Giving 360 feedback

Who can use this: Employees and managers. Anyone in your organization may be asked to give peer feedback.

A 360 feedback cycle is a structured way for the people who work with someone to share observations about how that person is doing. When a manager runs a cycle, they nominate peers — colleagues, cross-functional partners, direct reports — to give feedback about the subject. If you have been nominated, you will see a feedback assignment in your account.

This article covers what to expect when you are asked to give feedback, how the form is structured, what is confidential and what is not, and how to write peer feedback that is actually useful to the person receiving it.

When you will be asked

You will receive a feedback assignment when:

• A manager in your org has chosen you as a peer reviewer for one of their team members.
• You worked with that person closely enough to have a useful perspective.
• The cycle is open and there is a deadline for submission.

Notifications arrive in-app and by email, and (if your org has the Slack or Teams integration) in your messaging tool. You can also see all your assignments — owed and submitted — on the Feedback page in the left navigation rail.

You are typically asked to give feedback on more than one peer per cycle. Each assignment is independent — separate form, separate deadline (usually the same date), separate submission.

What to expect from the assignment

When you open a feedback assignment, you will see:

• The subject — the person you are giving feedback about.
• The cycle name and deadline.
• A context note from the requesting manager explaining what the cycle is for ("Q2 360 cycle — focus on collaboration and delivery"). This is optional and not always present.
• The feedback form itself.

You can save your progress and come back later — your draft is preserved automatically as you type.

Form structure

The feedback form is opinionated. It asks you to share strengths and opportunities, both tied to specific attributes (competency tags) the requesting manager has selected for the cycle.

Strengths

For each strength, you will be asked to provide:

1. The attribute — pick from the list of attributes attached to this cycle (for example "Communication", "Strategic thinking", "Cross-functional collaboration").
2. The observation — what specifically did you see this person do well? A sentence or two describing the behavior.
3. The impact — what was the result? How did it benefit the team, the project, the customer?
4. The recommended action (optional) — what should they keep doing or do more of?

You can add multiple strengths. You are not required to fill every attribute — pick the ones where you have a clear, specific perspective.

Opportunities

For each opportunity (a development area), the form follows the same structure:

1. The attribute.
2. The observation — what did you see that suggests room for growth? Be specific and behavioral.
3. The impact — what consequence did the behavior have? What did it cost the team, the project, the customer?
4. The recommended action — what should they try differently? What would good look like?

Opportunities are not complaints. They are forward-looking development input. The recommended action field is the most valuable part of an opportunity — it turns a critique into a plan.

Overall comments (optional)

Some cycles include a free-form comment field at the end. Use it for context that does not fit the structured strengths/opportunities — observations about overall trajectory, comparisons to prior periods, or anything else you think the manager should know.

What "specific, behavioral feedback" actually means

The single biggest difference between feedback that helps someone grow and feedback that is forgettable is specificity. A few comparisons:

Vague	Specific
"Great communicator."	"When the API change broke our integration in March, you wrote a clear summary of the impact and circulated it within an hour. That gave us time to coordinate with the partner team before customers noticed."
"Could improve at delivery."	"On the Q1 launch, the timeline slipped twice without a heads-up to me until the day before. I would have been able to adjust my own work if I had known a week earlier."
"Strong leader."	"In the post-mortem for the outage, you opened with what you would have done differently rather than asking the team to defend themselves. That set the tone for an honest discussion and we ended up with three concrete improvements."

The pattern is the same in every example: what did they do, when, and what was the result.

If you find yourself writing an adjective ("great", "strong", "needs work"), force yourself to follow it with "for example, when…". If you cannot finish that sentence, the feedback may not be specific enough to be useful.

Tips for writing useful peer feedback

• Be balanced. Almost everyone has both strengths and opportunities. A form that is all strengths or all opportunities is less credible to the manager and less useful to the subject.
• Pick fewer items, but make each one count. Three high-quality strengths and two high-quality opportunities is better than ten of each at lower quality.
• Stay in your lane. Comment on what you have actually seen, not what you have heard secondhand. If you have not worked closely with the subject in a particular area, skip that attribute rather than guessing.
• Lead with behavior, not personality. "Did X in situation Y, with result Z" lands. "Is good at things" or "is not a team player" does not.
• Recommend, do not just diagnose. Especially for opportunities, the recommended action is what makes the feedback actionable. "Communicate more" is a diagnosis. "Send a weekly progress note to the partner team like the one you did for project X" is an action.
• Think about the calendar. If the cycle covers the last six months, do not let the most recent two weeks dominate. Try to recall the full period.
• Read it once before submitting. Re-read your feedback as if you were the subject. Would it land? Would you know what to do with it? Edit until both answers are yes.

Confidentiality

Confidentiality in 360 feedback depends on how the cycle was configured by the requesting manager. There are two common modes:

Attributed (default)

In an attributed cycle, your name is associated with your feedback when the manager reviews it. The manager can see who said what. The subject (the person being reviewed) does not see giver names — they see aggregated themes in their summary, but not direct attribution.

If you want your manager to know it was you who said something, attributed mode is what you want.

Anonymous

In an anonymous cycle, your name is removed before the manager reviews the feedback. The manager sees the body of your feedback but not who wrote it. The subject sees only aggregated themes, with no attribution.

Anonymous mode is used when the requesting manager wants candid input that might be hard to give if names were attached — typically for senior or sensitive roles.

The mode is set per cycle and shown clearly at the top of the feedback form. If you are uncertain, look for the Confidentiality banner on the form itself.

In both modes:

• Your feedback is never shared verbatim with the subject without your manager's deliberate decision to do so.
• Your feedback is not visible to other peers giving feedback on the same person.
• Org admins can see that you submitted feedback (for compliance and audit), but the body is treated according to the cycle's confidentiality setting.

Submitting and editing

You can save your draft as many times as you want before the deadline. Click Save draft to persist your in-progress work. You can come back to the form from the Feedback page or from the email reminder.

When you are ready, click Submit. The form is locked when:

• The cycle deadline passes, or
• You click Submit, whichever comes first.

After you submit, you can still view your feedback (it is on the Feedback page under "Submitted") but you cannot edit. If you realize you made a mistake — wrong subject, factual error — contact the requesting manager. They can return the form for re-submission if the cycle is still open.

Deadlines and reminders

Each assignment has a deadline. You will receive reminder emails:

• 7 days before deadline.
• 2 days before deadline.
• On the day of the deadline (only if you have not yet submitted).

If you cannot meet the deadline, contact the requesting manager. They can extend your individual assignment or, if needed, reassign to someone else.

If you do not submit by the deadline, the form locks automatically and your assignment is recorded as "Not submitted." This is visible to the requesting manager.

What the manager does with your feedback

Once the cycle closes, the requesting manager reviews everything that was submitted. They may:

• Use themes from peer feedback in the next summary they share with the subject.
• Discuss the feedback directly with the subject in a 1:1 conversation.
• Identify patterns to inform next-period objectives or development planning.
• File the feedback as part of the subject's permanent performance record.

Whether peer feedback appears as direct quotes or aggregated themes in the subject's summary is the manager's call (subject to org policy and the cycle's confidentiality setting). In all cases, the giver's identity is handled according to the cycle's confidentiality mode.

Receiving feedback

This article is about giving peer feedback. If you are also the subject of a cycle (your manager is collecting peer feedback about you), you will not see the raw submissions directly — you will see synthesized themes when your manager shares your next summary. See Viewing your summaries for what to expect on the receiving side.

Common questions

"What if I do not feel I know the person well enough?" Decline the assignment. Click Decline on the form and add a short note ("I have only worked with them on one project — happy to give input on a future cycle if I am still relevant"). The requesting manager will be notified and can replace you.

"What if I have a conflict of interest?" Same answer: decline. The form is not the place to disclose a conflict; just decline politely and let the manager re-pick.

"What if I want to give feedback to someone but I have not been asked?" The 360 system is invitation-only — you cannot self-nominate. But you can suggest yourself to the manager directly, and if the cycle is still open they can add you.

"What if I get an assignment for someone I do not recognize?" This is rare but happens with name collisions or admin errors. Decline the assignment with a short note explaining the situation.

"Can I see what I wrote in past cycles?" Yes. The Feedback → Submitted view lists every assignment you have ever completed, with the form contents preserved. This is private to you.

Tips for getting better at this over time

• Keep a running file of observations. When something good or instructive happens with a peer, jot a quick note. By the time the cycle opens you will have material to draw from.
• Read your past submissions before writing new ones. Patterns in your own feedback (what you tend to overweight, what you tend to ignore) are useful self-knowledge.
• Think of the recipient. The best test of whether your feedback is useful is asking: "If I received this myself, would I know what to do with it?" If yes, send. If not, edit.

Where to go next

• Viewing your summaries — the receiving side, where peer feedback is synthesized into themes.
• Conversations with your manager — for follow-up discussion if your manager wants to talk through what came in.
• Tracking your objectives — peer feedback often informs the next round of development goals.