Manager Feedback Survey: 40+ Upward Feedback Questions & Templates (2026)

What is a manager feedback survey?

A manager feedback survey — also called an upward feedback survey — is a structured way for employees to evaluate the person they report to, usually anonymously, on dimensions like communication, support, fairness, and trust. The results help managers see themselves the way their team sees them and give the organization an early-warning system for leadership problems.

The bottom line: The whole value of upward feedback depends on one thing — honesty. Employees will only tell the truth about their manager if they genuinely believe their answers are anonymous and consequence-free. Get the psychological safety right and a manager feedback survey is one of the highest-leverage tools in people analytics; get it wrong and you collect polite, useless noise.

Upward feedback differs from a 360-degree review (which gathers input from peers, reports, and the manager's own manager) by focusing specifically on the direct-report-to-manager relationship. It is typically run quarterly or twice a year, and the best programs pair a few quantitative rating questions with open-ended questions that explain the scores.

The categories of a strong manager feedback survey

Organize your questions around the behaviors that actually predict team performance and retention:

1. Communication & clarity — does the manager set clear expectations and share context?
2. Support & development — do they help the employee grow and remove blockers?
3. Trust & psychological safety — is it safe to disagree, admit mistakes, or raise concerns?
4. Fairness & recognition — are workload, credit, and opportunity distributed fairly?
5. Decision-making & competence — do they make sound, timely decisions?
6. Overall & intent — would the employee recommend this manager, and do they plan to stay?

40+ manager feedback survey questions

Communication & clarity (rate 1–5)

1. My manager sets clear expectations for my work.
2. My manager communicates important information in a timely way.
3. My manager gives me feedback that helps me improve.
4. I understand how my work connects to team and company goals.
5. My manager is approachable when I have questions.

Support & development (rate 1–5) 6. My manager actively supports my professional growth. 7. My manager helps remove obstacles that block my work. 8. My manager gives me the autonomy to do my job well. 9. My manager dedicates enough time to our 1:1s. 10. My manager advocates for me and my career.

Trust & psychological safety (rate 1–5) 11. I feel safe disagreeing with my manager. 12. I can admit a mistake to my manager without fear. 13. My manager follows through on what they say. 14. My manager treats me with respect. 15. I trust my manager to act in the team's best interest.

Fairness & recognition (rate 1–5) 16. My manager distributes work fairly across the team. 17. My manager recognizes my contributions. 18. My manager treats all team members equitably. 19. My manager gives credit where it is due.

Decision-making & competence (rate 1–5) 20. My manager makes timely decisions. 21. My manager makes decisions based on sound reasoning. 22. My manager handles conflict well. 23. My manager keeps the team focused on what matters.

Overall & intent 24. On a scale of 0–10, how likely are you to recommend my manager as a leader to others? (manager NPS) 25. Overall, how effective is your manager? (1–5) 26. How likely are you to still be on this team in 12 months? (1–5)

Open-ended questions (the part that explains the scores) 27. What is the single most valuable thing your manager does? 28. What is one thing your manager could start doing to support you better? 29. What is one thing your manager should stop doing? 30. Describe a recent moment when you felt well supported by your manager. 31. Describe a recent moment when you felt let down or unsupported. 32. If you could give your manager one piece of advice, what would it be? 33. Is there anything you have wanted to tell your manager but have not felt able to?

Optional pulse / situational questions 34. Since the last survey, has your experience with your manager improved, stayed the same, or declined? 35. How clear are you on what success looks like in your role right now? 36–40. (Rotate in role-specific items: workload sustainability, remote/hybrid support, onboarding quality, recognition cadence, growth conversations.)

How to keep upward feedback anonymous and honest

The mechanics of trust are not optional — they are the methodology:

• Aggregate before reporting. Never show a manager results unless there are enough respondents (commonly a minimum of 4–5) that no single answer can be traced back to one person.
• Separate collection from the manager. Feedback should flow to a neutral system or HR, not through the manager's own inbox.
• Ask behaviors, not identities. Avoid demographic questions that could de-anonymize a small team.
• Close the loop. Managers who receive feedback, share what they heard, and act on it earn higher honesty in the next round. Feedback that disappears into a void trains employees to stop being candid.

Why surveys alone leave honesty on the table

Even a perfectly anonymous form has a ceiling. Employees soften their language, skip the open-ended boxes, and rarely volunteer the most important thing — the issue they have "wanted to tell but never felt able to." A static form cannot ask a follow-up when someone rates trust a 2, so the why behind the most important scores goes uncaptured. That is the exact gap where upward feedback programs lose their value.

How Koji gets the candid feedback a form never will

Platforms like Koji run the manager feedback survey as an anonymous AI-moderated conversation instead of a static form — which is what unlocks honest, specific, actionable input at scale.

Koji structures the survey with the six structured question types: open_ended, scale, single_choice, multiple_choice, ranking, and yes_no (see the structured questions guide). For upward feedback that means:

• Scale questions capture every 1–5 rating and the 0–10 manager-NPS item as clean, chartable, comparable numbers — so you can benchmark a manager over time and across the org.
• Open_ended questions with AI follow-up are the breakthrough: when an employee writes "communication could be better," Koji's AI interviewer gently probes — "Can you share a recent example?" — and keeps the exchange anonymous. People open up to a neutral AI in ways they will not in a 1:1 or a comment box, and the follow-up turns a vague rating into a concrete, coachable story.
• Voice or text, 24/7, no moderator, so participation is high and the experience feels like being heard rather than processed.

Koji then auto-generates a real-time report: rating distributions per question and per category, the manager-NPS, and themed clustering of the open-ended responses into specific start/stop/continue findings — with anonymity preserved by aggregation. The result is upward feedback that managers can actually act on, delivered in a fraction of the time a manual survey-plus-analysis cycle takes. That is the difference between learning your team rates communication a 3.2 and learning exactly what to change on Monday.

Related Resources

• Structured Questions Guide — the six question types behind quantitative-plus-qualitative people surveys
• Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) Guide — the companion org-wide loyalty metric
• DEI Survey Guide — measuring fairness and inclusion across teams
• Employee Wellness Survey Guide — protecting wellbeing and preventing burnout
• Remote & Hybrid Team Survey Guide — feedback tuned for distributed teams
• Building Rapport in Research Interviews — the trust principles that make people open up