Most teams that decide to run a 360 lose two weeks building the machinery: the survey, the emails, the report format. This page is that machinery, free to copy. The survey structure below follows what the research supports, the email scripts are the ones that get honest answers back, and the downloads at the bottom give you the whole thing as a spreadsheet and a printable PDF. No email required for any of it.
Leaders ADAPT on 360 feedback template: A complete 360 feedback template has five parts: a survey of 60 to 80 behavior statements across 8 to 12 competencies on a 5 point scale plus 2 or 3 open questions, a rater invitation email that promises anonymity, a reminder email, a results report that groups scores by rater type, and a debrief plan. Collect from 8 to 15 raters with at least 3 per group, and keep the results developmental, never tied to pay.
Built by Andreas Pettersson, former CEO of Arcules, a Canon company, and founder of Leaders ADAPT.
The 5 Parts of a Complete 360 Feedback Template
- The survey: 60 to 80 rating statements across 8 to 12 competencies, plus 2 or 3 open-ended questions at the end.
- The rater invitation email: who is being reviewed, why the rater was chosen, how anonymity works, and the deadline.
- The reminder email: sent once, three days before the deadline, to non-responders only.
- The results report: scores grouped by competency and by rater type (self, manager, peers, direct reports), gaps highlighted, verbatims lightly edited for identifying detail.
- The debrief plan: who walks the recipient through the report, and the first follow-up date. This part decides whether anything changes, so build it before you send survey one.
The Survey Template
Open with two sentences of instructions: "Rate how consistently you observe each behavior. If you have not had the chance to observe it, choose Not observed." Then the scale: 1 Never, 2 Rarely, 3 Sometimes, 4 Often, 5 Consistently, plus Not observed. Then the statements, grouped by competency with the group name visible, because raters give better answers when they know what a block is measuring.
For the statements themselves, take 6 to 8 per competency from our bank of 100 360 feedback questions organized by competency. The ten below are the spine we start every custom survey from:
- This person communicates decisions and the reasoning behind them, not just the decision.
- This person follows through on commitments without needing reminders.
- This person asks for input before making decisions that affect others.
- This person stays composed and constructive under pressure.
- This person gives feedback that is specific enough to act on.
- This person delegates meaningful work, not just tasks they dislike.
- This person admits mistakes openly and corrects course quickly.
- This person removes obstacles instead of adding process.
- This person treats people the same whether or not they can be useful to them.
- I would choose to work for or with this person again.
Close with two open questions, not more: "What should this person start doing, stop doing, and continue doing?" and "What one change would most improve this person's effectiveness?" Every open question past the second adds about two minutes of rater time and the answer quality drops with each one.
3 Email Scripts: Invitation, Reminder, Results
1. The invitation. Subject: Your input on [Name], 10 minutes, anonymous.
"Hi [Rater], [Name] is going through a leadership development process and picked you as someone whose honest view matters. The survey takes about 10 minutes. Your answers are combined with at least two other people in your group, so no individual response is visible to [Name] or anyone else. Blunt and specific beats polite and vague; the point is to help [Name] grow, and soft answers help nobody. Deadline is [date]. [Link]"
2. The reminder, three days before the deadline, non-responders only. Subject: Closes [date]: your input on [Name].
"Quick reminder that [Name]'s feedback survey closes [date]. Ten minutes, anonymous, and the process only works if enough people in your group respond. [Link]"
3. The results note to the recipient. Subject: Your 360 report and what happens next.
"Your report is attached. Before you open it: read it once without judging, note the two or three things that surprise you, and bring those to our debrief on [date]. Nothing in this report is a verdict. It is a snapshot of how your behavior lands, taken so you can decide what to do with it. We will pick one thing to work on, not seven."
The Results Report Format
Page one: overall averages by competency, self score next to the combined rater score, biggest positive gap and biggest negative gap called out. Page two: the same scores split by rater type, because a leader who scores 4.5 from their manager and 2.8 from direct reports has a different problem than a flat 3.6. Page three: the open-ended answers, grouped by theme, with identifying details removed. Last page: one development priority, chosen in the debrief, with the first follow-up date written down. Research is blunt on this: recipients who set goals and get follow-up rate the process effective 94 percent of the time against 34 percent without, and the full numbers live in our 360 degree feedback statistics.
How to Customize Without Breaking It
Swap competencies freely to match the role, but hold four lines: never more than 80 rating statements, never fewer than 3 raters per anonymous group, never a trait word where a behavior sentence belongs, and never route the results into pay or promotion decisions, which cuts the improvement effect to roughly a third. Before you customize anything, spend four minutes on our free 360 readiness assessment; it tells you whether your raters would even be honest yet, and an honest survey with 40 items beats a gamed one with 80. For the full process around the template, the practical guide to 360 degree leadership assessments walks it end to end.
The Mirror Rule for the Debrief
One reframe makes or breaks the debrief. A 360 is not a verdict on your team’s loyalty, and it is not a popularity score. It is a mirror. I tell every CEO the same thing about the tools on this page: it does not fix your team, it fixes you.
So in the debrief, resist the urge to explain any score away or to guess who wrote what. Pick the one behavior with the biggest gap between how you see yourself and how your raters see you, put a follow-up date on it, and go tell your raters what you picked. That last step is the one almost everyone skips, and it is the one the improvement data hangs on.
Free Downloads
Both files are free and ungated, use them inside your company as you like. Attribution is appreciated, not required.
- 360 feedback template spreadsheet (.xlsx): the survey with the 10 core statements plus room for your competency blocks, a response tracker, and a results sheet that computes averages by competency and rater type as you paste scores in.
- 360 feedback questionnaire PDF (printable): the survey formatted for print or annotation, with the scale, the instructions block, and the open questions.
Frequently Asked, Quickly Answered
What should a 360 feedback template include?
Five parts: the survey (60 to 80 behavior statements across 8 to 12 competencies plus 2 or 3 open questions), a rater invitation email that explains anonymity, one reminder email, a results report grouped by competency and rater type, and a debrief plan with a follow-up date.
What rating scale should a 360 survey use?
A 5 point frequency scale (Never to Consistently) plus a Not observed option. The Not observed option matters most: without it, raters guess, and guessed scores poison the averages.
Is there a free 360 feedback template?
Yes, this page. The spreadsheet and printable PDF above are free with no email required, and the 100 question bank they draw from is free as well.
How many raters does the template need?
8 to 15 total, with a minimum of 3 in each rater group (peers, direct reports) so anonymity holds. Below 3 per group, either merge groups or drop the group from the report.
