Leadership feedback that moves leaders forward.
We design, collect and support your leadership feedback: from the questionnaire through the anonymous survey to the results meeting. Each leader’s self-image and how others see them become visible, in a report that shows where the conversation is worth having.
How it works
From goal setting to the results meeting: everything from one team.
A leadership feedback is a process, not a questionnaire. The quality of the preparation decides acceptance, the follow-up phase decides impact. We support all three phases; how much you take on yourself is up to you.
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Phase 1
Preparation
- Goal setting: development or performance appraisal, who receives which reports
- Choose perspectives: team members, plus managers and peers if needed
- Tailor the questionnaire from the item pool to your understanding of leadership, pretest
- Involve leaders, works council and data protection early, plan communication
- Register feedback providers: by list or self-declaration of the leaders
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Phase 2
Fieldwork
- Invitation per leader and perspective, self-rating in parallel
- Reminders and live response rates per leader and perspective
- Report per leader available immediately, with or without self-rating
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Phase 3
Follow-up
- Results meeting or coaching: make sense of self- and others’ ratings together
- Moderated team workshop in a protected setting, record agreements
- Repeat after one to two years, make development visible
»A leadership feedback is not a grade but a comparison: how do I see myself, how do others experience me? The gap is the real information. That is why the report has to put this comparison at the center, not the mean.«
No off-the-shelf leadership feedback
Your understanding of leadership sets the shape. Not the questionnaire.
A standard questionnaire measures what the vendor considers leadership. Your organization, however, has its own guidelines, its own leadership levels and its own words for them. Forcing that into a template yields results leaders can do little with.
That is why every leadership feedback we run grows out of a scientifically grounded model and is tailored to your organization: dimensions, items, perspectives and report. That takes days, not weeks, because questionnaire, assignment and analysis are built on our own engine, Survkit.
The questionnaire follows your understanding of leadership.
Eight dimensions from the IWOP leadership model: four levels of demand from personal to strategic, each with a view of the team and of the organization. Four standard items per dimension, extended from a pool of scientifically grounded questions. Existing leadership guidelines or competency models usually map onto it directly.
Perspectives as needed: 180°, 270° or 360°.
Team members are always included. Managers and peers are added when it serves the goal and the burden stays reasonable. Every perspective is evaluated separately and only appears above a minimum number of responses. You register who rates whom by list, or the leaders do it themselves.
Reports that set self-image and others’ view side by side.
Overview, detailed results per topic, items with the highest and lowest agreement, portfolio by rating and importance. Others’ and self-ratings stand side by side as result lines; from one scale point of deviation the report marks a blind spot or a hidden strength. As a report per leader, with or without self-rating on request, plus aggregated reports for divisions and the whole organization.
Trust
Honest feedback needs protection in both directions.
Feedback providers stay anonymous: answers are technically separated from the person, results only appear above a minimum number of responses per perspective agreed in advance, in practice usually three for leadership feedback, free-text comments go into the report without a sender. Who sees the leaders’ reports is something you decide before the start: only the leader, or also their manager, HR and executive management. We recommend report ownership by the leader when development is the goal, and we implement technically what has been agreed. Works councils and data protection officers get the documents they need from us.
- Minimum count per evaluation, agreed in advance
- Access to reports as agreed
- ISO/IEC 27001 data centers in Germany, GDPR-compliant
The software protects too: every number in the report is a group value, perspectives below the minimum stay hidden, including against back-calculation from other values, and every leader sees only their own report. The exceptions are managers and the self-rating, which are shown as individual persons and know that in advance. On request the system irreversibly separates answers from the person on submission.
From practice
Organizations with high standards for method and process.
SMEs, DAX-listed groups, federal ministries: what clients say about their survey projects with us.
»Around 2,000 employees and managers took part in our leadership feedback. We couldn't have been happier with how it was run. Special requirements were handled expertly and quickly, so that every single employee could take part without difficulty.«
»Thank you for the great collaboration on our leadership feedback. We were very happy with the consulting ahead of the project as well as the technical delivery and the results. What we appreciated most was how individually and promptly our requirements were always addressed.«
»Our 360° feedback was developed hand in hand with our leaders, and the results were so strong that we plan to expand it further. My sincere thanks for another round of great, collegial teamwork — communication this smooth, prompt and respectful is anything but a given.«
»To avoid survey fatigue and keep the follow-up process efficient, we combined our employee survey and leadership feedback into a single integrated process. Thank you for your tremendous dedication — and for how quickly you implemented the specific requirements that came with it.«
»We use manager assessments as an additional building block in our performance reviews. The technical delivery left nothing to be desired, and we especially appreciated the scheduling flexibility. Tailoring the content to our needs — such as grouping participants along multiple dimensions — was no problem either.«
»For several years now, the IWOP team has been an active partner in the strategic positioning and ongoing development of our survey instruments. What sets IWOP apart is the perfect blend of scientific expertise and hands-on experience. The consultants won us over completely — as sparring partners for our project team and as advisors to our top management alike. Our warm thanks for a truly enjoyable collaboration; we look forward to future projects.«
»For our survey of employees and development workers, we polled more than 15,000 people in over 100 countries and multiple languages, with the results analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The technical delivery was outstanding, and on the content side we always felt we were in expert hands. Requests were handled quickly, flexibly and without any fuss.«
»Over the past two years we worked together to rebuild our "feedback landscape" and ran a range of topic-specific surveys. After such an outstanding experience, we look forward to collaborating even more closely with your team on survey feedback in the future.«
»Thank you for your support and advice throughout the process. Your experienced clarity and relaxed manner were a great help in seeing the project through. Everything really worked out wonderfully.«
»Leaders open up to feedback when they know the report lands with them first. That is why we recommend report ownership by the leader wherever development is the goal. And what is agreed, we secure technically, not just with a promise: the anonymity of the feedback providers as much as access to the reports.«
Survkit as software
The same engine in your hands.
Some organizations prefer to run their leadership feedback themselves: consultancies that support their clients’ leaders, groups with their own feedback team, HR development units that survey a cohort every year. For them, Survkit is also available as software, the same engine we use for our own leadership feedbacks, without template limits.
- Feedback providers per leader Assignment via Excel import or self-declaration by the leaders, checked in the dashboard
- Self- and others’ ratings Separate questionnaire versions per perspective, one joint report
- 180°, 270°, 360° Any number of perspectives, each with its own minimum count
- Live response rates Per leader and perspective, automatic reminders
- Report variants With or without self-rating, portfolio, tops and flops, leadership profiles
- Dashboard for leaders Approve participants, retrieve the report, no forced passwords
- Aggregated reports Division, leadership level, total; management report
- Multilingual & accessible Managed centrally, WCAG-compliant
Frequently asked
What you want to know before a leadership feedback.
What is the difference between leadership feedback and 360-degree feedback?
Leadership feedback is the umbrella term: a leader rates themselves, their environment rates them as well, and the two are compared. The degree only describes who takes part. In 180-degree feedback it is the team members, in 270-degree feedback the leader’s own manager is added, in 360-degree feedback peers as well. Which variant fits depends on the goal and on the burden you want to place on those involved.
How many feedback providers does a leader need at minimum?
A perspective is only evaluated above a minimum number of responses, so that individual answers cannot be identified. For employee surveys that is five; for leadership feedback the threshold is usually three in practice, because otherwise the instrument would only be feasible for part of the leaders in many organizations. The number is agreed with you and the works council before the start. For very small teams, perspectives can be combined or several leaders of one level considered together. Managers and the self-rating are exempt: they are shown as individual persons and know that in advance.
Who sees the results?
We agree that with you before the start and communicate it to everyone involved. If the feedback serves development, the leader owns the report: they receive it first and alone, the organization gets aggregated results. If it serves performance appraisal, managers or HR also see the individual reports. Both are legitimate; it just has to be clear beforehand.
Which topics does a leadership feedback cover?
Whatever your organization understands by good leadership. The starting point is your leadership guidelines, your competency model or the topics currently at hand. From that the questionnaire is built: with items from our pool of scientifically grounded questions, complemented by your own wording in the language of your organization. If you have no framework of your own, you can start with our leadership model, eight dimensions from personal to strategic; an example with 32 items is here.
How long does a leadership feedback take?
Preparation with goal setting, questionnaire, pretest and registration of feedback providers typically takes a few weeks; the pace is set by your internal coordination. The field phase itself runs three to four weeks. Reports are available a few days after the field phase ends, often the same day.
What does a leadership feedback cost?
That depends on the number of leaders, the perspectives, the languages and the extent of support, for instance whether we moderate results meetings or team workshops. After a short conversation about your project you receive a concrete quote.
Can we combine leadership feedback with an employee survey?
Yes, and it often makes sense: both run in one round, employees answer one questionnaire, and the answers yield both the team results of the employee survey and the others’ rating of the leader. That avoids survey fatigue and makes the follow-up more efficient. The German Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs did it this way with us.
What happens after the report?
The decisive part. Ideally the leader gets support in making sense of self- and others’ ratings, in a results meeting or in coaching. Then follows the workshop with the team in a protected setting, with agreements everyone can carry. A repeat after one to two years shows what has changed.
Articles
Read on.
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Sample questionnaire in 8 dimensions
Leadership Feedback Questionnaire: 32 Sample Questions Based on the IWOP Leadership ModelWhich questions belong in a leadership feedback? Eight dimensions of the IWOP leadership model with four sample items each, plus scale and self-rating.
Christopher Klanke
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6 min read
Leadership feedback
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Use case
Employee surveys, delivered for youConcept, questionnaire, fieldwork, analysis and follow-up from one team, built on our own survey engine.
Everything about running an employee survey with Survkit
Tell us about your leadership feedback.
A half-hour conversation is enough to clarify which perspectives, which questionnaire and which support your project needs. No obligation, no preparation.