How to give feedback to a colleague (with a scored example)

Feedback to a colleague is harder than feedback to a report because you cannot end with “anyway, I need this by Friday” as a manager. You need the work to change and the relationship to survive. That only works if the content is specific. “You have been a bit unreliable” is a fight. “The deck landed at 10pm on Tuesday, I had already sent the pack, and the numbers were wrong in the summary” is a fact pattern. Facts can be discussed. Identities cannot.

Colleagues can argue with your standards. They cannot easily argue with the consequence if you describe it cleanly. “I stayed until midnight.” “The client saw version three.” “I covered your section and mine.” Impact without accusation is the difference between a request and a prosecution. Then say what you need next time: earlier flag, a drop-dead time, a split of the work. A complaint without a request is just venting with better posture.

“I have been slammed, this feels like an attack” is a common move. It may even be true. Both things can sit in the room: they are busy, and the late work still landed on you. If you collapse into “forget I said anything,” you have trained them that emotion ends the topic. If you escalate into a catalogue of every slight, you have made it personal. The practised move is a short acknowledgement, then the example again, then the ask.

Peer feedback dies when you wait until the project is folklore. Book fifteen minutes within a few days of the miss, while the deck, the ticket, or the timestamp is still on the record. Ask for a private slot, not a thread with an audience. “Can I grab you about Tuesday’s handoff?” is enough. If you only ever give this feedback when you are already furious, they will hear the fury and not the example. The conversation is cheaper when it is still about one artefact.

“Let me know if it will slip” evaporates by Friday. Agree a time you will look again — the next planning meeting, Thursday at four, the standup after the next drop. Put it in the calendar. If the pattern continues, that check-in is when you decide whether this stays a peer conversation or becomes a manager one. Going to their manager first, before you have had this, makes you the problem in their story. Going never, after three more late packs, makes you the person who complained in the kitchen and did nothing. The check-in is also where you can say thank you if the flag came earlier. Reinforcement is part of the working agreement, not a softening of the original ask.

Twice is a pattern you can still handle as a peer. A third time, after a dated check-in, is when you say you will involve the person who owns the work. Tell them that before you do it. Surprise escalation after a polite chat is how peer feedback turns into politics. The first conversation was supposed to make that step unnecessary. If it did not, do not pretend you are still at “just so you know.”

The feedback sandwich that buries the point. Doing it in Slack with an audience. Waiting until the project is over and the damage is folklore. Softening until the only verb left is “maybe we could think about…” Saying it to their manager first so it arrives as a rumour. Practise saying the sentence you are afraid of: the work was late, it affected me, I need it earlier. If you cannot say that to a friendly peer in a simulation, you will not say it when they are hurt.