Best practice questions for upward feedback

Reviews: best-practice upward feedback

You can find inspiration for upward feedback on re:Work run by Google. It’s where they publish their ongoing findings about practices, research, and ideas that have proven successful when dealing with people operations. Below is a questionnaire that you can use to gather feedback on your managers’ leadership skills given by their direct reports. Each statement is based on one of the ten behaviors of successful managers.

Simply add one or several of the statements below as custom questions in a leadership review and choose ‘scale + text’ as the answering format. 

(Before you kick off your first (360°) performance review, you should decide on a scale for your structured questions. The default setting is a 5-point scale, but you can choose a 2, 3, 4, 6, 7-, or even a continuous scale. This scale will be applied to all structured questions in all future assessments. Additionally, you can use various scales and even multiple-choice questions in a template or cycle.)

1. My manager assigns stretch opportunities to help me develop in my career.
2. My manager communicates clear goals for our team.
3. My manager gives me actionable feedback on a regular basis.
4. My manager provides the autonomy I need to do my job (i.e., does not “micro-manage" by getting involved in details that should be handled at other levels).
5. My manager consistently shows consideration for me as a person.
6. My manager keeps the team focused on priorities, even when it’s difficult (e.g., declining or deprioritizing other projects).
7. My manager regularly shares relevant information from their manager and senior leadership.
8. My manager has had a meaningful discussion with me about my career development in the past six months.
9. My manager has the technical expertise (e.g., technical judgment in tech, selling in sales, accounting in finance) required to manage me effectively.
10. The actions of my manager show they value the perspective I bring to the team, even if it is different from their own.
11. My manager makes tough decisions effectively (e.g., decisions involving multiple teams, competing priorities).
12. My manager effectively collaborates across boundaries (e.g., team, organizational).