Tapping Into Peer Resources to Fuel Your Growth

Your peers and colleagues are a seriously untapped resource when it comes to career growth.

Think about it: who do you interact with more on a day-to-day basis?

Your manager, who’s busy with reports and their own boss, or the people you’re working alongside in the trenches?

The people in your team have deeper insights into you, they know you better, and you already have a more familiar, stronger relationship with them.

That’s why getting information from them to help you improve yourself is a smart, powerful strategy.

The Golden Rule? Don’t Give, But Do Ask!

Here's my suggestion: I generally don’t recommend giving unsolicited feedback to your colleagues.

🙅‍♀️ Why? Because it can come across as condescending and can be a huge source of conflict.

It triggers those feelings of insecurity and makes them think, “Who are you to tell me this? You’re not my manager.” 🤨

You can get a lot of that retaliation, that Shield and Dagger thing, and those feelings of insecurity can really come up. So, the golden rule is simple: don’t give unless you’re asked to give.

Instead, the superpower is in actively soliciting feedback from them. This is a game-changer. When you ask for it, you build a stronger bond and a better team dynamic. You also get more detailed information because they have a front-row seat to your work.

Combining Feedback for a Holistic View

What’s so powerful about asking your peers for feedback is that you can then combine it with feedback from your managers.

The lens through which your peers see you is different from the lens your leaders see you through.

Your colleagues can give you the detailed, day-to-day perspective on your work, while your managers provide the big-picture view - the motivation and incentives.

Combining these two data sets gives you a holistic, powerful understanding of where you can improve.

It provides you with a much clearer picture of yourself as a professional and is incredibly helpful when it comes to things like annual goal setting, as you’ll have a whole bunch of things to draw on to set your own goals.

How to Have a Critical Conversation Without It Being "Feedback"

What about those times when something a colleague is doing is impacting you negatively, and you need to address it?

This is where it's useful to have a critical conversation that you don't frame as “feedback.” The focus is on your needs and feelings, not on telling them what they did wrong.

The way to approach these conversations is you frame it as you would any difficult conversation in your life: "These are the things that I need. This is the way that I feel."

You’re not trying to give feedback; you’re just communicating your own personal experience. This is a different and very valuable thing to do.

The "I Statement" Technique

The best way to execute this is by using "I" statements.

You use a lot of "I" statements because your feelings can't be argued with.

For example, instead of saying, “You were late with your part of the project,” you say, “When this occurred, it added an extra four days of workload for me that I wasn’t anticipating, and that made me feel frustrated.”

By communicating how you felt and what happened from your perspective, you remove accusatory language and make it a vulnerable, honest conversation about how you both can work better together.

You move beyond who’s right or wrong, into building trust and a stronger team.