Manager Feedback Survey Questions for Managers & Leaders

Key Takeaways: Effective employee surveys must distinguish between managers (day-to-day guidance) and leaders (strategic vision). By measuring observable behaviors across ten distinct engagement factors, organizations can identify specific drivers for retention — noting that employees with ineffective managers are 6x more likely to leave within a year.

Oliver Lee Bateman, Ph.D.

January 13, 2026

Organizations with effective managers see 6x lower turnover risk. Yet most employee surveys fail to measure the specific behaviors that drive manager effectiveness.

Leaders chart the organization’s strategic direction and are ultimately accountable for organizational performance. They also set the tone on values, ethics, and behavioral expectations. Managers translate senior leaders’ strategic intentions and values into local actions that guide the employees they lead. Working together, leaders and managers guide organizations forward.

Employee listening events about management and leadership allow employees to voice their opinions on the day-to-day experiences within their team environment and the organization as a whole. Employee surveys must measure specific, observable behaviors to identify which managers drive retention and which create turnover risk.

What should a management survey measure?

Improving employee experience requires measuring two dimensions: what you ask (the factors) and who you ask about (managers versus leaders). The “What” involves knowing what to ask employees to measure their experience at work — and that includes measures of manager and leader effectiveness. The “Who” involves asking employees to evaluate multiple factors to get a more thorough understanding of their day-to-day interactions. For instance, we might choose to ask about growth and development, but also ask separately in what ways the employee perceives their manager and leader to be supporting that goal.

The Perceptyx People Insights Model maps 10 factors and 40 themes across the employee experience. Managers and leaders directly influence every factor, making their effectiveness measurable through targeted survey questions.

Working to deliver on the organization’s strategy, managers have two primary responsibilities: team performance and talent retention. Managers who focus only on performance metrics see 40% higher burnout rates. Those who prioritize comfort over results watch productivity decline by 25%. If managers focus only on retention and creating a comfortable work environment, then performance may dip. If they only focus on performance and getting every ounce of output from their team, it can lead to burnout and unwanted attrition.

Manager effectiveness questions fall into two primary buckets: manager relationship and performance management, both of which are themes in our People Insights Model. Most organizations, depending on their culture and values, will score higher in one area than another. The following are examples of some Perceptyx survey questions about the two dimensions of manager performance, which employees are asked to rank on a five-point Likert scale from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”:

What defines a strong manager relationship?

I am comfortable discussing concerns with my manager.
My manager supports my skill and career development.
I fully trust my manager to act in my best interest.
My manager treats me with respect.

What matters in performance management?

My manager provides useful feedback on my performance.
My manager clearly communicates performance expectations.
My manager holds me accountable for tasks and deadlines that I own.
I feel appreciated for the work I do.

Manager survey questions deliver actionable insights when they follow three design principles:

Focus the questions to make it clear who employees should have in mind as they answer the questions.
Ask about observable behaviors.
Ask about themes that connect to your leadership and manager competency models, values statement, code of conduct, or other widely communicated behavior expectations.

Who should employees have in mind when answering?

Most employees interact with many leaders and managers as they work. However, survey questions are generally designed to focus on the manager with whom an employee has the most direct contact. For that reason, it’s advisable to define what you mean by “manager.” Do you mean the person to whom the employee goes for guidance when they encounter a problem at work? Or the person who conducts their performance evaluations? Definitions can be built into the questions themselves, or they can be provided as dynamic instructions on each survey page.

Why focus on observable behavior?

Ask about observable behaviors only. Questions about abstract qualities force employees to guess, producing unreliable data.

Instead of asking employees to rate a statement like this:

“I feel my manager is effective in supervising my work,” It is more effective to ask for opinions about statements like these:

“My manager gives me useful feedback about my work.”

“My manager asks for my ideas and my opinions.”

Any employee should be able to say whether they agree (or disagree) that their manager is displaying the behaviors in question.

Which themes align with stated manager behavior expectations?

If you’ve communicated a model for expected manager behavior, use that model to guide the design of your survey questions. If you don’t have a model, think about what your organization is trying to accomplish that relies on managers for success. Define how managers should behave to support that future vision. Using this approach, you might even include some aspirational questions, asking about behaviors that leaders would like managers to exhibit, even if those behaviors have not been formally codified.

Aspirational questions produce low baseline scores. Expect 15-20 point increases over 12-18 months as you communicate behavior expectations and train managers.

The only challenge with this aspirational approach is that scores may initially be low as you use the survey to establish a baseline. Scores should improve over time as the behavior expectations are more widely communicated. Simply posing the questions guides managers to exhibit — and employees to expect — the behaviors they suggest.

Five manager behaviors predict 80% of team engagement scores:

Setting clear expectations
Making sure employees have the resources needed for their work
Showing fairness to all employees they supervise
Communicating openly and regularly to employees
Rewarding employees for their contributions

Perceptyx research shows that employees who evaluate their manager as ineffective are more than 6x as likely to report that they will leave the organization within a year as compared to those that evaluate their managers as effective. Effective managers can make or break an employee’s experience at work — so ensuring your listening events are aligned to measuring the right manager behaviors is critical.

Which manager behaviors do employees widely expect?

Seventy-three percent of organizations now measure manager relationship quality in annual surveys, up from 45% in 2019. Workers under 30 are 3x more likely to seek new jobs within 30 days than older workers, driven primarily by manager relationship quality. Younger workers, in particular, have expectations regarding:

Sense of connection to their manager
Manager interest in and support of their career aspirations
Feeling like they are treated as unique individuals
Manager showing a personal interest

According to Perceptyx research, workers younger than 30 years old are more than 3x as likely to report that they have engaged in job-seeking behavior within the last 30 days than those over 30 years old — suggesting that managers are essential to retaining younger talent.

Further, employees are asking for more from managers than just guidance about how to perform their work tasks. They want:

A sense of meaning and purpose in their work
A sense of psychological safety
A sense of belonging

When employees report that they possess all three of these characteristics, they are 24x more likely to say they have an effective manager according to Perceptyx research — suggesting that enabling managers to improve these outcomes among their direct reports produces more effective managers, and in turn improved engagement and retention across the organization.

What questions assess leadership effectiveness?

Managers guide day-to-day team performance. Leaders define strategy and organizational direction. Most employee surveys fail to measure these roles separately, missing critical insights.

Leaders who inspire trust see 5x higher engagement rates. Four factors build that trust: competency, communication, consistency, and care for people.

Referring to the People Insights Model can give us the “What” to identify what factors are most important to consider asking employees about, using the Leader as the “who” to be evaluated. Perceptyx research has uncovered four key concepts that build or erode trust in leadership, especially during times of change.

To measure the effectiveness of the leadership team, survey questions should focus on these four key concepts:

Leadership Competency: Ability to execute the strategy.
Communication: Clarity and frequency of updates.
Consistency: Alignment between words and actions.
Care for People: Prioritizing employee well-being.

Those concepts are leadership competency, communication, consistency, and care for people. To measure the effectiveness of the leadership team, survey questions should be designed to measure employee perceptions about these key aspects of leadership. The following are examples of leadership satisfaction survey questions that capture these important dimensions of leader effectiveness; these utilize a five-point Likert scale for employees to rank their agreement with the statement:

Senior management communicates a clear vision for the future.
Sufficient effort is made to get the opinions and thinking of people that work here.
Company-wide communications are effective/useful.
Change is handled effectively in my company.

Clarity about the strategy, confidence in leaders’ ability to execute the strategy, and clear communication about what is going on in the company influence employee engagement.

These strategic drivers of engagement sit solidly in the purview of executive leaders and are typically included in leader-focused questions in employee surveys. No other leader group can have as much impact on these aspects of organizational life.

More recently, again in response to changing employee expectations, new themes are emerging in employee survey questions that focus on leaders:

Visibility of leaders: Do employees see them and know who they are?
Social responsibility of the company: Do leaders guide the organization in doing what is right for the planet and the communities they serve?
Inclusiveness: Do leaders set the tone from the top of the organization and use their voices to advance diversity and inclusion in the workplace?

What should you ask about management and leadership?

Manager and leadership survey questions identify specific behavior gaps that drive turnover. Organizations that measure and act on these insights reduce regrettable attrition by 30-40%.

With the most comprehensive portfolio of listening products, a purpose-built platform, and expertise in all aspects of survey design, listening strategy, and communication, we can help you identify what you should be asking employees to improve your EX.

Frequently asked questions

How many questions should a manager feedback survey include?

Keep the survey to 25–40 rating-scale items plus two or three open-ended prompts. This length covers key themes — relationship, performance management, communication, and trust — without causing survey fatigue.

How often should we run a manager feedback survey?

Run a full survey once a year to track trends, then send short quarterly pulse surveys (5–10 questions) to monitor progress on action plans. Organizations using this cadence see 35% faster improvement in manager effectiveness scores compared to those surveying only annually.

Which rating scale works best for manager feedback items?

A five-point Likert scale (strongly agree to strongly disagree) provides enough range for actionable insights and aligns with industry benchmarks. This scale balances simplicity with precision, allowing employees to express nuanced opinions without overwhelming them with too many choices. Avoid three-point scales, which lack sensitivity to detect meaningful differences, and seven-point scales, which increase cognitive load without improving data quality.

How do we keep employee responses confidential?

Use a survey tool that masks individual answers and reports only aggregated data, usually for groups of five or more respondents. State this rule in the invitation so employees feel safe giving honest feedback.