360 item

design guide
A well-designed 360 is a vital source used to increase self-awareness and development by clarifying strengths and
opportunities. It includes items reflecting the critical success behaviors your organization expects its leaders/managers to
demonstrate. Glint's agile approach and lightweight 360 platform enables leaders to quickly receive feedback from those who
know them well to build greater self-awareness and identify ways to increase impact.

Glint approach to 360 item design

Glint's approach to 360 items can be summarized into three key principles:
simple, observable, and consistent.
How were the Glint 360 items
1. Keep it simple
developed?
• Use simple wording kept at a high-level so that all audiences can easily
understand the language. Avoid using jargons and adding too many A team of Glint People Scientists and I/O
qualifiers (except for technical competency models). Psychologists conducted an extensive study
• Avoid items that attempt to measure multiple concepts in one statement. of academic research, commercial
There may be exceptions where the multiple concepts in one item represent approaches, and organizational competency
the critical success behavior (e.g., Helps others think through and solve models to identify 300+ unique work
complex problems). behaviors. The behaviors were then content
• Survey takers have the option to leave comments on all items, and this helps analyzed, coded into clusters, reviewed for
you keep fewer items worded at a high level. General open-ended questions quality and conceptual overlap, and then
may be used to capture comments related to behaviors that may not be narrowed down to a list of 70+ behaviors.
measured by items. A validation study was then conducted using
these behaviors. The result is the 16 core Glint
2. Keep it observable and behaviorally focused
Manager 360 items. We also added two
• Focus on behaviors that are observable and can be developed by the person. open ended questions to provide additional
Avoid asking people to provide feedback on trait/dispositional items. context and help the subject prioritize
• Begin items with a verb that ends with the letter "s" (e.g., communicates). This developmental opportunities.
helps keep the item more behavioral and ensures they are activities that are
consistent and ongoing, instead of past-tense. Also avoid beginning with
“Ability to/Able to”.

3 Keep it consistent
• Use the same scale for all quantitative items in the 360.
• Do not include reverse scored items as these are harder for raters to answer
and make report interpretation more difficult.
Additional tips
How long should 360 be?
We recommend keeping the focus on only the most critical
success behaviors which can typically be covered in 25
items or less. This will allow the raters provide meaningful
feedback without feeling overwhelmed.
Unnecessarily long surveys reduce the likelihood a rater will
respond or take the time to provide thoughtful feedback.
360s often include all behaviors contained within a
competency model which results in a large number of
behaviors assessed, creating unnecessary complexity for
both raters and the subject receiving the report.
We don’t have a competency model (or we’re
working to create one). Can we still use 360?
Short answer is yes. Competency models often means you
have a clear alignment and understanding of what
successful leader/manager behaviors look like as well as
internal languages to describe those behaviors.
However, competency models themselves do not
guarantee such alignment. If you don’t have a
competency model unique to your organization, you might
leverage numerous off-the-shelf models, including the Glint
Manager 360.
Questions to consider:
1 What are your critical success behaviors for leaders and managers?
2 Could you simplify your process by using Glint's pre-validated items?
3 Who are the key stakeholders who need to approve the 360 strategy?
Additional resources
360 Feedback (People Science Explained)
Survey Design Principles (People Science Explained)
Survey Design Principles (video; 1-pager)
Does Glint have a recommendation for how to
develop a competency model?
The key is to develop a model that is relevant to the
success criteria for the target audience(s) in your
organization. While there are different approaches to
developing a competency model, we recommend the
following three general steps.
• Collect information on the success behaviors.
Conduct interviews and/or administer surveys with key
stakeholders, mid, and high performers in the roles of
interest to understand what behaviors are indicators of
success. It is important those you include in this process
are as diverse as your target population(s).
• Draft items. Operationalize these behaviors into
behavioral statements that will serve as your ‘items’. It is
also important to keep the model focused on only the
most critical success criteria versus including all
behaviors.
• Validate the competency model by comparing 360
results to desired business outcomes (e.g., promotion,
retention). This process should be repeated for each
major grouping (e.g. role, department).