Upward Feedback Questions: How to Get Honest Manager Input

Most feedback in an organization flows one way: down. Managers review their reports, set goals for them and tell them what to improve. The people best placed to say how a manager is actually doing, the ones who work for them every day, are rarely asked in any structured way. Upward feedback fixes that, but only if the questions are good and employees believe it is safe to answer them honestly.

This guide gives you 40 upward feedback questions grouped by what they measure, explains how to choose between rating-scale and open questions, and covers the part most programmes get wrong: anonymity, small teams and what happens after the results come in.

A note on method: we checked every source in November 2026 and link each figure to the page it comes from. Where we describe how software handles anonymity, we describe vendors from their own public help pages. The question sets and process advice are our own, informed by published frameworks from Google and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

What is upward feedback?

Upward feedback is structured input from employees about the performance of the person they report to. It is usually collected through a short survey, often anonymous, and summarized into a report that the manager reviews, sometimes with their own manager or an HR partner.

It is narrower than 360-degree feedback. A 360 gathers views from a manager's boss, peers, direct reports and the manager themselves. Upward feedback is just one of those directions: the view from below. Many organizations run it on its own because it is quicker to set up and easier to repeat.

It also differs from an engagement survey, which asks how people feel about their work and the organization. The two overlap, and a good manager effectiveness survey often draws on both, but upward feedback should always be about observable manager behaviour, not general morale.

Why upward feedback is worth the effort

Managers shape most of the employee experience

Gallup estimates that managers account for at least 70% of the variance in team engagement. If the manager is the biggest single factor in how a team feels and performs, the team is the best source of evidence about that manager.

Yet organizations are not confident in their managers. Deloitte's 2025 Global Human Capital Trends research found that only 26% of organizations say their managers are very or extremely effective at enabling the performance of their teams. Upward feedback is one of the few ways to find out which managers are in that 26% and which need support.

Feedback is scarce in both directions

Gallup reports that 47% of employees say they received feedback from their manager "a few times or less" in the past year. If managers rarely give feedback, they rarely ask for it either. An upward feedback cycle makes the habit two-way and signals that the organization expects managers to listen as well as direct.

There is also a quality problem. In a Gallup study of nearly 15,000 employees, only 16% said their last conversation with their manager was extremely meaningful. Upward feedback can tell a manager why their conversations are landing flat, which is very hard to learn any other way.

It surfaces problems before people leave

Gallup's turnover research found that 42% of employees who voluntarily left said their manager or organization could have done something to prevent it. The same research found that 45% of leavers said no manager or leader had discussed their job satisfaction, performance or future in the three months before they left. Upward feedback gives people a lower-risk way to raise issues before the exit interview.

Large employers already treat it as standard

Google is the best-documented example. Its re:Work site describes Project Oxygen, a multi-year study that analyzed over 10,000 data points about Google managers, taken from performance reviews and feedback surveys, and found that teams with highly effective managers were more likely to achieve better results, be happier and experience lower turnover. Today, Google says that "annually, we ask team members to give feedback on how their managers fulfill the Manager Responsibilities", and each manager receives a report with qualitative and quantitative feedback from the team.

In the public sector, OPM's performance management roadmap for supervisors recommends "360-degree feedback: input from peers, subordinates, and self-assessment" and encourages "two-way feedback (from employees to managers, and vice versa)."

How to write good upward feedback questions

Five rules separate useful data from noise.

1. Ask about behaviour, not personality. "My manager gives me feedback I can act on" is answerable. "My manager is a good leader" is a popularity vote.
2. One idea per question. "My manager is clear and supportive" asks two things. If someone agrees with half, their answer is meaningless.
3. Write statements from the employee's experience. Start with "My manager…" or "I…". Employees can judge what happens to them; they can't judge what their manager does in rooms they're not in.
4. Use a consistent scale. A five-point agreement scale (strongly disagree to strongly agree) is easy to answer and easy to compare across cycles. Add a "no basis to judge" option so people don't guess. OPM's Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey uses exactly this approach and excludes "No Basis to Judge" responses from its percentages.
5. Keep it short. Ten to fifteen rating questions and two or three open ones is enough.

40 upward feedback questions by category

The rating statements below are designed for a five-point agreement scale. The open questions at the end of each section work best as optional free-text fields.

Communication and clarity

1. My manager makes it clear what is expected of me.
2. I understand how my work contributes to the team's goals.
3. My manager shares information I need to do my job in good time.
4. My manager explains the reasons behind decisions that affect our team.
5. When priorities change, my manager tells me why.

Open: What is one thing your manager could communicate more clearly?

Feedback and coaching

6. My manager gives me feedback I can act on.
7. I receive feedback from my manager regularly, not only at review time.
8. My manager recognizes good work when it happens.
9. When my manager gives critical feedback, it is specific and fair.
10. My manager helps me work through problems rather than solving them for me.

Open: Describe a piece of feedback from your manager that helped you. What made it useful?

If scores here are low, the fix is usually skill, not attitude. Our guide on how to give constructive feedback is a practical starting point for managers who want to improve.

Listening and openness

11. My manager listens to what I have to say.
12. I feel comfortable raising problems or concerns with my manager.
13. My manager asks for my input before making decisions that affect my work.
14. My manager is open to being challenged.
15. When I raise a concern, my manager follows up on it.

Open: Is there anything you have hesitated to raise with your manager? You don't need to say what it is, only why you hesitated.

The first statement here is a FEVS item word for word: "My supervisor listens to what I have to say." Borrowing tested wording from a large public survey is a sensible shortcut when you're writing your own.

Trust and respect

16. My manager treats me with respect.
17. I have trust and confidence in my manager.
18. My manager does what they say they will do.
19. My manager treats everyone on the team fairly.
20. My manager gives credit to the people who did the work.

Autonomy and support

21. My manager gives me the freedom to decide how to do my work.
22. My manager does not micromanage.
23. My manager removes obstacles that slow our team down.
24. My manager supports my need to balance work and life outside work.
25. When I'm stuck, I know I can go to my manager for help.

Open: What is one thing your manager does that makes your job harder?

Growth and career development

26. My manager has discussed my career goals with me in the last six months.
27. My manager helps me find opportunities to develop new skills.
28. My manager supports me in taking on new responsibilities.
29. I believe my manager would support me if I wanted to move to another team.
30. My manager helps me understand what I need to do to progress.

LinkedIn's 2025 Workplace Learning Report found that only 15% of employees say their manager helped them build a career plan in the past six months. That makes statement 26 worth including on its own.

Team and goals

31. Our team has clear goals.
32. My manager involves me in setting my own goals.
33. My manager deals with performance problems on the team rather than ignoring them.
34. My manager builds a team where people help each other.
35. My manager represents our team well to the rest of the organization.

Statement 32 is supported by Gallup's finding that employees whose manager involved them in setting goals were nearly four times more likely to be engaged.

Overall and summary questions

36. Overall, my manager is effective in their role.
37. I would recommend my manager to a friend looking for a job.
38. I would want to work for my manager again.

Open:

39. What should your manager keep doing?
40. What should your manager start or stop doing?

If you only ask two things, ask these last two. They are easy to answer and give the manager something concrete to work with.

Sample upward feedback surveys

Three ready-made combinations:

Quick pulse (5 questions, under 3 minutes)

Use quarterly, or after a reorganization or a change of manager.

• My manager makes it clear what is expected of me. (1)
• My manager gives me feedback I can act on. (6)
• I feel comfortable raising problems or concerns with my manager. (12)
• My manager has discussed my career goals with me in the last six months. (26)
• What should your manager start or stop doing? (40)

Standard annual survey (15 questions)

Pick two statements from each of the seven categories, then add the summary statement (36) and the two open questions (39 and 40). That gives you 15 rating items and 2 open items, which is enough to see patterns without wearing people out.

New manager check-in (8 questions)

Run 90 days after someone starts managing a team. Use statements 1, 3, 6, 11, 13, 21 and 25, plus question 40. These focus on habits that are still forming and easy to change.

Anonymity: the part that decides whether people tell the truth

Employees won't criticize the person who controls their assignments and pay unless they are confident the manager can't tell who said what. Get this wrong once and honesty drops for years.

Set a minimum group size

Never show a manager results from fewer than a set number of respondents. Software vendors build this in, but the defaults vary. Lattice's help centre says that for its engagement and pulse surveys, a minimum of three employees must answer a question for the results to be revealed, and admins can raise but never lower that threshold. Culture Amp lets each customer configure a reporting group minimum and a separate comments minimum.

Three is the floor, not the target. For upward feedback, where the audience is a single manager who knows every respondent, five is safer.

Know how your tool handles 360s

Vendors often treat 360 and upward reviews differently from engagement surveys. Culture Amp's employee FAQ for its Effectiveness 360 product is unusually direct: "there is no reporting minimum for this survey," so if you are the only person providing feedback in a category, such as direct report, your feedback may be indirectly linked to you. Check your own tool's settings before you promise employees anonymity.

Small teams need a different approach

If a manager has two or three reports, anonymous ratings aren't really anonymous. Options include:

• Pooling. Combine results for small teams under the same senior leader, so each manager sees a group report rather than their own.
• Facilitated feedback. An HR partner or the manager's own manager interviews the team and passes on themes, without attribution.

Watch the comments

Free text is where identity leaks: writing style and specific incidents can point to one person. Say so in the survey introduction, and consider having HR screen comments for identifying details before release.

How to run an upward feedback cycle

1. Decide what the results are for

Be explicit about whether upward feedback is developmental only, or whether it feeds into manager performance reviews. Both are legitimate. Google's current approach links the two: it says that at year-end, "delivery of the Manager Responsibilities is a key consideration in performance reviews". Many smaller organizations start developmental-only to build trust, then connect it to reviews later.

Whichever you choose, tell managers and employees in advance and don't change the rules mid-cycle.

2. Brief managers first

Managers should hear about the survey, and see the questions, before their team does. A manager who feels ambushed will treat the report as an attack.

3. Explain it to employees

In one short paragraph, say why you're asking, who sees results and in what form, the minimum group size, and what happens next.

4. Keep the window short

One to two weeks, one reminder, and avoid busy periods such as year-end.

5. Debrief privately, then share back

The manager should first read the report alone or with a coach, HR partner or their own manager. Within a few weeks, they should share two or three themes with their team and say what they'll do differently. This is the step most organizations skip, and it is the one that determines whether people bother next time.

OPM's own FEVS results show the risk. Among OPM employees in 2024, only 61.7% agreed that "the results of this survey will be used to make my agency a better place to work", compared with 88.4% who agreed their supervisor listens to them. People can trust their manager and still doubt that surveys lead anywhere.

6. Follow up in one-to-ones

The best place to act on upward feedback is the regular one-on-one meeting. A manager can ask, "You said in the survey that priorities change without explanation. Has that improved?" without needing to know who wrote it. Senior leaders can use skip level meetings to check whether themes from the survey are being addressed.

7. Repeat on a fixed schedule

Run the full survey once or twice a year, with the pulse in between if you want faster signal. Keep core questions identical so managers can see trends.

How managers should read their results

• Look at the spread, not just the average. A 3.5 average from a split of fives and ones tells a different story from a team of steady threes and fours.
• Find the lowest two scores. These are the starting point. Trying to fix everything at once fixes nothing.
• Read the comments last. Numbers show where the issue is; comments show why. Reading comments first tends to anchor on the most emotional response.
• Don't hunt for authors. Trying to work out who wrote a comment breaks the promise of anonymity, and the team will notice.

Google's list of ten behaviours of highly effective managers is a useful lens for interpreting results. It includes being a good coach, empowering the team without micromanaging, communicating effectively, and supporting career development and discussing performance. Most of the questions in this guide map to one of those behaviours.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Using it to punish. If a low score leads straight to a performance plan, next cycle's scores will be suspiciously high.
• Asking about things the manager can't change, such as pay bands. Put those in the engagement survey.
• Running it once. The value comes from seeing scores move after the manager changes something.
• Skipping the share-back. Silence tells employees their input disappeared.

Where software helps

Dedicated performance and 360 platforms handle the awkward parts: group minimums, comment thresholds, manager reports and trends. Before you buy, check the vendor's own documentation for the minimum number of responses, whether it applies to upward and 360 reviews, and whether comments have their own threshold.

Frequently asked questions

Should upward feedback be anonymous?

In most organizations, yes. Employees are unlikely to criticize someone who influences their pay and career unless they're protected. Set a minimum group size of at least three, and ideally five, before any results are shown.

How many questions should an upward feedback survey have?

Ten to fifteen rating statements plus two or three open questions is a good length for an annual survey. A quarterly pulse can be as short as five questions.

How often should you collect upward feedback?

Once or twice a year for a full survey is common. Google runs its manager feedback annually. Add a short pulse between cycles, or 90 days after a new manager starts.

What is the difference between upward feedback and 360 feedback?

Upward feedback comes only from a manager's direct reports. 360 feedback also includes the manager's own boss, peers and a self-assessment.

What should a manager do after receiving upward feedback?

Read the report privately, pick the two lowest-scoring areas, share themes and a short action plan with the team within a few weeks, and check progress in one-to-ones before the next cycle.