How to Write Impactful Peer Feedback

What to Focus On

With examples of positive, neutral, and growth-needed interactions in hand, it’s time to format them into feedback. To make the feedback useful and to reduce the chance of misunderstanding, hurt feelings or argument, focus on the impact your peer’s actions had on you, the project or the organization.

Keeping the feedback in your own voice makes it authentic, which helps the reader accept it. After all, it’s easier to trust that the words come from a place of support if it sounds like it’s from someone we know rather than generic corp-speak. But that can be hard to do, so here’s a template to help you get started.

Last {time}, {peer} did {a thing} which resulted in {effect}. That impacted me by {impact}. (They should keep it up | Next time, they could try {growth idea}).

Here are some examples:

• Last March, Amy started a Modern Concurrency in Swift book club for the team. I learned several new techniques; as a result, I’ve made my code 10% smaller and a lot more reliable. I look forward to our next book.
• In version 3.1, Gus forgot to enable the Ice Cream widget feature flag, so our experiment went live to all our users. Fortunately, this was a minor change, but I had to stop the Fudge project to immediately revert the change and push out a temporary fix, losing three days. I showed Gus the experiment validator, so next time he should be sure to test changes in staging before releasing to production.

This template follows a lot of common feedback models that follow the pattern of describing a behavior, that behavior’s impact, and then a resolution. There are quite a few (trademarked and copyrighted) feedback models that you can find with an internet search, but they mostly boil down to a few points that you should consider when providing feedback:

• Be specific.
• Be timely and relevant.
• Focus on behavior and impact.
• Be personal.
• Be kind and empathic.

You’ll look at each of these next.

Be Specific

Specificity is important because concrete examples will help the receiver to recall the experience and to review it from your perspective. Your colleagues might dismiss or argue against general feedback because they can come up with counterexamples.

Furthermore, avoid adverbs like always and never. People rarely do something every time, and charging your feedback with those words can read like an accusation, causing your peer to reject your feedback. Instead, pick one clear example of when the behavior had an impact. If it was the build-up over time that caused an impact, lay out the specific frequency and time frame over which the event occurred.

For example, instead of “Matt always reviews my code on time, which is really helpful. He should keep that up.” Try something like “For each sprint of the waffle cone library, Matt reviewed my code within a day, allowing me to complete my tasks within their sprints. He should keep that up.”

This is specific to “each sprint of the Waffle Cone library“, which assumes the reader knows with enough specificity what those are. This is also specific to the impact: Instead of just labeling the behavior as “helpful”, it states that it allowed the writer to complete their work on time.

Be Timely and Relevant

Alongside specificity sits timeliness and relevance. The feedback should be about the work that happened within whatever period that you’re asked to consider for feedback. Don’t hold on to errors that happened in the past if your colleague hasn’t done them recently; they may have learned and grown from past mistakes.

It’s also not appropriate to provide feedback if there is no professional impact. If they planned a team outing and you did not like the lunch choice, it’s okay to politely let them know at the time, but it should not be part of formal peer feedback. (Unless the person’s job includes regularly ordering lunch — then it might be relevant).

As already stated, your goal should be to focus on behavior: What your peer did and its impact, as well as what was the result.

For example, if they have a lousy demeanor and dismiss others’ ideas out of hand, don’t write “Rich is a meany who doesn’t listen to his peers.” This is inappropriate even if you phrase it in a less charged way: “As shown in meetings over the last two months, Rich doesn’t listen to his peers.”

This is a judgment statement about Rich’s character. This type of feedback also has two undesirable side effects: It’s likely to elicit a defensive reaction, and it doesn’t provide any room for growth.

Instead, try something along the lines of: “At the Gumdrop meeting, when Tammy suggested we use the Strawberry library, Rich rejected the idea without giving her a chance to explain the benefits. At the Sprinkles meeting, when I brought up switching databases, Rich quickly responded that it would take too long, even though I think we had a viable mitigation. When this happens, people on the team feel like our ideas are not valued and it makes it harder to contribute in the future.”

In this example, instead of focusing on what Rich is or does, you refer to specific behaviors he did and calls out the impact that it had. This also follows the guideline of being specific, relevant and personal.

Be Personal

Meaningful peer feedback should be based on how your peer’s behavior affected you directly or on interactions you directly observed. When feedback is based on indirect observation, you might lack important context. Furthermore, there generally isn’t time for a supervisor to gather enough information to make fair use of the information. It also dilutes the message.

Be Kind

Finally, and most importantly, be kind and empathic in your writing. Read over your feedback and ask yourself: How would I feel if I received this feedback? The purpose is to help your peers grow and be more effective in their roles. The result of the writing should never be to make yourself feel better, get revenge for a past wrong or show off your own coaching greatness.

With these rules in mind, you can take a few examples and turn them into feedback, and you’re done… Well, almost.