Following another grueling performance review cycle, I’ve seen many of my peers gripe about the seemingly never-ending process of writing feedback for each other for a range of reasons: it takes up too much of their time, it’s difficult to craft in a way that’s useful to the reviewee and actionable by their manager, it can be selectively filtered by the reviewee’s manager in a way that’s harmful to them, and it’s just plain awkward. While these are valid complaints, I actually love giving peer feedback! But that hasn’t always been the case – it’s taken me some time to formulate the feedback process as a problem I’m interested in solving, as well as to craft feedback in a way that’s valuable to the one receiving it. It’s been well worth the effort, though, as I’ve found peer feedback to be one of the best ways to build strong relationships with my teammates.
How I motivate myself to give feedback
As an engineer, one technique that I’ve found to motivate myself to give good peer feedback is to view each of my teammates as a complex system to understand. Each colleague is unique in terms of the stage they’re at in their career, what their goals are, and what kinds of support and resources they need to achieve them. I enjoy trying to puzzle out each of these components through a combination of asking directly and matching those answers against patterns that I’ve seen work for myself and others as well as my knowledge of resources within the company that may be beneficial to them.
Aside from the problem-solving challenge, I’m also of course motivated by the desire to be an advocate for my teammates’ accomplishments to their management chain and to help them grow. And, selfishly, by giving my teammates actionable advice on areas ranging from problem-solving to communication, I’m making it easier for myself to build great products with them in the future.
Building good feedback habits
I’ve found that I can make things easier on myself come formal review time if I’ve already given some thought to what sort of feedback my teammates might be looking for and if I’ve established an informal feedback culture with them ahead of time. A couple habits that have worked for me:
Ask them what their goals are
My colleagues are all generally pretty self-aware about their areas of opportunity and what types of work they need to accomplish to get to where they want to go. At many companies, those ideas are even often made concrete in the form of either a formal or informal goal-setting process. I can help my colleagues better as a reviewer if we’re on the same page about what they’re working towards. If I’m particularly close with the person, I may ask them directly what they wrote down for their formal goals or if their manager told them they should be focused on something in particular. Otherwise, to avoid awkwardness, I try to use casual settings like lunch or a mid-day snack break to ask questions like:
What are you excited to be working on this year?
or
Is there something else you wish you were working on?
The answers to these questions often give me insight into what sort of opportunities my teammates find engaging, whether it’s learning about a new domain or embracing a stretch leadership role, as well as development opportunities they’re lacking.
Maintain a culture of regular, informal feedback
Though it’s sometimes difficult, I try to make feedback-giving a regular part of my interactions with my colleagues rather than only part of a review cycle. I do this for two reasons: it takes up less of my time during the review cycle if I already have a list of feedback for them, and it’s unfair to surprise my colleagues during a review with feedback they haven’t heard from me directly before. When I observe a teammate doing something well, particularly when I know it’s aligned with the areas of opportunity they’re working on, I make sure to tell both them and their manager, perhaps through an informal Slack message, email, or 1:1. When we complete a major project together, I often schedule time with them to collaboratively reflect on things that we can do better as a team next time, which creates an opportunity to deliver individual feedback as well. In either of these cases, it’s useful to jot down some bullet points in a doc to refer back to come review time.
What to do at review time
When it comes time to write formal feedback for my peers in the context of a company review process, I’ve also learned a few tricks to avoid some of the feedback pain points I mentioned earlier.
Ask them what they want feedback on
I had my mind blown during a recent review cycle when someone writing feedback for me Slacked me a simple question:
Is there anything in particular I should focus my feedback on?
I found this to be an amazing way to make sure that the feedback that I was receiving was relevant to the areas I was actively looking to grow in. Since then, when writing feedback for others, I’ve tried asking that question along with another:
Are there any accomplishments you’d like me to highlight to your manager?
Not only do these questions help me write feedback that’s actually useful to the person, they also save me time by narrowing my focus and help me establish a stronger bond with my teammates.
Frame feedback in terms of things they want
One common complaint I’ve heard (and experienced) about peer feedback is that managers can manipulate it by selectively highlighting constructive feedback as rationale for a poor rating or denied promotion. I try to turn this game on its head by framing constructive feedback in terms of opportunities that my teammates have told me they want. For example, if I know my teammate wants the chance to learn about Cool Thing X, I may say:
“One area of opportunity is for Beth to broaden her domain expertise and become a thought leader on the team in alternate areas of the problem space, such as Cool Thing X.”
If I know that they really want to work on an exciting cross-team project, I may say:
“One way John can expand his leadership skills is by working on projects outside of his team’s immediate domain.”
As an added benefit, the specificity of this type of feedback makes it easily actionable by their manager, though sometimes I make this explicit, as in:
“Jen’s manager can support her in building her domain expertise by offering resources such as a budget for online courses or conference travel.”
Share it with them directly
While I try my best to be delivering regular feedback to my teammates throughout the year and consider it a failure if they’re hearing anything for the first time in a review, I strive to maintain full transparency by sharing with them directly the feedback that I’ve written for their manager. That way, my colleague has the full picture of what I’ve shared outside of the narrative their manager is telling, and I avoid them losing some of the message in translation by giving them the chance to ask clarifying questions.
Writing feedback can feel grueling and pointless, but by approaching it like an engineering challenge, building good feedback hygiene throughout the year, and putting the system to work for your teammates, it can be less painful and even enjoyable as you build stronger relationships with your coworkers and put the system to work on their behalf.
Andrea Heyman 