If 360-degree feedback is a revolution in PA system, it has still gone a step ahead to include family, spouse and friends to make it truly comprehensive. Optimizing the utility of this method would help in leadership development, suggests Radha Sharma. In an organization, 360-degree assessment is based on the assessment of an individual's management styles, competencies and behavior by colleagues horizontally and vertically involving boss, peers and direct reports. This is supplemented with self-rating and can, therefore, be a powerful mechanism through which information regarding personal or employee development can be obtained. One of the innovative features about 360-degree feedback is the upward feedback and is considered as an important process contributing to individual and organizational development. The most innovative one of all is to include family, spouse and friends as a tool for feedback provided the focal employee agrees or volunteers to do so (Kalpan).

The advantage of this process is that one obtains information from multiple sources and from people who routinely work with and are affected by the employee's behavior. One may classify the sources into three broad categories: The first one consisting of those who come in direct contact of the recipient (the focal person about whom the feedback is being sought) like supervisor, peers, subordinates, internal or external customers; the second one including the individual himself/ herself; and the third category involving his work-related performance. Some organizations include clients /customers too in the feedback loop.