My current organization has a semesterly performance review process where we give and receive feedbacks from our peers, managers, and direct reports. I just have received my feedbacks for 2025 H2 performance review from my peers. I have read all the feedbacks and it makes me think how different people gave feedbacks and how I gave feedbacks to others. Some feedbacks are more general while some are more specific.
When I give feedbacks to others, I think I tend to be more specific. For example, there’s this one question from the performance review form about “highlight 1-2 key strengths of this individual”. I usually focused on specific task or project that the person did well like “He was successfully managed his team to deliver better and faster in project A”. Where my peers might give feedbacks like “technical and analysis” or “getting things done fast and doing them right”. Which are more about the person’s characteristics rather than specific tasks or projects.I’m not saying that giving feedbacks about the person’s characteristics is wrong, in fact it is also useful. Now I know what my peers are perceiving about me in terms of my characteristics.
Although both types of feedbacks are useful, I’m thinking that if we’re gonna take another performance review in the next six months or taking a look back at previous semester, the person’s characteristics feedbacks might be more or less the same even though the person has improved or changed in some way. Hence I prefer to give specific feedbacks that are more related to the person’s work and performance. So the person that receives the feedbacks can reflect and learn from their past work and performance.
I just remembered that I was reading The Making of a Manager by Julie Zhuo where she mentioned that when giving feedbacks there are three points to consider:
- Make sure the feedback is specific
- Clarify the definition of success
- Give suggestions for what to do next
I think I need to keep in mind these points when giving feedbacks to others. It would make my feedbacks more useful and actionable. Only being specific is not enough, I need to make sure that the feedbacks are clear and actionable. I think we can also apply these points to the characteristics feedbacks, by giving specific examples of how the person’s characteristics have impacted their work and performance.
Above points are quite hard to do, especially when there’s this feedback question that requires us to give rating from 1 to 5 for certain skills or characteristics. How can we give specific feedbacks in a rating scale? Some people might do this differently too. if 1 is the lowest and 5 is the highest, does giving 3 means average or needs improvement? I tend to give 5 as a default, and reduce it to 4 or 3 if I think the person needs improvement in certain areas. Other people might give 3 as a default, and increase it to 4 or 5 if the person is doing exceptionally great. I think this is also something to consider when giving feedbacks in a rating scale. That being said, I also quite lazy to give qualitative feedbacks if the questions are too many. So, yeah I guess combining both quantitative and qualitative feedbacks is also important.
Additional cognitive load that I can think of is, how should we give feedbacks to managers? Should we give feedbacks based on their team achievements and performance? Or should we give feedbacks based on how they manage and lead their team? Because I saw some bad managers (I think) that their team is performing really well despite their bad management. On the other hand, there might be good managers that their team is not performing well due to external factors. These are some things to consider when giving feedbacks to managers. I still don’t have a clear answer for this yet.
Overall, I think giving feedbacks is not an easy task. It requires us to think deeply about the person’s work and performance, and how we can help them improve. I think I need to practice more in giving feedbacks that are specific, clear, and actionable. Hopefully, by doing so, I can help others grow and improve in their careers.
Thank you for reading!