Giving peer feedback can feel awkward, often leading us to find excuses to avoid it. Thoughts like, “Maybe someone else will tell them” or “I don’t want to make the relationship weird” can quickly kill our motivation.
Despite this hesitation, many people genuinely believe feedback is important and are committed to their company’s success. However, when the time comes to share feedback, they often hold back. This reluctance isn’t due to opposition but rather a hidden competing commitment that prevents action. Among peers, there’s a mix of respect and subtle competition, making it feel like feedback isn’t our place to give.
3 Tips to Make Peer Feedback More Effective
Assuming your managers know how to give feedback, it's important to eliminate the competing commitment about peers, or nothing will change. While this isn't easy, here are some practical ideas to consider.
Tip #1: Practice Giving Peer Feedback
Round tables or small workshops are an effective way to practice giving peer feedback, especially over Zoom. Gather a group of no more than 6 peers and follow this facilitation structure:
- Ask the group: What’s difficult about delivering feedback to your peers? Why is it more uncomfortable than giving it to direct reports?
- Ask the group: Why is it important to give feedback to our peers? How can it actually help you? Encourage them to envision a positive outcome.
- Implement this exercise: Give the group 10 mins to write out one piece of praise and one piece of feedback for each person in the group. Then get the group into pairs and rotate the pairs until everyone has delivered their praise and feedback to each person. This can feel a little uncomfortable but we are trying to rip the bandaid off in a safe environment! By asking people to deliver live, real feedback we are lowering the hurdle and increasing people’s confidence that they can do it and that they can be open to hearing it. Make sure to mention that when everyone receives their feedback they thank the other person - no defensiveness! Just take the feedback as a gift and in good faith.
- Debrief: After the exercise, discuss the takeaways participants have gained from giving and receiving feedback.
Tip #2: Encourage People to Ask for Feedback
Another challenge is that people don’t always love receiving feedback from their peers, even though they may say they do. So, how can we foster a culture of peer feedback? One way is to get people into the habit of regularly asking for feedback so they become more comfortable with it.
Try this exercise: Pair up participants and have them think through when during the week they can ask for specific feedback from a peer. Ask them to note down:
- Who they’re going to ask
- What feedback they’re going to ask for (Note: “Do you have any feedback for me?” won’t work. Make it specific, like: “In our group meeting yesterday, when I presented our findings, what could I have done better to get my point across?”)
- When they’re going to ask for it
- How they’ll remember to do it
Next, have the pairs discuss how they can hold each other accountable for asking for feedback and how to make it a regular habit. This exercise can also be done individually.
Tip #3: Change Processes to Drive Behavior
Arrange for peers to meet (without their manager) to discuss how they would like to set up feedback mechanisms and processes to regularly give each other constructive feedback. By taking ownership of the meeting, they can hold each other accountable for the actions and processes they agree on. This encourages conversation and accountability within the group. To ensure the meeting stays productive, nominate one person to facilitate so that the group can agree on one or two action items by the end. One example is organizing more frequent 15-minute check-ins where feedback is a standing agenda item.
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