Make leadership clearer with 360-degree feedback
Most leaders have a reasonably good idea of their strengths and the areas they’d like to improve. But how closely does their own perception match the experiences of the people they work with?
360-degree feedback helps answer that question by gathering feedback from managers, colleagues, direct reports and other stakeholders. It provides valuable insight into how a leader’s behaviours are experienced by others, highlighting strengths, potential blind spots and opportunities for development.
At Epic People, we offer established SHL 360-degree feedback assessments, as well as the option of creating a customised 360 aligned with your organisation’s leadership expectations.
Whether you’re developing an individual manager or building a wider leadership development programme, we help you turn feedback into practical development priorities, supported by training, coaching and ongoing development where appropriate.
Why use 360-degree feedback?
Because how we think we’re leading isn’t necessarily how others experience our leadership.
Leaders don’t always receive open, constructive feedback about their behaviour. Employees may be reluctant to speak up, colleagues might avoid difficult conversations, and managers don’t always see what happens in day-to-day interactions.
360-degree feedback provides a structured way to gather these different perspectives, helping leaders understand what’s working well and where they could be more effective.
A well-designed 360-degree feedback programme can help you:
- Identify leadership strengths and blind spots – understand what leaders are doing well and where their intentions may not match their impact.
- Focus development on what matters – use feedback to identify the behaviours and skills that would make the greatest difference.
- Make coaching and development conversations more meaningful – move beyond general impressions to discuss specific leadership behaviours.
- Align leadership with organisational expectations – help leaders understand how well their behaviours reflect your values, culture and leadership framework.
- Measure progress over time – repeat the assessment to understand whether people are noticing changes in leadership behaviour.
360-degree feedback is useful as a standalone development tool, but it can be particularly valuable as part of a wider leadership development programme.
Our 360-degree feeback options
SHL 360-degree feedback
We are licensed to use SHL’s 360-degree feedback products, providing organisations with established, research-based assessment tools.
SHL 360-degree feedback helps leaders understand how their behaviours are perceived by others, using structured questionnaires to identify leadership strengths and areas for development.
We manage the feedback process, help participants interpret their results and work with them to identify practical development actions.
SHL 360-degree feedback is a good option if you:
- Want an established, research-based assessment.
- Need to assess individual leaders or groups of managers.
- Want to identify strengths and development priorities without creating your own questionnaire.
- Are looking for a structured assessment to complement leadership training or coaching.
As we’re also accredited in all SHL psychometric assessment tools, we can combine 360-degree feedback with other assessments where a broader understanding of an individual’s strengths, preferences and potential would be useful.
Customised 360-degree feedback
Sometimes an off-the-shelf assessment doesn’t quite capture what good leadership looks like in your organisation.
We can work with you to create a customised 360-degree feedback questionnaire that reflects your organisation’s leadership expectations, values and the behaviours you want your managers to demonstrate.
For example, if collaboration is one of your organisational values, what does that actually look like day to day? How do they involve others in decisions, share information or work across teams?
A customised 360 can assess these specific, observable behaviours rather than relying solely on a general set of leadership competencies.
Customised 360-degree feedback is particularly useful if you:
- Have an existing leadership framework and want to measure how well it’s being demonstrated.
- Want to establish clearer, more consistent leadership expectations.
- Are developing a customised leadership development programme.
- Need feedback that reflects your organisation’s culture, values and priorities.
A customised 360 can be used independently or developed alongside a customised leadership framework, providing a consistent way to define and measure leadership behaviours.
Would you like to pilot the Epic Leadership 360?
We’ve been working on something exciting – our own NZ-made and administered 360-degree feedback tool. If you’d like to pilot the tool, please complete the contact form at the end of this page and we’ll be in touch.
How does our 360-degree feedback process work?
We take care of the process, from initial planning through to interpreting the results and identifying development priorities.
1. Agree on the purpose and objectives
We start by understanding what you want to achieve, who will participate and how the feedback will be used. This includes whether the assessment is for individual development or part of a wider leadership development initiative.
2. Select or design the assessment
We’ll help you choose between the SHL 360-degree assessment or work with you to develop a customised questionnaire aligned with your organisation’s leadership expectations.
3. Select feedback providers and prepare participants
We help identify appropriate feedback providers, usually including managers, peers, direct reports and sometimes other stakeholders. We also help communicate the purpose and process so everyone understands what’s involved and how their feedback will be handled.
4. Gather the feedback
Participants complete their self-assessment and feedback providers respond to the questionnaire. We coordinate the process, monitor participation and apply appropriate confidentiality and anonymity arrangements.
5. Interpret the results and agree on development priorities
We help participants make sense of their feedback, explore differences between their own perceptions and those of others, and identify strengths and development opportunities.
The aim isn’t to produce a long list of things someone needs to improve. It’s to identify a manageable number of meaningful actions that will make a difference.
6. Support development and measure progress
A 360 is a starting point, not the end of the process. Where appropriate, we can provide coaching, targeted leadership training and follow-up support to help participants put their development plans into action.
Repeating the assessment later can help determine whether these changes are being noticed by the people they work with.
Who benefits from 360-degree feedback?
360-degree feedback can be valuable at different stages of a leadership career, from employees preparing for their first management role through to experienced senior leaders.
For employees showing leadership potential, 360-degree feedback can help identify the strengths they already demonstrate and the capabilities they’ll need to develop as they take on greater responsibility.
It can provide useful information for individual development plans, mentoring and succession planning.
Moving from being a capable employee to managing other people requires a different set of skills.
360-degree feedback helps new managers understand how they’re communicating, delegating, supporting others and building relationships. It can identify development needs early, before unhelpful habits become established.
It also complements our team leader development programme, helping managers focus on the skills most relevant to their roles.
Even experienced leaders develop habits and blind spots. As their responsibilities change, the behaviours that made them successful in the past may need to evolve.
360-degree feedback gives experienced leaders an opportunity to reflect on how they’re perceived, understand their impact on others and identify areas where they could adapt their approach.
It can also provide valuable input into executive coaching, leadership transitions and succession planning.
360-degree feedback as part of leadership development
A 360-degree review can be valuable on its own, but it can be even more useful when it’s part of a wider leadership development programme.
By identifying strengths, blind spots and common development needs, 360-degree feedback helps organisations make informed decisions about where to focus their leadership development efforts.
For example, we can use 360-degree feedback to:
- Establish a baseline before starting a leadership development programme.
- Identify common development needs across a group of managers.
- Shape individual development plans and targeted training or coaching.
- Assess leadership behaviours against a customised leadership framework.
- Repeat the assessment later to evaluate changes in leadership behaviour.
Where an organisation has its own leadership framework, a customised 360 can measure how consistently those expectations are being demonstrated.
The results can then inform a programme of training, coaching and practical workplace development, with opportunities to practise new behaviours and measure progress over time.
Build a more complete approach to leadership development
360-degree feedback is just one part of building leadership capability. Depending on what you’re trying to achieve, we can help you connect feedback with other development activities.
Leadership development programmes
Explore how we combine practical leadership training, coaching, psychometric assessments and 360-degree feedback to help managers become more effective people leaders.
Leadership frameworks and capability development
Define what effective leadership looks like in your organisation, create a customised framework and develop ways to measure and reinforce the behaviours that matter.
Annual leadership development plans
Take a structured approach to building leadership capability over 12 months, combining development activities, support and opportunities to measure progress.
Common myths about 360-degree feedback
Myth 1: It's just a popularity contest
360-degree feedback isn’t intended to measure whether someone is liked. A well-designed assessment focuses on observable leadership behaviours rather than general opinions about personality.
Feedback will always involve people’s perceptions, but carefully designed questions, appropriate feedback-provider selection and professional interpretation can help reduce bias.
Myth 2: People will use it to settle scores
This is a reasonable concern, especially where workplace relationships are strained.
Clear communication about the purpose of the assessment, appropriate confidentiality arrangements and an emphasis on constructive, behaviour-based feedback all help reduce this risk.
It’s also why the results need to be interpreted carefully rather than treated as unquestionable facts.
Myth 3: It's too expensive or time-consuming
360-degree feedback doesn’t have to involve a large, complicated programme.
You can start with an individual leader, a small group of managers or a targeted development initiative. We can help you choose an approach that suits your goals, timeframe and budget.
Myth 4: It's only useful when someone isn't performing well
In fact, 360-degree feedback can be particularly valuable for capable, experienced leaders who want to keep developing.
Understanding your strengths is just as important as identifying areas for improvement, and feedback can reveal leadership behaviours that others value but the leader may not recognise.
Myth 5: The report just ends up sitting in a drawer
Unfortunately, that can happen when organisations treat the assessment as the end of the process.
The real value comes from helping leaders understand their feedback, choose meaningful development goals and apply what they’ve learned. Coaching, training and follow-up assessments can all help turn feedback into action.
Frequently asked questions about 360-degree feedback
What is 360-degree feedback?
360-degree feedback is a structured assessment process that gathers feedback about an individual’s behaviours from several sources, usually including their manager, colleagues, direct reports and sometimes customers or other stakeholders. Participants also complete a self-assessment.
The results help identify leadership strengths, development opportunities and differences between how people perceive themselves and how others experience their behaviour.
How is 360-degree feedback different from a performance review?
A traditional performance review usually focuses on how well an employee has met their objectives and performed their responsibilities, with input primarily from their manager.
360-degree feedback brings together multiple perspectives, focusing on observable behaviours and how those behaviours affect others. It’s primarily a development tool, rather than a substitute for performance management.
Are 360-degree feedback responses anonymous?
360-degree feedback should be managed confidentially, with clear arrangements for how responses will be reported.
Feedback from peers and direct reports is commonly combined into groups, with minimum response thresholds to protect individual identities. However, some categories, such as manager feedback, may be identifiable.
We explain the confidentiality and reporting arrangements before the process begins so participants and feedback providers know what to expect.
Who should participate in a 360-degree feedback assessment?
360-degree feedback can be used for emerging leaders, team leaders, middle managers and senior executives.
Feedback providers are normally people who have sufficient experience of working with the participant to comment on their leadership behaviours. These may include managers, colleagues, direct reports and relevant external stakeholders.
How long does a 360-degree feedback process take?
A typical 360-degree feedback cycle can take around four to six weeks, from initial planning through to feedback collection and debriefing.
The timeframe depends on the number of participants, questionnaire requirements and availability of feedback providers. Customised assessments may require additional time for design and testing.
How much does 360-degree feedback cost in New Zealand?
The cost depends on the type of assessment, number of participants, level of customisation and the interpretation or coaching support required.
Epic People offers established SHL 360-degree feedback assessments as well as customised options. Contact us to discuss your requirements and receive a tailored quote.
Can we create a customised 360-degree feedback assessment for our organisation?
Yes. Epic People can develop customised 360-degree feedback questionnaires based on the leadership behaviours, values and the culture you’re aspiring to build.
Let's talk about your 360-degree feedback needs
Behind every epic workplace, is Epic People
Whether you’re looking for a standalone 360-degree assessment, a customised solution, or want to include 360-degree feedback in a wider leadership development programme, we’d love to help.
Tell us a little about what you’re looking to achieve, and we’ll help you explore the options that best suit your organisation.
