How to Use Multi-Source Feedback to Improve Team Dynamics and Collaboration

Whose opinion on a team is most important? Is it the team leader or is it the team members themselves? All too often, feedback on team performance comes from the top-down. But talk about a limited perspective. Instead, the best way to improve team dynamics and collaboration is using multi-source feedback. Keep reading for the 411 on this type of feedback, including multi-source feedback examples.

What Is Multi-Source Feedback?

Also known as 360 degree feedback or multi-rater feedback, multi-source feedback is exactly what it sounds like—feedback from multiple sources. It’s not just the team leader chiming in on team dynamics and collaboration, it’s also the members who are slugging it out in the trenches. They’re often the ones working together the most so their perspective is vital.

How Often Should You Collect Multi-Source Feedback?

This is another question we hear a lot. The answer depends on your organization, what feels right for your culture, and how quickly things move on teams. At a minimum, multi-source feedback should be collected annually. But it could also be collected on a quarterly basis or when a big project wraps.

But why stop there? We’re big fans of the team pulse survey, which is a short survey that asks simple and focused questions, meaning it’s easy to take and easy to glean useful insights from. It’s so easy that a team pulse survey could be taken monthly, without much moaning and groaning from participants.

What Are Some Multi-Source Feedback Examples?

It’s one thing to administer a multi-source feedback survey and ask for responses. It’s another to encourage those responding to do so in a way that will be meaningful and help improve team dynamics and collaboration. So how do you do it? It starts by following these golden rules of providing feedback. But, we get it, it also helps to see examples of effective multi-source feedback so that you can make sure yours reflects best practices. Here are a few examples of team feedback from the leader and team member perspectives:

From the Team Leader

“Commitment, focus, overall company strategy is kept front and center. Everyone is committed to see the company succeed and invests all their energy for the company’s success.”

“Overall, the team is innovative and routinely thinks outside the box while still maintaining a good understanding of what’s realistic. This can-do attitude is sometimes stymied by individual team members who are more locked into a ‘This is how we’ve always done it’ perspective.’”

From the Team Members

“Group of smart dedicated people who truly want the organization and the people to be successful.”

“Execution on major initiatives is always a huge challenge. I think we need to be honest about what we can and cannot do. Often we plan to do more than what can actually be accomplished.”

“We all need to ask more questions and not assume we understand the full context of any discussion.”

Check out our sample team feedback survey report for additional multi-source feedback examples.