Giving peer feedback is not always easy. You want to be able to provide constructive criticism, but at the same time you don’t want it to sound like a personal attack. Tips are often sought after for giving better feedback in the workplace and therefore this blog provides 8 Tips for Giving Great Peer Feedback!
Why Feedback Is Important?
Feedback is an important part of life and it’s great to get feedback when we’re trying something new. We can use feedback to improve our lives, but also help others do the same thing as well!
Feedback from managers, peers, and reports is critical to identifying performance strengths and weaknesses. Feedback can provide employees opportunities for growth in their roles which often leads to improved communication between the employee’s boss/peers etc…
Feedback on a person’s work provides them with many different benefits including ways they might improve as an individual while also improving relationships within your company overall.
8 Tips for Giving Great Peer Feedback
- It’s important to assume good intent when you’re talking with people- Remember that not everyone is a mind reader, and it takes time to empathize with someone. When you’re the receiver of constructive feedback, it can be tough to hear. But when someone is giving you negative criticism – they want your input on how well or poorly their critique did its job. When both parties are invested in each other’s work and future success then there should never be any fear about being honest with one another! After all, 76% of employees surveyed were motivated by positive peer-feedback only; if that doesn’t motivate people to give meaningful commentary back I don’t know what will!
2. Review regularly- If you’re an employer and your staff starts to dread the occasional peer review, it might be a good time for new policies. Otherwise, your employees will feel like they are only being reviewed when there is something wrong with them – which can lead to disengagement in their work or job-hopping. Regularly reviewing each other’s performance helps foster open communication among peers that leads to faster problem solving skills on both sides of the spectrum!
3. Be prepared- Fractl surveyed 1,100 employees about how they felt about difficult conversations in the workplace and found that respondents were more likely to be satisfied during feedback discussions with a direct report than an employee of higher rank. The promising result? Nearly 50% of respondents reported being either somewhat or completely satisfied with challenging discussions between colleagues.
4. Be sure to evaluate the other person’s style- When you are on the receiving end of feedback, it can be tough to take criticism. It might seem like a personal attack or that your colleague is speaking in an unprofessional way–but they may just have different communication styles than you! If there’s something about how someone prefers to receive their critiques, try updating your notes so everyone has more clarity.
5. Get to the point- Think of addressing constructive criticism as a way to help your colleague improve and grow. Do not start off with flattery, but dive right into the feedback first before offering solutions for improvement. Instead of prefacing constructive criticism with praise, dive into the feedback head-on and follow it up by discussing how their strengths can be used to solve any problem. This way they know what areas need improvement but also feel like you’re already aware that there are strong points in an otherwise problematic work method.
6. Encourage a growth mindset to help them find success and develop as human beings- In today’s workplace, it can be tough to give and receive feedback with our coworkers. However, this doesn’t mean that you should shy away from challenging colleagues on a daily basis about their goals in the office (or lack thereof). When providing peer feedback for your colleague next time around, take some pointers from experts like Carol Dweck: phrase your comments and challenge them by using a growth mindset instead of focusing on individual tasks they didn’t accomplish. Focusing too much attention or responsibility onto one person will make them feel unmotivated rather than challenged!
7. Use the passive voice- Giving productive feedback that’s helpful without being personal doesn’t have to be a struggle. The passive voice is integral in this process, as it allows you to focus on the problem and not the individual when critiquing them; leading your peer having less risk of getting defensive or offended by what they’ve said.
8. Leverage technology- The benefits of communicating peer feedback electronically are that it can be documented and saved for future reference. Another benefit is the convenience, as you don’t have to get up from your desk or find a coworker in order to give them constructive criticism face-to-face. If there’s something about their work that they need some help with, sending an email could solve this problem! A third advantage of electronic communication tools like Google Drive comments is having more than one person giving feedback at once; even if someone doesn’t respond right away after commenting on a document, others will still see what was said so far when looking back through previous versions.
