Peer feedback: how to build the habit without it feeling awkward
Giving feedback to a peer (not someone who reports to you) is a different skill from giving feedback as a manager, and almost nobody practices it before they actually need it.
Why peer feedback is harder than hierarchical feedback
There's plenty of literature and training out there on how a manager gives feedback to their team. There's a lot less on something just as important and considerably more awkward: how to give feedback to a peer — someone at your same level — without the formal structure of a performance review to give the conversation "permission" to happen.
Peer feedback carries its own specific social friction: there's no hierarchy to legitimize the comment, and there's a real fear that saying something direct will damage the everyday working relationship. The most common outcome is that the feedback simply never gets said, and problems quietly pile up until they explode in a tense meeting or, worse, never get resolved and just generate background resentment.
Why teams that give good peer feedback perform better
Teams where people feel comfortable giving each other direct feedback — without needing a manager to mediate every conversation — fix mistakes faster, because they don't wait for a formal review cycle to flag something that could be better. They also build more trust, somewhat paradoxically, because direct honesty (delivered well) earns more respect than polite silence.
Why cooperative games are a good place to start practicing
Giving feedback about a decision made inside a game is objectively easier than giving feedback about real work: nothing is actually at stake, and the comment is anchored in a specific, recent fact the whole team lived through together. Telling a teammate "when you decided on your own without checking with the rest of us, the team lost time" during the debrief of a Crisis Room session is far less threatening than saying the same thing about a real decision from last week — and yet it trains exactly the same muscle: calling out a specific behavior, without attacking the person.
What well-delivered feedback looks like
Effective peer feedback has three traits you can practice consciously:
- It's specific, not general. "When you didn't share the Pressure system's information until minute 20, the team lost time" is far more useful than "you don't communicate well."
- It talks about the behavior, not the person. The difference between "you did this" and "you are like this" is enormous in how the comment lands.
- It's given close to the moment, not weeks later. Feedback loses effectiveness the further it drifts from the concrete event that triggered it.
A simple exercise for the debrief
After a cooperative game session, instead of only discussing the overall result, run a short round where each person gives another (chosen at random or in turns) one specific comment about something they did well during the round, and one about something they could do differently next time. Starting with the positive lowers initial resistance, and anchoring everything in concrete facts from the session — never in generalities about anyone's personality — keeps the exercise safe. We go deeper on how to structure this conversation in our debrief facilitation guide.
An example of how it sounds in practice
Compare these two ways of saying the same thing after a session of Dependency Network. Vague version: "eh, it was fine overall, though coordinating was a bit rough at times." Specific version: "when you sped up your area in round 2 without telling anyone, it created a bottleneck in round 4 that cost us the rest of the game to recover from." The second version gives something concrete to act on next time; the first gets forgotten before the meeting even ends. Practicing that second way of speaking, round after round, is exactly what turns peer feedback into a natural habit instead of an awkward exception.
The role of psychological safety
Peer feedback only works in an environment with enough psychological safety: if someone's afraid an honest comment will cost them socially, they'll avoid giving it. Building that foundation is ongoing groundwork, not something you resolve in a single session. We dig into this further in our note on psychological safety in teams.
Practicing it regularly, not just once
Like any skill, peer feedback improves with repetition. Turning the debrief after a team activity into a regular space for this practice — brief, specific, anchored in facts — builds the habit gradually, without needing a separate formal training program.
What to do when feedback doesn't land well
Sometimes, even with the best intentions and the most careful delivery, peer feedback doesn't land well: the other person gets defensive or brushes off what's being said. In that moment, pushing harder or repeating the same comment with more emphasis rarely helps. It's more useful to dial it back, acknowledge that the conversation got tense, and offer to pick it up later, once things have cooled down. The goal of peer feedback isn't to "win" the conversation in the moment — it's to plant a specific observation the person can process at their own pace, even if they don't react the way you expected right away.
Start with a low-risk session
If your team doesn't yet have the habit of giving each other direct feedback, a cooperative game session is a good entry point: the context is safe, the facts are shared by everyone, and the exercise of giving specific feedback can be practiced without the emotional weight of a real work situation. Check out the platform and add this practice to your team's next session.
Want to try it with your team?
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