an org of five thousand people — not by whether the answers will tell you anything you don't already know. The result is a familiar disappointment: feedback comes back, the rating averages are vaguely positive, the open-ended fields say "great communicator, could improve delegation," and you close the report knowing nothing you didn't know before. This list is the opposite. Fifty-three questions, sorted by who you're asking, calibrated for one purpose: surfacing the specific things people see about you that you can't see about yourself.

Why most 360 question lists produce useless answers

Three failure modes show up in almost every generic 360 questionnaire, and they're worth naming because they're the things this list is designed to avoid.

They ask about traits, not behaviors. "How would you rate this manager's leadership skills?" is a trait question. There's no honest answer to it, because the truthful answer is "it depends — leadership of what, when, under what pressure?" The respondent picks a number on the way to abandoning the question. "In the last quarter, when did you see this manager handle a tough call well, and what specifically worked?" is a behavioral question. It forces a moment, and moments contain information — a point Korn Ferry's work on 360 design has made repeatedly across two decades of leadership-assessment research.

They average across a quarter, a year, a tenure. A question like "is this person a good communicator?" asks the respondent to compress hundreds of interactions into one rating. The interesting parts of the year — the meetings that went sideways, the email that landed badly, the moment of unexpected clarity — get smoothed flat. Specific time anchors ("in the last three months," "in our last project together," "in Tuesday's review") prevent the smoothing.

They ask about you, not about the gap between how you see yourself and how others see you. This is the actual point of 360 feedback, and most question lists ignore it. The signal isn't what others think of you in isolation; it's where their answers diverge from your own self-assessment. Questions that don't have a self-assessment counterpart aren't really 360 questions — they're peer-survey questions wearing a 360 label.

What makes a 360 question worth asking — the three-filter test

Before adding any question to a 360 round, run it through three filters. If it fails any of them, drop it.

Filter 1: Behavior, not trait. Can the respondent answer this by pointing to something you actually did, said, or didn't do? "Are you a good listener?" fails — there's no specific moment to point at. "When did I last interrupt you in a meeting?" passes. The behavioral version is harder to write and harder to answer, which is why most question banks dodge it. That's exactly why it works.

Filter 2: Specific, not pattern. Does the question force a particular moment, or does it invite a generalization? "Am I decisive?" invites a generalization ("yes, mostly"). "Walk me through a decision I made in the last quarter that you'd have made differently" forces a story. Stories contain detail. Generalizations contain almost nothing.

Filter 3: Useful if answered honestly. Imagine the respondent answers this question with maximum candor. Would the answer change something — a behavior, a meeting structure, a delegation pattern, a self-assessment? If you can't picture an action coming out of the honest answer, the question is decoration. Drop it. You're not running a survey for the sake of running a survey; you're running it to find out what to do differently next quarter.

The questions below are written to pass all three filters. Some of them will feel uncomfortably specific to ask. That's the signal you're asking the right kind.

Fifty-three questions, sorted by who you're asking

Different relationships see different things. The same person who can tell you exactly what you do badly in 1:1s won't have a useful answer about how you show up in cross-functional meetings, because they aren't in those meetings. Ask the right block to the right people. Don't send all fifty-three to anyone — pick six to ten per relationship.

Questions for direct reports (15)

Direct reports see your decisions, communication, and delegation patterns up close. They're also the people most likely to soften their answers — not because they don't have the answers, but because they're calculating cost. The questions below are phrased to lower that cost where possible.

What's something I've done in the last quarter that made your work harder?
When did I last give you direction that you found unclear, and what would have made it clearer?
What's a decision I made that you would have made differently — walk me through your reasoning?
When did I last seem to ignore feedback you gave me, even if I didn't mean to?
What's something I do consistently that you've never told me directly affects you?
What's a meeting in the last three months that you wish I'd run differently?
When did I last take credit, consciously or not, for something you or someone else did?
What's a piece of your work I haven't acknowledged that I should have?
When have I delegated something to you and then quietly redone it, or rewritten it without telling you?
What's a topic I avoid in our 1:1s that you wish I'd actually engage with?
If you had to predict how I'd respond to bad news, what would you predict — and how often is that prediction right?
When did you last hold something back from me because of how you thought I'd react?
What's something I'm doing well that I shouldn't change, even if I'm tempted to?
What part of my job do you think I underestimate the difficulty of?
If I disappeared for a month, what would the team handle better than I expect, and what would fall apart faster than I expect?

Questions for peers (12)

Peers see you in shared meetings, cross-team projects, and the moments where you're not in charge. They notice patterns that direct reports don't have a clean line of sight on — how you handle disagreement with someone who isn't required to defer to you, how you behave when status is being negotiated rather than exercised.

What's a project we worked on together where I made your part harder, and how?
What's a strength of mine that I lean on so heavily I miss other angles?
When did I last say something in a meeting that landed worse than I think it did?
What's something I assume about my own role that doesn't match what you actually see me do?
Where do I add real value to the projects we share, and where do I just add process?
What's a habit of mine you've noticed that I probably haven't?
When did I last over-commit on a shared deliverable and leave you holding the bag?
What's a moment where you saw me at my best — and what was specifically working?
What's a moment where you saw me at my worst — what was underneath it, in your read?
If you were giving me one piece of unsolicited career advice right now, what would it be?
What's a recurring meeting we both attend that you think I dominate or underweight in?
What's something I do that other peers complain about but nobody tells me directly?

Questions for your boss / upward (10)

Your boss has visibility you don't — into how your work lands above their level, into how you compare to peers in your role, into the trajectory they're (or aren't) building for you. Most boss-feedback conversations stall because the questions are too generic for that visibility to come out. The ones below are designed to pull on it.

What's something you wish I did more of that I haven't picked up on from your hints?
What's something you wish I did less of that you've signalled without saying directly?
What's a recent decision of mine you would have made differently, and what's your read on my reasoning?
Where do I rank, in your honest view, against the median person in my role at this company?
What's a skill gap of mine you're working around without telling me?
What reputation do I have inside the company that I might not be aware of?
What's the work of mine that's most visible above your level, and how is it landing there?
When did I last surprise you, in a way I should remember — good or bad?
What's the next twelve to eighteen months of my growth supposed to look like, in your view? Am I on track for it?
If I were promoted tomorrow, what's the one thing you'd worry about?

Questions for cross-functional collaborators (8)

Cross-functional collaborators — counterparts in other teams, partner functions, anyone you work with regularly without sharing a manager — see how you behave when neither side has authority over the other. They notice the asks that feel expensive on their end and the moments when your team's reputation is being shaped from the outside.

When you and your team interact with mine, what do you brace for?
What does my team get right about working with you that other teams get wrong?
What's a request I make of you that I probably don't realize is more expensive on your end than it looks?
When did I last over-communicate with you, and when did I last under-communicate?
If you had a magic wand to change one thing about how I show up in our shared meetings, what would it be?
What's a piece of context about your team that I clearly don't have but should?
When did my team last fail you, and was the fix structural or specifically about me?
What's a project we've worked on where I made your job easier — what was specifically helpful?

Open-ended starters that work for anyone (8)

These are universal — they pass the three-filter test in almost any relationship, and they're useful when you want to leave room for the respondent to choose what matters most. Ask sparingly; they reward the respondent who's been waiting to say something specific, and they bore the respondent who hasn't.

What should I start doing?
What should I stop doing?
What should I keep doing?
What's something most people in my orbit know about me that I probably don't?
If you were me, what would your top priority for the next ninety days be — and is it different from the priority I've been signalling?
What's the kind of feedback you've given me before where I clearly didn't really hear it? Try again.
What's one thing I do that, if you were my manager, you'd ask me to change tomorrow?
What's something you wish someone would tell me — that you don't want to be the one to tell me — but I'm asking anyway?

Common mistakes when running these questions

The questions are only half of it. The way you run the round shapes the answers as much as the wording.

Sending all fifty-three to one person. Don't. Pick six to ten per relationship, and pick the ones most relevant to what you're actually trying to learn this round. A respondent who opens a survey with thirty questions in front of them does one of two things: gives short answers to all of them, or gives detailed answers to the first five and abandons the rest. Neither is what you want.

Asking the same questions of everyone. A peer can't answer "what's a topic I avoid in our 1:1s" because they don't have 1:1s with you. A direct report can't answer "how is my work landing above your level" because they don't have visibility there. Generic question banks ignore this, which is why the answers come back generic. Match the question to the relationship.

Asking questions whose answers you don't actually want. This is filter three working in the other direction. If you secretly want every answer to be flattering, the respondent can read that — even in writing — and they'll oblige. Vanity questions are obvious to everyone except the asker. Drop them.

Skipping the follow-up. The honest first answer is rarely the deepest one. "Tell me more about that" and "what specifically did I say or do?" are the two follow-ups that produce more signal than any clever question. If the round is one-shot written, build the follow-ups into the questions themselves — "and what specifically did I say that gave that impression?"

Forgetting the self-assessment side. Without your own answers to the same questions, the responses you get back are interesting but not actionable in the 360 sense. The whole point of 360 feedback is the comparison — where do others see something you don't see in yourself, and where do you see something others miss? If you only run the peer side, you're running a peer survey, not a 360. (More on why this matters in Why self-assessment comes before peer feedback, and a thirty-question version of the self-assessment side in Self-assessment template for managers: 30 questions.)

Asking too often. A 360 round is taxing for the respondent — even six well-crafted questions take real cognitive work to answer honestly. Once a quarter is plenty for the same group of people. More often than that and you'll get rote answers, or ghosted ones.

What to do next

Pick one block above that maps to the relationship you most want a sharper read on. Choose six questions from it. Don't pick the easiest six — pick the ones whose honest answers you'd most want to know, even if you suspect you wouldn't enjoy them. Send them to two or three people, not the whole group. Two or three honest, specific answers beat ten generic ones.

Before you send, write down your own answers to the same six questions — that's the 360 part working. When the responses come back, the most useful thing you'll do isn't read each answer in isolation. It's read your version side by side with theirs and notice the gaps. The gaps are where the next quarter's work lives. (For the receiving side — what to actually do in the first thirty seconds after a hard answer lands — see How to ask for honest feedback at work.)

If you want to run this as a structured round — same questions answered by you and by your respondents, anonymous or named at your call, side-by-side comparison of your self-assessment against the aggregated responses, the same template re-run quarterly so you can see what changed across rounds — that's what Mirorly's templates handle. The Library is where the per-context templates live. But you don't need any of that to start. Pick six questions. Send them to two people. The list is here. The work is in choosing which six.