On Peer Feedback

Every organization has some form of performance review mechanism that allows leaders to calibrate and grow talent. In medium to large organizations, this review process has a peer feedback component that allows peers to provide feedback on how collaborative an employee is and how well their partnership worked as a result. I have a personal rubric that I have used for many years (with some minor variations) across 3 organizations and 18 years of writing reviews (upward, team and peer). It is pretty simple and has worked for me well. I am sharing it here so it is useful if you are looking for some simple tips on writing feedback. Here it goes.

- Don’t decline requests unless you truly haven’t worked much together. If your feedback can make someone better and help them in the career goals, it is a privilege and one worth taking seriously.

- Take the time to write reviews. Collaboration is hard. Projects are hard. And people often go out of the way to help when you most need them. Performance reviews are the time to return that favor. A good review is tangible.

- Consider sharing your feedback with the requestor. This level of transparency and vested interest in someone's growth is always positive.

- Be kind. Feedback on areas to improve can be harsh or it can be delivered in a constructive manner. Remember, you get to work with this person tomorrow and the week after. Being nice (yet providing honest feedback) is how we build good relationships.

- PMs are uniquely positioned to write feedback. We collaborate with hundreds of people across multiple teams and this naturally means more people get to ask you for feedback. PM feedback is also super helpful for the person requesting it because it is the rare one that talks about a holistic story. For my PM peers, you have great power that you can put to good use for the XFN that collaborate with you on a regular basis. It’ll be super valuable to them when you write feedback because this is the big picture.

Hope this is useful next time you get around to writing reviews. As time consuming and challenging as it is to write a few dozen of them, remember that this is one of those few times in a year when you can share candid and valuable feedback with your colleagues. Your thoughtfulness goes a long way.