Why 360-degree Feedback Matters for Healthcare Leadership
Sonja Cronjé
January 27, 2026
In this Article:
Why 360-degree feedback matters for healthcare leadership
Leadership in healthcare often comes with very little real feedback
I see this a lot – people step into leadership with surprisingly little guidance.
One minute, the focus is on mastering your clinical work. Next, you’re supervising others, making decisions that affect patients and teams, and being looked to for direction. The responsibility ramps up quickly, expectations climb just as fast, and somehow you’re meant to already know how to do this well.
What’s missing for many early-career specialists and healthcare leaders is real, useful, timely feedback. Not end-of-term tick boxes or polite “you’re doing great” comments. I mean honest, specific input about how you actually come across, how your behaviour affects others, and what it’s like to work with you on a tough day.
Most people don’t get much of that. So we fill in the gaps ourselves – usually with a mix of guesswork, self-criticism, and whatever scraps of information happen to drift our way.
Without that wider view, it’s easy to assume we’re doing better, or worse, than we actually are.
Why self-awareness is not a “nice-to-have” in leadership
Self-awareness gets underestimated in leadership. Too often, it's treated as something you either have or you don't, rather than a capability you can actively build.
In practical terms, self-awareness means having some insight into how you come across, not just how you intend to come across. It’s about noticing how you respond under pressure, what you default to when you’re stretched, and where your blind spots might be.
That matters in any workplace. In healthcare, it matters even more.
You’re working in high-stakes environments with built-in hierarchies, multidisciplinary teams, and a constant emotional load. Decisions carry real consequences, and the way leadership is experienced shapes whether people feel safe to speak up, how information moves through a team, and how conflict is handled when there isn’t a clear or perfect answer.
This is where self-awareness stops being a “nice extra” and becomes part of doing the job well.
When leaders understand their own impact, they’re better able to adjust their approach, communicate clearly, and notice when something isn’t working. Over time, that shapes team culture and influences the quality and safety of patient care.
What a 360-degree review actually is (and what it isn’t)
A 360-degree review is exactly what it sounds like. Instead of feedback coming from one direction, usually a line manager, it comes from several angles.
People you work with give confidential feedback on your leadership. That usually includes peers, people who report to you, and senior colleagues. Sometimes it also includes other stakeholders or collaborators, depending on the role.
The aim isn’t to judge you, label you, or put a score next to your name. It’s to give you a clearer picture of how your leadership is actually experienced by others, not just how it feels from the inside.
This is where 360s often get misunderstood.
They’re not the same as an annual performance review, which tends to focus on outputs, targets, and formal expectations. They’re not the same as casual feedback in passing, which is often rushed, filtered, or incomplete. And they’re not the same as patient satisfaction scores, which matter, but measure something quite different.
A 360 also differs from personality tests and leadership quizzes.
Those tools can be interesting – they can give you language, categories, or a way of thinking about your preferences. But they don’t tell you how you show up in real working relationships, under real pressure, with real consequences.
One important caveat: not all 360s are created equal.
There’s a big difference between a validated, research-backed tool and a DIY survey thrown together on a Friday afternoon. I personally prefer the Hogan 360, which is grounded in psychological research and includes healthcare-specific benchmarks.
That matters, because leadership doesn’t look the same in every industry. What’s considered effective in a corporate setting can be unrealistic, or even unhelpful, in a hospital or clinical environment.
What a 360 can reveal about your leadership
One of the biggest strengths of a good 360 is that it doesn’t just give you comments. It shows you patterns.
Single pieces of feedback can be misleading. One awkward interaction, one bad day, one misunderstanding, and suddenly you’re carrying a story about yourself that may not be accurate.
A 360 brings together multiple perspectives so you can see what shows up consistently, rather than getting stuck on a single comment or interaction. When you compare that with your own self-view, you start to get a much fuller picture of how you lead.
That’s what makes it useful for real leadership growth.
Instead of vague advice like “communicate better” or “be more confident”, you get specific information about what’s working, what’s unclear, and where small changes could make a meaningful difference. It shifts development from abstract ideas to concrete behaviours. Things you can notice, practise, and adjust.
It also helps with prioritising. Most high performers already carry a long mental list of things they think they should improve. A 360 helps narrow that down. It shows you what to keep doing, and what’s worth working on, so you’re not trying to fix everything at once or reacting to every passing comment.
Another benefit is that you can see change over time. When you repeat a 360, you can track whether the changes you’re working on are actually being felt by others.
This is where 360s pair well with coaching or structured reflection. Instead of guessing what to focus on, you’ve got real information guiding the work. It makes the whole process more targeted, more efficient, and far more relevant to your actual context.
It also helps prevent what I sometimes think of as “random acts of self-improvement”. Reading all the books, trying all the tips, jumping from one idea to the next, without a clear sense of what you’re actually trying to change.
A good 360 gives you a map. Not a perfect one, but a much more useful one than most people are working with.
Common fears and misconceptions about 360s
Whenever I mention 360-degree feedback, I often see a particular look cross someone’s face – a mix of curiosity, scepticism, and mild dread.
A lot of people worry that a 360 will knock their confidence. That it will confirm every private doubt they already carry around. Others worry they’ll be misunderstood, judged without context, or confronted with feedback they don’t know what to do with.
I also hear versions of: “This feels like something for senior executives, not someone at my stage,” and, very practically, “I barely have time to get through my inbox! How am I meant to fit this in?”
None of these concerns are silly.
A poorly designed 360 can be unhelpful. It can be vague, overwhelming, or poorly framed. It can leave people with a lot of information and very little support for making sense of it.
But when a 360 is done well, with a solid tool, clear framing, and coaching support, it tends to do the opposite of what people fear. It doesn’t exist to catch you out or tear you down. It’s simply a way of getting clearer, more usable information about how your leadership is being experienced, so you’re not left guessing.
Yes, it takes time and emotional energy – I won’t pretend otherwise. But many people find that it saves time in the long run, because it reduces second-guessing and stops them from trying to fix everything at once.
Who benefits most from a 360 (and when)
A 360 can be useful at many points in a career, but there are certain moments when it is especially helpful.
One of those is when people step into leadership for the first time. For many early-career specialists, that shift happens around the same time they take on consultant-level responsibility. The work changes, and so do the expectations. You’re no longer just focused on your own decisions, but on how others are being supported, guided, and influenced by you. A 360 can give you a clearer sense of how that shift is landing for the people around you, not just how it feels from the inside.
It’s also helpful for people who find themselves leading without much formal preparation for that part of the role. Senior nurses, midwives, allied health leads, and others often become leaders because they’re good at their jobs, not because anyone sat them down and taught them how to lead. A 360 can make that side of their work more visible and easier to think about, without relying on guesswork or copying whoever they last worked under.
A 360 can also be useful when someone changes roles or joins a new team. What worked in one environment doesn’t always translate neatly into another. Getting early insight into how you’re coming across can prevent small misunderstandings from hardening into habits.
And then there are people who come to this not because they’re in a new role, but because they feel stuck or uncertain. From the outside, things probably look fine – they’re meeting expectations and getting through the work. But inside, they don’t really know how they’re going or whether they’re focusing on the right things. That kind of uncertainty can be surprisingly tiring. For them, a 360 can turn vague self-doubt into something more usable: a clearer picture of what’s actually happening, and something concrete to work with.
A final thought
Leadership in healthcare is demanding, and most people are doing it with far less information about their impact than they deserve.
A 360 doesn’t give you answers, and it doesn’t tell you who to be. What it can do is help you see yourself more clearly, through the eyes of the people you work with every day. Not to judge you, or reshape you, but to give you more accurate information to work with.
That kind of clarity doesn’t make leadership easy, and it doesn’t remove uncertainty or complexity. But it can make your choices more intentional, your adjustments more targeted, and your growth less reliant on guesswork.
And in a system that asks so much of people, that matters.