The UQ Leadership Survey

About the Survey

The UQ Leadership Survey is a 360-degree feedback tool designed to support the development of leadership skills and behaviour related to the 7 key capabilities in the UQ Leadership Framework.

Leadership is not just about what a leader does, but also about their relationships and how others perceive their behaviour, strengths, and development needs. A 360-degree feedback survey asks for feedback about a leader from a variety of people. It usually includes feedback from peers or colleagues, direct reports and managers, as well as self-ratings. It can include customers, collaborators or other stakeholders.

A 360-degree feedback survey provides rich information that can be used to:

check your own perspectives on your strengths and development needs against others' perspectives
celebrate your strengths
plan further development
design your job and career to make use of your strengths
achieve higher performance more easily.

Instructions for Leaders

Advice and instructions for leaders undertaking the UQ Leadership 360-Degree Feedback Process.

Instructions for Respondents

Advice and instructions for respondents completing the UQ Leadership Survey.

What the survey measures

The survey is a combination of quantitative scales and written responses. It provides leaders with data and insight into perceptions of their leadership style held by their manager, team members and colleagues.

The survey report is intended as a stimulus for reflection and conversation, and should be interpreted alongside other indicators. It does not measure factors like intent, personality, or ability.

Anonymity and response aggregation

The leader undertaking the survey nominates respondents from a number of categories:

manager or supervisor
peers and colleagues
direct reports
other contacts.

The leader will also complete the survey to rate themselves.

A total of five respondents must complete the survey for a report to be generated.

Peers, colleagues, direct reports and other contacts

Feedback from 'peers and colleagues', 'direct reports' or 'other contacts' categories will be anonymous. These categories will only appear in the report if they have three or more responses. Quantitative responses will be combined within each category. The report does not identify who gave which responses, or who did or did not respond to the survey.

Manager or supervisor

Responses from the leader's manager or supervisor will be identifiable because they will be the only person in this category. It is strongly recommended the manager or supervisor listed in the 360 is the primary role manager. If the leader wants the perspective of another manager, they will need to be included in another category (e.g., peer, other).

Written responses

Written responses are included in the survey report unedited and in full, but they are not identified. They are presented in a randomised order to maximise anonymity. Try not to include any information that may identify you. Shorter comments are usually less easily identified as being provided by a specific person.

Reporting and access to data

This report is a tool for the development of the leader being rated. The report belongs to the leader, who is not obligated to show this to anyone.

Reports are only accessible to team members in the Organisational Culture and Capability team within HR, who need access to facilitate each debrief and help leaders interpret their report. Results will not be shared with anyone else without a leader's permission.

The survey is hosted through the online survey system of Xref Engage (formerly known as the Voice Project). All data is collected and stored by Xref Engage and UQ staff are not able to access individual responses. Xref Engage may use de-identified data combined with many other people's data for research or benchmarking.

Group reports and benchmarking

Group reports may be produced at times to help identify group-level training needs and trends. They are only produced with a minimum of five participants to preserve anonymity. Group reports contain data averaged across a specified group of participants (e.g., all senior managers). Group reports do not include the identity of respondents, and no individual scores are identifiable.

Survey design

The questions have been developed in collaboration with Xref Engage (formerly known as the Voice Project), survey specialists based at Macquarie University.

Where available, questions were selected from the Xref Engage question bank with demonstrated reliability. These questions were supplemented with tailored questions specifically crafted for the University to ensure relevance in relation to UQ's Leadership Capabilities.