The promise of 360 feedback is compelling: give leaders a comprehensive view of how they're perceived, and they'll naturally improve. But the reality is far different. Our research shows that even when managers have access to focused insights, only roughly 1 in 5 actually engage in the process of action planning, and even fewer execute these plans effectively as the pressure of daily responsibilities creeps in.
Most 360 models are designed to give individuals feedback on how they're perceived. They generate reports, identify gaps, and then... nothing. The feedback sits in a drawer or digital folder while leaders return to their daily patterns, unchanged and increasingly skeptical about the value of the entire exercise.
As one Perceptyx analysis of 360 feedback implementation reveals, organizations often struggle to communicate and develop the infrastructure needed to turn feedback into actual behavior change. The disconnect between insight and action represents millions in wasted investment and, worse, erodes trust in development initiatives.
The Perceptyx 360 Leadership Competency Model is designed to drive real behavior change that aligns with your culture and business strategy. This focus on development over performance evaluation represents a fundamental shift in how organizations should think about 360 feedback.
Traditional 360 models treat leadership development as an individual exercise. The Perceptyx model goes further, linking leader behaviors to organizational culture, performance, and change readiness. When aligned to the competencies important to the organization, 360s communicate to employees the behaviors they need to exhibit to move the organization in its intended direction.
This positions the 360 as a strategic intervention. Leaders grow in ways that move the organization forward, not just themselves. Aggregated 360 results provide leaders with additional information about the overall health of the organization from a capabilities perspective, revealing which competencies need development across the organization so that training or other interventions can be targeted effectively.
Many 360s are based on generic leadership frameworks or buzzword-heavy competencies that change with each new management fad. The Perceptyx 360 Leadership Competency Model, by contrast, reflects validated behavioral science, drawing from evidence-based constructs like psychological safety, trust, coaching, and decision quality.
The model is built with input from PhD-level behavioral scientists and trained on extensive research, including a knowledge base of more than 10,000 pages of peer-reviewed behavioral science and a library of over 2,500 behavioral nudges. This ensures the behaviors being measured actually drive real outcomes like engagement, retention, and team performance.
Using research spanning more than 20 million employee survey respondents, the model connects to Perceptyx's broader People Insights Model — a science-backed approach to transforming the employee experience that links employee feedback to leading practices for actions that result in behavior change.
The Perceptyx 360 Model is composed of 4 dimensions, which include 17 competencies, for a total of 98 behaviors. These behaviors are relevant for individual contributors, frontline leaders, and mid-level leaders, ensuring appropriate assessment across organizational levels.
Perceptyx's 360 Leadership Competency Model addresses the following dimensions:
Each dimension breaks down into specific, observable behaviors that can be measured and developed. For example, "Develops Others" involves providing ongoing feedback and coaching to help subordinates grow, while "Drives Innovation" stresses the development of innovative solutions and challenges others to improve business results.
Effective 360 feedback surveys focus on observable attributes rather than abstract qualities. Rather than asking about a subject's priorities, values, or beliefs, the assessment focuses on behaviors that raters can actually see. For example, to measure integrity, asking raters if the individual keeps commitments is a more clear-cut measure than asking if they have a clear set of values.
Items are written to be:
A lot of off-the-shelf 360s offer no flexibility — you get what you get. On the other hand, overly customizable models risk losing comparability and quality. The Perceptyx model strikes a critical balance, offering modularity by role level or strategic priority while preserving psychometric integrity.
Organizations can tailor the model by leadership level, strategic priority, or even map it to existing competency models, without compromising the rigor of the insights. This makes it feel relevant and usable, not theoretical.
This customization capability becomes particularly important when organizations have:
The ability to blend models strategically — using the Perceptyx framework as the spine while selectively mapping or tagging items that align with external models — ensures adoption without sacrificing the behavioral science foundation.
Feedback without follow-through equals a major missed opportunity. Many 360s stop at the report. The Perceptyx model includes coaching guides, action planning tools, and nudges that make it exponentially more effective.
Once results are compiled, participants automatically receive a suggested action plan generated by AI, which analyzes their feedback and identifies the most important areas for development. This is personalized based on their specific feedback patterns and organizational context. As these needs change, the coaching adapts.
Based on Nobel Prize-winning research, the system delivers science-based, personalized habit-forming suggestions to managers and employees in the flow of work. These nudges are delivered within the flow of work — through Microsoft Teams, Slack, email, or appropriate channels for deskless workers — making them easy to adopt.
Weekly behavioral nudges reinforce key skills in the flow of work, with 83% of managers engaging with nudges at least weekly in enterprise rollouts — a powerful sign of adoption and value.
Unlike most leadership development programs that struggle to prove ROI, organizations using the integrated approach see measurable results:
The Perceptyx 360 Leadership Competency Model is part of a broader Employee Experience ecosystem. This integration provides a systems-level view that's rare and valuable.
Because our Perceptyx platform integrates culture, engagement, and leadership data, you get a fuller picture of how leadership is showing up and how that impacts your people and your strategy. The platform integrates point-in-time surveys, continuous lifecycle listening, crowdsourcing, and 360 feedback — all in one configurable system.
This connection enables:
This learning-focused approach creates a virtuous cycle: feedback identifies needs, AI provides contextual coaching, targeted learning builds skills, and continuous listening measures improvement.
In the right context, blending an external model with the Perceptyx 360 Leadership Competency Model can be both strategic and customer-centric, as long as it's done without compromising scientific integrity or clarity of feedback.
The customer has a strong internal competency model: Large enterprises often invest heavily in proprietary leadership frameworks. Ignoring that model creates friction and undermines stakeholder buy-in. Blending shows respect for internal language and reinforces adoption.
The external model fills a strategic need: Some companies follow models tied to industry standards or regulatory requirements. Supplementing with key external elements can add credibility and compliance value.
There's a need for executive alignment: At senior levels, boards or CEOs may expect to see feedback mapped to familiar external frameworks. A light-touch mapping can drive stakeholder acceptance.
When blending models, organizations should:
One customer organization successfully used 360 feedback to assess progress on new consultative selling behaviors, with the process serving as a way for leaders to coach their people and hold them accountable for the transformation.
360 feedback programs represent significant investments of time, money, and organizational energy. Yet most fail to deliver meaningful behavior change. The difference between programs that transform organizations and those that become expensive paperweights lies not in the quality of feedback collected, but in what happens next.
The Perceptyx 360 model addresses this gap by:
Schedule a demo with our team to explore how our evidence-based approach can transform your leadership development from an expensive exercise into a strategic advantage. For ongoing insights on leadership development and employee experience transformation, subscribe to our blog for weekly updates on building organizations where leaders and teams thrive together.