Leadership Survey Mistakes That Kill Trust

The executives in many companies set out with the best intentions to gather honest, actionable feedback from their teams around leadership effectiveness. However, the road to meaningful insights can be a minefield that transforms what should be a powerful development tool into something that causes harm. This article will guide you through the most common missteps that leaders make when conducting 360-degree leadership surveys – from compromising anonymity during collection to mishandling feedback delivery and failing to implement meaningful changes.  

 

Here is a three-phase guide on what NOT to do when collecting and acting on your teams’ true leadership insights: 

1. The Collection Phase: 

Anonymity must be protected at all costs. 

Companies routinely destroy honest feedback by collecting unnecessary identifying information or using survey platforms that track individual responses. Studies show that when participants perceive their anonymity as compromised, response rates can drop significantly, and the quality of sensitive information disclosure decreases substantially. Similarly, when companies use survey platforms that track identifying information or conduct surveys in small teams where responses can be traced back to individuals, they create environments where honest feedback becomes impossible. 

Rushing the survey process sends the wrong signal.  

When leaders send daily reminder emails or set unrealistic two-day deadlines, they communicate that participation is more important than quality. In addition, timing is everything. Research from Harvard Business Review shows that layoffs create long-term negative impacts on employee engagement and morale that can last for years. This makes it a particularly problematic period for feedback collection in an environment where honest feedback about leadership becomes nearly impossible as employees prioritise self-preservation over authenticity. 

Biased survey design undermines the entire process.  

Confirmation bias occurs when survey designers inadvertently phrase questions to support a preconceived hypothesis or belief. This bias can significantly skew results and lead to faulty conclusions. As documented in Harvard Business Review‘s research on survey bias, leading questions like “How well does your manager support the company’s new direction?” clearly have expected answers.  

 

2. The Feedback Phase: 

Too many leaders overwhelm recipients during feedback delivery.  

Dumping raw survey results on managers without analysis or interpretation can create overwhelm as well as defensive reactions. Instead of overwhelming leaders with raw data, it is more effective to first identify patterns and themes across the survey results. Most importantly, feedback should be welcomed rather than imposed by first creating a psychologically safe environment where leaders feel comfortable receiving input and guidance. This recommended process transforms overwhelming data into digestible, actionable insights managers can process without becoming defensive. 

Even more damaging, leaders often break confidentiality during feedback sessions.  

If surveys are not anonymous, participants might cater their responses to what they think management wants to hear, rather than sharing their true thoughts and feelings. This can lead to skewed data that does not accurately reflect employee sentiment. Even dropping specific, negative comments without naming names like, “someone mentioned you interrupt too much,” can destroy psychological safety. 

When leaders ignore serious patterns in feedback, they signal that the process was just a tick-box exercise.

Here is a real-world example from a case study shared by Productivity Advocates (June 2025)  involving two companies that regularly conducted leadership surveys—but failed to act on the insights. In “Company B,” employees repeatedly raised concerns in biannual surveys about burnout, unclear direction, and workload. Leadership, however, ignored these warning signs and instead blamed employees for being negative or lacking a work ethic.  

The result? 

• Survey participation dropped significantly – employees lost trust in the process, seeing it as meaningless. 

• Trust fractured: staff felt like victims, and leadership felt misunderstood. 

• Over time, honest feedback dried up, and the company became stuck in a downward spiral of disengagement.  

 

3. The Action Phase:  

The most critical phase often receives the least attention.

Companies frequently implement changes without communicating their connection to survey feedback, leaving participants feeling ignored. For example, a mid-sized tech firm, actively engaging employees with quarterly leadership surveys, identified recurring themes around communication breakdowns and inefficient meeting structures. In response, the company revamped its meetings—introduced clear agendas, shortened sessions, and new collaboration tools. However, they missed a critical step: they did not link these changes back to the survey feedback. 

The Fallout: 

• Survey response rates plunged from 82% to 46% within a year.  

• Employees later confessed in focus groups: “It just feels like a checkbox exercise. Nothing changes anyway.”

Vague action plans demonstrate that feedback was not taken seriously.  

Commitments like “improve communication” or “be more supportive” without specific steps or timelines prove meaningless. McKinsey research indicates that “70% of organisational change efforts fail due to lack of concrete implementation plans.” 

 

Most destructively, some leaders retaliate against participants, even subtly.  

In a SAP blog on workplace retaliation, Skip Lowney, Senior Researcher at the Ethics & Compliance Initiative (ECI), explains: “Exclusion is the number one form of subtle retaliation,” such as withholding essential information, sidelining outspoken employees, or giving them “the silent treatment” after they raise concerns.  

The lasting impact of poor implementation 

Ultimately, poorly handled 360-degree leadership surveys create cascading negative outcomes. Teams become reluctant to provide honest input in any context; leadership development efforts lose credibility, and company culture shifts toward self-protection. More tragically, companies lose access to their most valuable resource: honest, actionable feedback from the people who work most closely with their leaders. Recovery can take years and requires consistent demonstration that feedback is truly valued, protected, and acted upon. In a nutshell, success depends not just on collecting feedback, but on creating an environment where honest communication drives continuous improvement while preserving the trust that makes such communication possible. Leaders that avoid these critical mistakes transform their 360-degree surveys from a routine exercise into a powerful catalyst for leadership development and business growth. 

 

Using a leadership coach during the leadership survey process can significantly increase the impact of the entire cycle – from collecting feedback to driving meaningful change. Here is how a coach adds value at each stage: 

• During Survey Collection: A coach’s role is to ensure quality and clarity, helping leaders interpret the intent of the survey questions and understand the value of honest feedback. 

• During Feedback Interpretation: A coach’s role is making sense of the data, acting as an objective guide to help leaders digest the results while separating personal identity from leadership behaviours. 

• Instituting Change: A coach’s role is to partner with the leader to design and execute realistic behavioral shifts based on feedback. They also help sustain accountability. 

 

As a leadership coach with extensive business knowledge, Kerstin Jatho provides personalised coaching to develop leaders and managers who inspire and guide their teams to success. 

Contact Kerstin Jatho, here to facilitate your company’s 360-degree leadership survey process.

Over to you for sharing your comments and experiences.