This article will guide you on how to create an Employee survey about Leadership Effectiveness. With Specific, you can build this kind of survey in seconds, using proven best practices and AI expertise.
Steps to create a survey for Employees about Leadership Effectiveness
If you want to save time, just generate a survey with Specific. Here’s really all there is to it:
Tell what survey you want.
Done.
You honestly don’t even need to read further. The AI will create a professional, topical survey—pulling from expert knowledge and real-world research. It’ll even ask respondents custom follow-up questions for richer insights, all conversationally. If you do want to get your hands dirty or tweak every detail, the AI survey generator makes it easy.
Why employee leadership effectiveness surveys matter
Let’s not sugarcoat it: organizations live or die by their leadership quality. If you’re not running leadership effectiveness surveys with employees, you’re missing out on some of the most actionable feedback your company can get.
Identifying strengths and growth areas: Regular input from employees pinpoints what leaders are excelling at—and where things are breaking down.
Boosting engagement: Employees who feel heard are more likely to stick around and perform at their best. In fact, the manager-employee relationship accounts for 70% of employee engagement variance. [1]
Reducing needless turnover: More than 50% of employees have left a job due to poor management. That’s a huge, preventable cost. [1]
Driving smart development: When you combine employee feedback with coaching, leadership effectiveness can increase by up to 60%. [1]
Bottom line: The importance of employee recognition surveys and leadership feedback surveys isn’t just academic—these surveys lead to real improvements, cost savings, and better morale. Skip them and you’ll never know what’s actually going on in your workplace.
What makes a good survey about leadership effectiveness?
Not all surveys are created equal. The best leadership effectiveness surveys for employees ask clear, unbiased questions that invite honest, thoughtful answers. Use a conversational tone to lower the stakes and encourage people to open up—no one wants to feel like they’re on trial.
Your goal? Maximize both the quantity and quality of responses. High participation plus clear, useful feedback equates to survey gold.
Bad practice | Good practice |
|---|---|
Confusing, double-barreled questions | One question, one idea |
Loaded or biased phrasing | Neutral, open phrasing |
Robotic/formal tone | Conversational, human tone |
If you’re seeing lots of skipped answers, or responses that are vague, the survey probably needs a tune-up. And remember: good surveys make it easy for people to respond thoughtfully without overthinking.
What are the question types for Employee survey about leadership effectiveness?
A good Employee leadership effectiveness survey uses a mix of question types to capture all angles—not just ratings, but stories and the “why” behind responses.
Open-ended questions dig deeper into context, patterns, and nuance. Use them when you want details, real-world examples, or to uncover what you wouldn’t think to ask. Benefits: richer insights, surprising patterns, and the chance for employees to tell their own story. Try including:
What’s one thing you think your manager does especially well?
Describe a situation where your manager made a positive impact on your team.
Single-select multiple-choice questions give you measurable data and make it easier to compare results across different teams or periods. Great for “quick pulse” feedback or when choices should be limited to the most common scenarios. Example:
Which of the following best describes your manager's approach to feedback?
Provides regular, constructive feedback
Gives feedback only during formal reviews
Rarely provides feedback
NPS (Net Promoter Score) question helps you distill overall leadership sentiment and benchmarks manager performance over time. AI makes it easy to follow up with “Why did you choose that score?” If you want a ready-to-go NPS survey for your team, generate it here. For instance:
On a scale from 0–10, how likely are you to recommend your manager as an effective leader to a colleague?
Followup questions to uncover "the why": Use these to drill down after an initial answer—especially if someone gives a low NPS score, a vague comment, or flags a particular issue. Example:
What could your manager do differently to improve your experience?
If you want to level up your approach or explore even more question ideas, check out this guide to the best questions for employee surveys about leadership effectiveness—it’s packed with examples and creation tips.
What is a conversational survey?
A conversational survey isn't just a list of boxes to check—it's an interactive, chat-like interview that feels natural and engaging for employees. Traditional surveys often feel cold and transactional, while AI survey generators like Specific empower you to have “real” conversations at scale.
Manual surveys | AI-generated surveys |
|---|---|
Static, fixed questions | Dynamic, conversational, adapts to replies |
No real-time followup | Automatic followup on unclear/vague responses |
Time-consuming setup | Done in seconds—just describe what you want |
Often low completion rate | Higher engagement, feels like chatting |
Why use AI for employee surveys? You get a professional, deeply contextual survey instantly, without wrestling with survey builders or endless copy-pasting. AI survey examples adapt tone, question flow, and even follow-ups for richer feedback. And with Specific, the user experience on both ends—the survey creator and the employee respondent—is best-in-class. The feedback process is smooth, so you get more honest, actionable insights.
Curious how this works from start to finish? See our walkthrough on how to create a conversational survey with Specific and how to analyze the results with AI—no manual coding or spreadsheet wrangling needed.
The power of follow-up questions
If you care about truly actionable leadership effectiveness feedback, automated follow-up questions are the ace up your sleeve. Specific’s AI follow-up feature automatically asks smart, context-relevant follow-ups in real time, just like a human expert would—without extra manual effort from you.
Employee: My manager listens sometimes.
AI follow-up: Can you share an example of when your manager actively listened to your concerns?
Without follow-ups, responses often stay vague, leaving you guessing at the real issue—or missing a chance to learn what works.
How many follow-ups to ask? Usually, 2-3 followups per question are enough to get to the heart of the matter, especially if each new reply genuinely clarifies or digs deeper. With Specific, you can set follow-up depth, or let respondents skip ahead when they’ve said enough—it’s all configurable.
This makes it a conversational survey: The back-and-forth isn’t just more pleasant for employees; it captures stories, not just single-word answers, creating true dialogue and unlocking insights you’d never get from static questionnaires.
AI survey analysis is now easy: Even with all this unstructured conversational data, AI makes analysis effortless. Instead of drowning in qualitative data, you can chat with AI about your team's feedback and instantly see key themes and outliers.
Automated follow-ups are still a new concept—give it a try and see just how much deeper your insights can go with an AI survey example. You’ll notice the difference immediately.
See this leadership effectiveness survey example now
Ready to gather meaningful, actionable feedback in minutes? Create your own survey and see how easy it can be to spark honest employee conversations and pinpoint what’s working—and what to improve—across your leadership team.