The rating questions in a 360 are easy. People click a number and move on.
Then they hit the comment box and freeze. What do you write about your boss that's honest, useful and won't come back to bite you?
Below are 360 feedback examples you can borrow: comments on strengths, comments on areas to improve, and a few for the self-assessment. Some come straight from the Org360 sample leadership report. The rest we wrote in the same style. At the end I'll show how a handful of comments turns into a development plan, because that's the part most 360s skip.
What makes a 360 comment useful
A good comment names something the person actually did, says what effect it had, and (for areas to improve) suggests one thing to try.
Compare these two:
- Vague: "Great leader, very supportive."
- Useful: "When the funding bid fell through, she spent 20 minutes with each of us that week. Nobody left the team in the months after."
The first one feels nice and teaches nothing. The second tells the leader exactly what to keep doing.
Same for criticism:
- Vague: "Needs to communicate better."
- Useful: "Priorities shift daily sometimes, so one thing gets started before another is finished. A weekly top 3 would help."
That second one is a real comment from our sample report. It's short, specific and a bit uncomfortable. That's what you want.
360 feedback examples for strengths
Grouped by the competencies most leadership 360s measure. Swap in your own details.
Trusting people and giving them room
- "Everybody feels like they are working with the person, not for the person, which greatly improves the quality of work." (from the sample report)
- "No micromanagement: he gives you space to grow and take the lead." (from the sample report)
- "She let me run the partner workshop on my own after one dry run. I'd never have asked for that, and it's the thing I'm proudest of this year."
- "He asks what I need before he tells me what to do."
Communication and openness
- "The team is always informed about decisions, and the reasoning behind them gets explained." (from the sample report)
- "When she disagrees she says so in the meeting, and then she backs the decision once it's made."
- "He shares the bad news early. We heard about the budget cut from him, a month before it hit."
Inclusion and respect
- "This person respects everyone's personality and treats each person individually, which creates a very comfortable and supportive working environment." (from the sample report)
- "In calls with 3 time zones she always rotates the meeting slot so it's never the same people up at 6am."
- "He makes a point of asking the quietest person in the room first."
Strategy and results
- "2 or 3 of these sections would all have been marked 2 or 3 one year ago, but today they're a confident 4 or 5." (from the sample report)
- "She can explain our strategy in 2 sentences, and every project I work on maps to one of them."
- "He follows through. If he says he'll send it Friday, it arrives Friday."
Coaching and developing people
- "After every pitch he gives me one thing that worked and one thing to try next time. Always within a day."
- "She pushed me to apply for the regional lead role when I didn't think I was ready."
360 feedback examples for areas to improve
These are harder to write, so here's a pattern that works: what happens, what it costs, one suggestion.
Priorities and focus
- "Due to an overload of ideas, priorities tend to shift daily sometimes. One thing gets started even though another isn't finished." (from the sample report)
- "When giving tasks, say whether it's urgent or can wait 1 to 2 weeks. Right now everything sounds urgent." (from the sample report, lightly edited)
- "Maybe plan a bit more. Clear sprints and clearer requirements would make things smoother." (from the sample report)
Coaching and feedback
- "I'd like more regular feedback. Right now I mostly find out how I'm doing at the annual review."
- "Clearer 1:1 communication, please. A lot of important stuff arrives in WhatsApp between other messages." (based on the sample report)
- "You trust us a lot, which I love. I'd also like you to tell me when something I did wasn't good enough."
Listening and patience
- "Keep practising patience with people whose communication style is different from yours. Make more space for those who don't speak up easily." (from the sample report)
- "You often finish people's sentences. It's well meant, but people stop explaining."
Under pressure
- "When a deadline slips, your tone in the team channel gets sharp. A short call works better than a message at 11pm."
- "In tense board meetings you answer fast. A pause before replying would land better."
Delegation (the opposite problem)
- "You still review every email to funders. The team is ready to own some of those relationships."
- "Projects get stuck waiting for your sign-off. Could we agree on what needs you and what doesn't?"
Self-assessment examples
Most 360s ask the person to rate themselves too. The comments here are usually shorter and more honest than people expect.
- "I'm good at getting people excited about an idea. I'm less good at telling them which idea to work on first."
- "I think I give feedback too rarely, and too late."
- "I avoid conflict with board members. I'd like to get better at disagreeing in the room."
One pattern shows up a lot: good leaders rate themselves lower than everyone else does. In our sample report the leader scored coaching at 2.0 and their raters scored it 3.8, a gap of almost 2 points. One rater wrote: "I encourage you to be kinder to yourself. You've built an amazing organization."
Phrases to avoid
- Personality labels: "She's too emotional", "He's arrogant." Describe the behaviour instead.
- Comparisons with other people: "Not as organised as Sam." It identifies you and doesn't help.
- Details that give you away: "As the only person in finance..." If the comment only one person could have written, rewrite it.
- One-word answers: "Fine", "N/A", "Nothing." If there's really nothing, say what you'd want more of.
From comments to a development plan
A pile of comments still needs someone to read them, find the 2 or 3 themes, and decide what changes.
In Org360 the report does that first pass for you. Claude reads the scores and the comments together and writes a 6-month plan. Here's what came out of the sample report:
- Layer in coaching without losing autonomy. Bi-weekly 1:1s with 3 questions: what's going well, what's hard, one piece of feedback from me.
- Build a filter between ideas and priorities. A "Top 3 this week" note every Friday, including what's deliberately not a priority.
- Slow down to connect. A 3-second pause before responding, and asking "What haven't we heard yet?" in meetings.
Each priority links back to a score and to the raters' own words. That's what makes people take the plan seriously: they can see where it came from.
You can read the full example in the sample leadership 360 report.
How to get comments people will actually write
Comments are where people self-censor. A rater can hide behind a 4 out of 5. Their writing style is much harder to hide.
So we built 2 confidentiality modes:
- Standard: the report opens after 3 replies. Comments are shown, but never with names.
- Highest (Pro plan): the report opens after 5 replies. Comments stay hidden. The person reads an AI summary of them instead, so nobody's phrasing can give them away.
Either way, names of people and organisations are stripped out before any text reaches the AI.
And keep the open questions to 2. Ours are "What does this person do that you particularly appreciate?" and "What suggestions would you have to become even more effective?" Ask 5 and you'll get one-word answers to all of them.
Try it
The Leadership Pulse has 12 questions and takes about 5 minutes. The Full 360 has 24 and takes about 10. You can edit any question before you send it.
Your first survey is free. Start here.