360 feedback questions by role: ICs, managers, and senior leaders

The right 360 feedback questions for a manager are different from the right ones for an individual contributor, and different again for a senior leader. Most question banks miss this. They give you a hundred generic prompts and trust you to figure out which ones land at which seniority. This piece does that work for you, organized by who’s being reviewed, with six to eight observable-behavior questions per role.

If you came here because you’re picking questions for someone at a specific level, the role-based sets below are the practical answer. If you also want to vary the questions by who’s giving the feedback (a peer asks different things than a direct report), the pillar at 360 feedback questions cuts the same problem by rater relationship and covers the design principles every question here relies on.

Key Takeaways

• Question sets should change with the seniority of the person being reviewed, not just the relationship of the rater. Two cuts, both useful.
• Six to eight role-calibrated questions beat sixty generic ones. The padding in most question banks is what makes them feel comprehensive and what makes the responses worthless.
• Every question in this piece targets observable behavior in a specific situation, not personality traits. That’s the construction rule the pillar covers in full.
• Senior-leader sets work at small-company scale (founder, head of function, exec at a sub-200-person org), not enterprise. Generic “leadership” frameworks at that scale are theater.
• When running a round with mixed-seniority reviewees, pick five to seven questions per person from the relevant role set rather than running the same six across everyone.

One construction rule, three role cuts

Every question below follows the same construction rule the pillar on 360 feedback questions lays out: target observable behavior in a specific situation, never a personality trait or a verdict. “Is this person a strong leader?” produces nothing. “When this leader was under real pressure in the last quarter, what behavior pattern did you notice?” produces something a reader can act on.

What changes with the role isn’t the construction rule. It’s what’s available to be observed in the first place. An IC’s day surfaces craft, learning speed, collaboration density. A manager’s day surfaces coaching, decision-making under constraint, the way they make their team’s work visible. A senior leader’s day surfaces choice of priorities, hiring judgment, and the way pressure travels through the org. The questions ladder to what raters can actually see.

360 feedback questions for an individual contributor

ICs are reviewed by their manager and a few close peers. The signal lives in their craft, how they handle being stuck, and how their work shows up for the rest of the team. Avoid questions about leadership traits or strategic thinking; those aren’t yet what their role is for.

• What does this person ship that you don’t think they realize how much the team relies on?
• When they’re stuck, what unblocks them fastest? When they’re stuck without acknowledging it, what does that look like?
• In code review, design critique, or planning sessions, what’s a habit they bring that the rest of the team should copy?
• Where have you noticed them shipping fast at the cost of something that came back later? Be specific.
• When this person is the strongest voice in a meeting, what shifts about the discussion?
• What’s a problem they could solve well today that they couldn’t have six months ago? Where did that growth come from?

The one to keep if you keep only one: What’s one thing this person could change about how they work that would make them noticeably more effective by next quarter? It surfaces both the development direction and whether anyone has told them yet.

360 feedback questions for a manager

Managers get reviewed by their direct reports (anonymously, full stop, see why anonymity matters in small companies if upward feedback is the part you’re new to), by their own manager, and sometimes by a peer manager who works closely with their team. The signal lives in coaching, decision-making when capacity runs out, and how their team’s work lands above and around them.

• When this manager has to choose between protecting their team and protecting a deadline, which way do they usually go? Give a recent example.
• What’s something this manager does that you’d want copied by every manager in the company?
• Where does coaching from this manager feel real, and where does it feel like a performance review in disguise?
• When this manager’s team misses, what does their first move look like? Does it land as accountability, blame, or curiosity?
• What’s a tough conversation you’ve watched this manager avoid? What did it cost?
• When this manager pushes back on a decision from above, what’s their style? Does it work?
• What’s the kind of mistake this manager catches in advance, and what’s the kind they only catch after it’s already cost the team?

The one to keep: If you reported to a different manager next quarter, what specifically would you miss about reporting to this one? It’s the question that surfaces real value rather than performance of value.

360 feedback questions for a senior leader (at small-company scale)

“Senior leader” here means a founder, head of function, or exec at a sub-200-person company, not a Fortune 500 SVP. The job at this scale isn’t running a competency framework. It’s choosing what the company doesn’t do, hiring well, and the way pressure travels through the org when something breaks. Raters are typically their direct reports, peer leadership, and where relevant a board or investor.

One specific addition for this role: under stress, leaders show a behavior pattern that doesn’t appear in normal weeks. The pattern is observable and worth asking about directly, framed as a specific situation rather than a trait.

• Under real pressure in the last quarter, what’s the behavior pattern you noticed from this leader? Describe a specific moment.
• What’s a strategic decision this leader made in the last year that you’d flag as the most diagnostic of their judgment, in either direction?
• Where does this leader make space for the team to disagree with them, and where do they close that space down?
• When this leader is wrong about something visible to the company, what does the recovery look like? Public, private, fast, slow?
• What’s something this leader keeps doing that’s invisible to them and meaningful to the team?
• What’s a hiring decision in the last year that you’d consider their most consequential, and what does it tell you about how they weigh trade-offs?
• Where do you think this leader’s instinct is sharpest? Where would you most want a second opinion to challenge it?

The one to keep: If this leader were replaced tomorrow, what’s the specific thing that would be hardest to recreate, and what would the team finally be free to do differently? Double-edged on purpose. The honest signal at this level surfaces both the value and the cost, and a senior leader who hears only the first half hasn’t actually had a 360.

How to use these without doubling your question count

The temptation when you see three role sets is to use all of them across one round. Don’t. Pick five to seven questions per person from the relevant role set, not the full seven or eight, and not a mix from all three.

If your round covers mixed seniority (one IC, one manager, one senior leader), each person gets a different five-to-seven question subset drawn from their own role’s list. The pillar’s guidance on how many 360 feedback questions to ask holds: six to eight is the high end before completion rates collapse. More questions feel thorough when you assemble them and feel like a punishment when someone fills them out for four colleagues at 6pm.

Imagine a People Ops lead at a 50-person company running three reviewees in one round: a senior engineer, an engineering manager, and the head of engineering. Picking six questions per person from the role set above gives her eighteen unique questions across the round, none of them generic, none of them recycled across roles. That’s the version that produces useful responses without making reviewers want to set their laptops on fire.

The reframe

A question bank that grows to two hundred items isn’t more rigorous. It’s less. The signal-to-noise gets worse with every padded question, because what you’re really doing is asking your reviewers to scan past the bad questions to find the good ones, and most of them will give up halfway. Six to eight specific, role-calibrated questions per reviewee is the version that holds.

The harder half of any 360, regardless of the questions, is what gets done with the answers. For the part that happens after the responses come in, how to deliver 360 feedback results without breaking trust covers the conversation most guides skip. And if you want to run the next round without a spreadsheet, start your first 360 in Lynxify, no annual contract, no credit card required.

FAQ: 360 feedback questions by role

What are the best 360 feedback questions for managers?

The strongest 360 feedback questions for managers surface coaching, decision-making under constraint, and how the manager’s team lands above and around them. The strongest ones probe a specific situation: when they’ve had to choose between protecting their team and a deadline, when they’ve avoided a tough conversation, what their first move looks like when their team misses. Avoid trait-level prompts like “Is this manager a good leader?” The full role-calibrated set is in the manager section above.

Are 360 questions different for senior leaders than for regular employees?

Yes, meaningfully. ICs are reviewed on craft, learning velocity, and collaboration. Managers are reviewed on coaching, decision-making, and how their team’s work lands. Senior leaders are reviewed on strategic judgment, hiring, and how pressure travels through the org when something breaks. Using the same questions across all three produces three flavors of “fine” and signal from none of them.

How many 360 questions should you ask for each role?

Five to seven per reviewee, drawn from the relevant role’s set. The general rule is six to eight questions max before completion rates collapse, and that ceiling applies per person reviewed, not per role you’re running. If your round covers mixed seniority, each reviewee gets a different subset from their own role’s list rather than one universal questionnaire across all of them.

Can you use the same 360 questions for an IC and a manager?

A small overlap is fine (questions about growth, collaboration, and what to keep doing transfer across both), but the bulk of the question set should change. Asking an IC questions calibrated to a manager’s job produces low-signal answers, because raters reach for trait-level descriptions when they’re asked about behavior they haven’t seen. Use the role-specific sets and accept a small overlap rather than running one questionnaire across both levels.