Peer feedback (small team)
For: Anyone giving feedback to a peer in a small team — not a formal performance review
Peer feedback is the trickiest kind to give well — no formal authority, full mutual exposure. Ten questions on what your teammate does for the team, with the team, and to the team.
- 10 questions
- 3 dimensions
- ~3-4 min
- Self · Peer · Both
Peer feedback is uniquely hard. There's no positional authority to lean on, mutual exposure is total, and the relationship continues every day after the feedback lands. Most peer-feedback formats import the manager-from-above template and discover it doesn't quite fit. This template starts from a different assumption: that the highest-leverage thing peers can tell each other is what they bring to the team, how it feels to work with them on the actual work, and what the team is missing — without dressing it up as performance assessment. 10 questions, designed to make peer feedback usefully specific without making it cost the relationship.
How it works
Best run in a small team where the social fabric is thin enough to absorb honest signal — typically 3-8 people who work directly together. Run it on yourself first to get clear on what you'd say. Then send to 2-4 peers you actually work alongside (not the whole company). Anonymous mode is the default; named feedback works only when trust is genuinely high.
What's inside — 10 questions across 3 dimensions
What they bring to the team
their contribution, reliability, skill
How they work with you
collaboration, communication, trust
What the team is missing
what you'd want from them more, or differently
The questions, in full
Every question is included below. You answer them yourself first, then send the same set to the people who've seen you work.
What they bring to the team
- Q1Rating (1-5)
When this person is on a project with me, I can rely on them — what they say they'll do, gets done.
- Q2Rating (1-5)
This person makes the team better — through their skill, their attention, or just how they show up.
- Q3Rating (1-5)
I'd want this person on my next significant project — not because we're already on the same team, but because I'd choose them.
- Q4Multiple choice
The way this person most strongly contributes is through...
- — Their craft skill — they raise the bar on the work itself
- — Their reliability — things move forward when they own them
- — Their thinking — they ask the questions that change the direction
- — Their energy / culture impact — the team is better with them in it
- — It's hard to point to one — they contribute steadily across all of these
How they work with you
- Q5Rating (1-5)
When we disagree, we work it out directly — there's no political maneuvering, no avoidance, no carrying it for weeks.
- Q6Rating (1-5)
When I bring something hard or vulnerable — a stuck project, a worry, a mistake — this person responds in a way that makes me glad I told them.
- Q7Rating (1-5)
This person shares credit and information — they don't quietly hoard either.
What the team is missing
- Q8Rating (1-5)
There's something this person could do more of (or do differently) that would meaningfully improve the team.
- Q9Open answer
If you could ask this person to do one thing differently as a teammate, what would it be — and what would it unlock for the team?
- Q10Open answer
What's something this person does as a teammate that you'd want them to know lands well — that you've never told them?
The research behind these questions
Drawn from Patrick Lencioni's The Five Dysfunctions of a Team on the team-trust cascade — trust enables productive conflict, conflict enables commitment, commitment enables accountability; Brené Brown's Dare to Lead on vulnerability as the precondition for honest peer relationships; Daniel Pink's Drive on the team-effects of mastery and contribution; Kim Scott's Radical Candor on direct-without-cruel feedback; and CCL strength-spotting research. Each question targets an observable peer behavior — and the template is deliberately calibrated to make positive feedback as specific as critical feedback.
References
- — Patrick Lencioni — The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
- — Brené Brown — Dare to Lead
- — Daniel Pink — Drive
- — Kim Scott — Radical Candor
- — Center for Creative Leadership — strength-spotting research
Ready to run this round on yourself?
Sign up, pick this template, answer it about yourself, and send the same questions to the people who've been in the room with you. The gap between your view and theirs is where the actual learning lives.