In This Article
Most feedback between coworkers goes unsaid or goes badly. Here's how to give both kinds well with no authority behind you: the appreciation and the correction.
Think of the last piece of feedback you swallowed instead of saying. Got it? Keep it in mind, because you’ll want it later.
Feedback is supposed to help.
Across hundreds of measured attempts, more than a third of them made performance worse.1
Between coworkers the odds get worse still. Nobody put you in charge. And nobody ever agreed on the standard you’re about to hold someone to.
Which is roughly why most of us say nothing for eight months and then say it badly in a kitchen.
The good news? This is a technique problem, and technique is learnable. By the end you’ll have the exact words for eleven of these conversations.
Why Your Feedback Hits Differently Than Your Manager’s
Most of what’s known about feedback at work was measured on managers. Research covering more than a hundred workplaces has looked almost entirely at feedback from supervisors, and the coworker version is barely studied by comparison.2 Where it has been measured, coworker feedback goes with performance more weakly.
When a manager raises an issue, two things are already settled: judging your work is part of their job, and there’s usually a standard you both signed up for—a goal, a role, or a performance review cycle.
With a peer, neither is settled.
Nobody appointed you. And the two of you never agreed on what “on time” means, which is usually the actual argument wearing a scheduling costume.
So your colleague is deciding two things at once. Whether you’re right. And whether it’s your place to say so.
Be honest: which of those would you be weighing?
That’s the hard half of coworker feedback, and most of this guide is about it. But there’s an easier half that almost nobody gives enough of, and it happens to make the hard half work better. Let’s start there. (It’s also the fun half!)
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Six Kinds of Positive Feedback Worth Saying Out Loud
Most of the feedback you’re sitting on is appreciation you keep meaning to voice and haven’t. (If a specific person just came to mind, hold that thought—you’ll want it in a minute.)
Here are six moments worth catching, and what to say when you catch them.
Give Props While the Room’s Still Warm
Have you ever seen a colleague say the right thing in a tense meeting and get everyone back on the same side? Or turn a moment of chaos into one of clarity?
Pointing it out does double duty. The person feels appreciated, and the rest of the team learns that this is a group where that kind of move gets noticed.
When to give it: At the end of the meeting, while everyone who watched it happen is still in the room.
Sample feedback: “Before we close, I just want to give some props to Jane. When you stepped in and mediated that conflict earlier in the meeting, I thought it helped get us back on track.”
Validate the Idea Machine
Got a coworker who’s an idea machine? Tell them. It keeps the ideas flowing, and it makes them far more likely to help you through your own stuck moments later.
When to give it: Any time you feel appreciative or inspired. Stop by their desk, or send the Slack message you’d normally just think.
Sample feedback: “I loved your idea about streamlining our workflow. Seriously, that could save us hours every week. You have a gift for coming up with inventive ideas.”
Be Their Lifeboat
We’ve all been there: life throws a curveball, and suddenly work feels like an uphill battle. When you spot a coworker navigating choppy waters, be their lifeboat—your words can go a long way.
When to give it: Catch a private one-on-one moment when work doesn’t feel hectic or high-pressure.
Sample feedback: “Hey Paul, I know you’ve been going through a tough patch recently, and I just want to tell you that I see you. You’ve been putting in some awesome work and inspiring the rest of the team. Keep at it, and let me know if I can support you in any way.”
Clap for the Work Nobody Sees
Everyone loves a shoutout for the big, flashy wins. The day-to-day grind is what keeps the wheels turning—and it’s the part nobody claps for.
Think about how it feels at home when someone notices the extra care you put into cleaning the kitchen.
Work is no different. And you’re almost certainly underestimating it.
When researchers had people write letters of gratitude, the writers consistently underrated how good those letters made the recipients feel.3
When to give it: In a team meeting if they’d enjoy the public version, or privately if they wouldn’t. You probably already know which one they are.
Sample feedback: “Hey, I noticed you stayed late to organize the project files. That kind of attention to detail helps the whole team, even if it’s not as visible. Please know that your extra effort and dedication are appreciated!”
Go Deeper Than “Nice Spreadsheet”
A compliment about who someone is tends to go deeper than one about what they own or produce. Telling someone you admire their tenacity will outlast telling them you admire their spreadsheet, their purse, or their haircut.
When to give it: Anytime, honestly. Even in passing, it can create a moment of openness and connection.
Sample feedback: “Hey Eric, just real quick, I wanted to tell you how much I appreciate your positive attitude. I feel like you fill every space you enter with optimism, and I’m glad to be around your energy.”
Use the Biscuit Principle
It’s primitive. It works.
Want your dog to put its paw in your hand? Biscuit, every time.
Love it when your partner rubs your neck? Say so, every time.
Grateful your coworker ran that meeting with actual precision? Tell them!
When to give it: Soon after the behavior you want to encourage. It could be during a team meeting, a quick chat in the break room, or over email.
Sample feedback: “I noticed how you helped onboard the new hires and created a welcoming atmosphere. I just wanted to tell you that it was awesome! Keep it up :-)”
There’s a quiet bonus to all six: every one is a deposit in the account the rest of this guide draws on.
Build the Conditions Before You Need Them
Most advice on this starts at the conversation itself, which is a bit like coaching someone on their penalty kick and skipping the part where they learn to run. The things that decide how it goes are set weeks earlier.
Earn the Right on an Ordinary Day
Credibility is one of the things researchers look at when they measure a workplace’s feedback climate, alongside how the feedback gets delivered and whether the source is around when someone wants input.2 It covers two separate things: whether you know the work well enough to have a view, and whether the other person believes you’re being straight with them.
Neither one gets built in the moment you need it. Ask yourself: if this person had a problem with your work, would they tell you? If the honest answer is no, start there.
Visible competence in the specific area builds the first. If you’ve never had to hit that deadline yourself, your view on their deadlines is a preference wearing a lanyard.
The second is built out of duller material.
You don’t repeat what people tell you in confidence. You say the same thing to someone’s face that you said in the meeting. And when you’ve been wrong, you’ve said so where people could hear it.
Action Step: Pick the colleague whose work you’re most likely to need to raise something about. Before you need anything, tell them one specific, accurate thing you noticed about their work. Accuracy is the point. You’re establishing that you see their work clearly, in either direction.
Agree on “Done” Before Anyone Is Late
Quick test: what does “on time” mean on your team, exactly? If you and your colleague would answer differently, congratulations, you’ve just found your next argument in advance.
The feedback research rests on a plain mechanism: people regulate what they do by comparing what they’re told against a standard.1 Take the agreed standard away and there’s no gap to close, just your preference against theirs.
That distinction decides everything.
When someone sees a gap between what they’ve been told and the standard, they have four ways to close it: change the behavior, lower the standard, drop it altogether or reject the message.
Only the first one is what you wanted. The same research ties choosing it to a clear goal and genuine commitment to that goal.
So the most useful feedback conversation is the one you have before there’s anything to give feedback about.
It’s short and completely forgettable. “If either of us is going to miss Wednesday, can we say so on Tuesday instead of Wednesday night?”
Now Wednesday night is a standard somebody agreed to. Raising it later isn’t an accusation.
Try This: On your next shared piece of work, agree on one checkpoint out loud before you start. One sentence is enough, and it gives your future self something to point at besides your own opinion. Future you will be so grateful.
Make Them Say Yes First
Ask whether they want the feedback before you give it. Sounds almost too simple? Watch what it does.
“Can I share something about the handoff yesterday?” does three things.
It hands them control of the timing. It lets them brace, and anything is easier to hear from someone you saw coming.
And their answer is information. A “not now” tells you something. Pushing past it spends credibility you spent weeks building.
Sometimes they say no and you still have to say it. If the issue is safety, money, or a third person getting hurt, permission is a courtesy you can skip. Just know what it costs.
Keep It Pointed at the Work
Once you’re in the conversation, a lot of it comes down to where the feedback aims—and most of us put all our worrying into how gently to say it instead.
Feedback works best down at the level of the task, and gets weaker as attention climbs toward the person receiving it.1 Everything below is a way of keeping it down there.
One caveat for the numbers in this section: they come mostly from lab tasks, where feedback often arrived as a score on a screen. Expect your own office to look messier.
Pass the Camera Test
One of the things that mattered most was how much the feedback threatened the recipient’s sense of themselves. The most threatening quarter of it barely moved performance at all, while the least threatening quarter moved it several times as much.1
The practical version is duller than you’d expect: say only what a camera would have recorded, then stop.
“You’re disorganized” is a diagnosis of a person.
“The file came over Thursday night and I’d blocked Thursday afternoon to review it” is a description of an event.
The second is much harder to argue with, because it’s just what happened. It also leaves your colleague’s picture of themselves out of the conversation entirely.
Watch for the words that convert one into the other. Always and never turn a Thursday into a character trait. So does any sentence starting “you’re the kind of person who.”
Pro Tip: Before you speak, check whether your sentence would still be true if a camera had recorded it. (Try it—it’s weirdly clarifying.) “The file came over Thursday night” passes. “You don’t care about my time” doesn’t, because it’s a claim about someone’s interior that no camera caught.
Bring the Fix With You
This is the step you’re most likely to skip (everyone does), because naming the problem feels like the honest part and proposing the fix feels like overstepping. It’s the opposite: the fix is the generous half.
The numbers point the other way. Feedback that supplied the correct solution did noticeably more than feedback that only pointed at the problem.1
The fix is what turns a complaint into something the other person can actually act on.
The fix doesn’t have to be right. “Could we try the draft going over Tuesday instead?” is a proposal your colleague can improve, reject, or take. What it does is move the conversation from your grievance to a shared problem, which is also the only frame where they can say yes without conceding anything about who they are.
Action Step: Write your feedback as two sentences before the conversation. Sentence one, what happened. Sentence two, what you’d like to try instead. If you can’t write the second one, you’re not ready to have the conversation.
Delete the Stinger
Ready for the hardest edit you’ll make this week? Almost every piece of feedback has one sentence in it that exists only to make the other person feel the weight of the thing. It’s usually the truest sentence, and it’s usually the one you rehearsed most.
“…and honestly, it made me look bad in front of the client.”
Delete it. That’s the stinger: the sentence that flips the conversation from the work to the person, and the numbers on that trade are bad: feedback that came across as discouraging left performance worse on average than giving no feedback at all, while feedback that didn’t improved it.
Try This: Read your two sentences out loud. If one of them has no fix attached and no observable event in it, it’s the stinger. Delete it and see whether the feedback still says what you needed it to.
Write It Before You Say It
One finding here is tempting to misread. Feedback delivered out loud showed smaller average effects than feedback delivered some other way.
That isn’t permission to send a Slack message and call it handled. Between coworkers, the relationship matters in ways no lab task measured.
What survives the translation is narrower and still useful: writing it down first forces you to find the specific—the thing a camera would have caught. You might try it on the one you’ve been putting off for weeks. Most feedback that goes badly was never specific to begin with.
Part of what stops you is the fear that it’ll come out like messy spaghetti and your lack of grace will ruin everything. A draft is the cheapest insurance against that.
Scripts for the Conversations That Usually Go Wrong
A few situations account for most of the feedback people never give. Recognize any of these from your own week? Each script below asks permission, describes an event, and brings a fix. For the full step-by-step delivery process, see how to give constructive feedback.
The Approach That Isn’t Working
Watching a colleague pour weeks into a strategy that isn’t landing is uncomfortable partly because there’s no clean moment to say so. Waiting for one is how people end up saying nothing until the review.
When to raise it: Privately, and early enough that changing course is still cheap.
Sample feedback: “Hey Sam, can I share a thought on the campaign? … The last two rounds came back under target, and I keep wondering whether the segmentation is doing what we hoped. Would you be up for trying one variant with the old segments, just to see?”
The Deadline That Keeps Slipping
Reliability is the one where people wait longest, because the first slip always has a reason and the fourth one still does.
When to raise it: One-on-one, at the second miss. Pick a moment with no deadline in it.
Sample feedback: “Can I raise something about the timeline? … The last two drafts came over the night before review, and I lose the afternoon I’d set aside for it. Could we try flagging slippage on Tuesday? I’d rather know early than get it late.”
The Meeting That Eats the Afternoon
This one is easier than it feels, because the standard is public and nobody has to take it personally.
When to raise it: In the meeting itself, or right after. Aim it at the format.
Sample feedback: “Could we try a hard stop at :50 and see whether we still get through everything? If we do, that’s 30 minutes back for everyone.”
The Emotional Ouch
When we’re in close quarters with other humans, our personalities rub against each other. And sometimes you get pricked.
This is the hardest one to keep pointed at the work, because the work isn’t really what happened. Something hurt and you’re still carrying it.
The move is to describe the moment and name your own reaction, without diagnosing theirs.
You get to report your experience. You don’t get to report their intent. You don’t have access to it.
When to raise it: Soon, privately, and after the heat has come off enough that you can describe the event without relitigating it.
Sample feedback: “Hi Helga, can I share something from the meeting earlier? … When I pitched the idea and we moved straight to the next agenda item, I felt dismissed. I don’t think that was your intention. But I wanted to say it, because otherwise I’ll be weird with you for a week and neither of us will know why.”
The Boundary Nobody Named
Some feedback is about what you’re willing to have happen to you at work, and the research on task feedback has nothing useful to say about it.
Years ago, I worked in retail, and one of my coworkers was always playfully flirting with me, and one time grabbed me in a way I didn’t like. I knew he didn’t mean any harm by it and was just being flirtatious. However, the encounter left me feeling uncomfortable and unsafe. So, after our shift ended, I stopped him outside and told him so. I asked him if he’d be comfortable asking me before engaging in touch in the future.
Admittedly, he did retract from our relationship after this. But it was far better than the alternative of me feeling continually disempowered, uncomfortable, and placating toward him.
Setting a boundary sometimes costs you the warmth of the relationship. It’s still usually the better trade.
When to raise it: In private, close to the incident, while it’s fresh for both of you.
Sample feedback: “Hey Sid, do you have a minute? … When you used my desk earlier without asking, it threw me. My desk feels like my space. In future, would you mind checking with me first?”
What to Do in the Days After
A manager’s feedback is episodic. Yours isn’t, because you’re both at the same standup on Monday (and the same kitchen at 11). What happens in the next few days shapes how the conversation gets remembered.
Skip the Morning-After Apology
The most common mistake is going back the next morning with “hey, I hope what I said yesterday was okay?” We’ve all done it.
That reopens something that had closed.
Worse, it hands your colleague a second job: managing your discomfort about feedback they didn’t ask for and you chose to give.
If the conversation was fair, let it sit. Give it until Thursday before you decide it went badly.
Their quiet on Tuesday is usually just Tuesday. Reading it as damage is how people talk themselves out of ever doing this again.
Let the First Attempt Count
When they make the change, partially or clumsily or however it looks, say so once, plainly. “The Tuesday heads-up helped, thank you.” Then stop talking about it.
This is the biscuit principle from the positive-feedback section, pointed at the exact behavior you asked for. If you feel grateful that your coworker flagged the slip early, let them know.
Naming it once tells them the change was visible. It also closes the loop, so the episode stops being an open item between you. Recognition is its own skill, and praising someone professionally goes much deeper on it.
Accept That Some of These Just Cost You
Sometimes you do all of it correctly and the relationship still cools. The boundary story above ended that way, and it’s the most honest thing in this article.
The research can tell you which conditions make corrective feedback more likely to help. It can’t promise you a colleague who’s glad you said something, or that the work changes at all. Either way you didn’t spend six months being annoyed instead.
When You’re the One Getting It
Everything above has a mirror image, and it’s uncomfortable. How do you do when the feedback points your way?
When a colleague raises something with you, you have the same four exits they did: change what you’re doing, lower the standard, drop it or reject the message.
Rejecting a peer is the cheapest of the four, because nothing happens if you do.
No review. No follow-up. No consequence beyond a slightly odd Wednesday.
So the discipline is catching yourself reaching for it.
It usually arrives dressed as a reason their feedback doesn’t count. They don’t see the whole picture. They’re stressed. That’s just how they are.
Every one of those can be true and the feedback can still be worth acting on.
Then ask for the specific. “You need to do better” is as useful as a screen door on a submarine. You need actionable input to make real changes, so ask what they would have done instead, and on which day, and to what.
And buy time if you need it. “Thank you, give me a day to sit with that” is a complete response, and a better one than the defense you’d have improvised on the spot.
The receiving side has its own guides: handling criticism gracefully covers the emotional side, and constructive criticism covers both directions in more depth.
Frequently Asked Questions About Coworker Feedback
What is coworker feedback?
Coworker feedback is information about someone’s work or behavior offered by a colleague at the same level, rather than by a manager. It differs from a performance review in two ways that matter: it has no formal authority, and it usually refers to a standard the two people never actually agreed on.
Should I give feedback to a coworker if I'm not their manager?
Yes, when the work is shared and you can name a specific event. What you can’t borrow is a manager’s standing, so the groundwork matters more: build credibility before you need it, agree on standards while nothing is wrong, and ask permission before you start.
How do I give constructive feedback to a coworker without causing conflict?
Keep the feedback aimed at the work, and bring a proposed fix with you. Feedback that supplied a correct solution did more than feedback that didn’t, and the most ego-bruising feedback did close to nothing at all. Describing an observable event and proposing something to try does both jobs at once.
What if my coworker gets defensive?
Defensiveness is a common response to being told your work falls short of a standard, and it’s the cheapest one to reach for when the person speaking has no authority over you. Don’t argue them out of it. Restate the observable event, drop the interpretation, and give them the exit of thinking about it and coming back. A colleague who agrees with you on Thursday has usually processed it privately on Wednesday.
Is it better to give feedback in person or in writing?
For anything with feeling attached to it, in person. Write it down first, though. Drafting forces you to find the specific event and the specific fix, and it’s the fastest way to notice that what you have is still just an irritation.
Should I just tell my manager instead?
Sometimes, and the trade is worth naming. Going to a manager borrows the authority you don’t have, which is exactly why it works and exactly why it costs something: your colleague learns you escalated before you asked. As a rough rule, raise it yourself when it’s between the two of you, and escalate when it affects people who aren’t in the conversation, when you’ve already raised it directly and nothing changed, or when the issue is one of conduct.
Coworker Feedback Takeaway
Ready to be the coworker people actually want feedback from? Here’s your week:
- Give the appreciation you’ve been meaning to give. Pick one of the six positive types and say it this week. It’s the cheapest feedback you’ll ever deliver, and it makes every later conversation easier.
- Spend credibility only after you’ve built it. Pick the colleague whose work you’re most likely to need to raise something about, and this week tell them one specific, accurate thing you noticed.
- Agree on one checkpoint out loud on your next shared project. One sentence before you start gives you something to point at later that isn’t your own preference.
- Ask before you open. “Can I share something about yesterday?” hands them the timing and lets them brace.
- Write two sentences first. What happened, then what you’d like to try. If the second sentence won’t come, the feedback isn’t ready.
- Delete the stinger. Find the line that offers no fix and no observable event, and cut it before you speak.
- Say it once when they change, then stop. Naming it closes the loop; repeating it reopens the whole episode.
And if the colleague in question would crumple your feedback into a ball and throw it back in your face, that’s a different problem: here’s this guide on dealing with toxic coworkers.
