# Review Feedback Examples: What to Write, and What to Say Back Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/working-with-your-manager/review-feedback-examples/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/working-with-your-manager/review-feedback-examples.md Entity type: Article Last updated: 2026-07-07 Language: en Primary audience: professionals improving working with your manager at work Owner: Headway Skills Contact: https://headwayskills.com/contact/ ## Short answer Review feedback examples for self-reviews, peer reviews, and upward feedback, plus what to say when the feedback is about you and you don't fully agree. ## Key facts - Title: Review Feedback Examples: What to Write, and What to Say Back - Category: Working with Your Manager - Primary skill: Working with Your Manager - Related skills: Building Self-Awareness, Communication - Primary keyword: review feedback examples - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/working-with-your-manager/review-feedback-examples/ ## What this page covers - Review feedback examples for self-reviews, peer reviews, and upward feedback, plus what to say when the feedback is about you and you don't fully agree. - Practical guidance for review feedback examples - How this topic connects to Working with Your Manager ## Detailed explanation Good review feedback examples all do three things: name a specific, observable behavior, say what that behavior caused, and point at what better looks like next time. That anatomy holds whether you are writing about a colleague, filling in your own self-review, or reading a comment about yourself. Most phrase libraries hand you two hundred examples without ever naming the pattern underneath them, which is why they blur together after the first screen. The questions below are the ones people actually ask once the blurring starts. ## What does a good review feedback example actually look like? Two comments can describe the same person and only one of them is usable, and the difference is not tone. Take the kind of line that appears in hibob's collection of performance review examples: "You've consistently demonstrated remarkable time management by completing high-priority tasks before the assigned deadlines, which has boosted our team's overall productivity." It names a behavior, ties it to an effect, and could not have been written about anyone else. Now take "good communicator." According to PerformYard, generic feedback is the single most common complaint employees have about reviews, and this is exactly why: there is nothing in it to repeat and nothing in it to fix. The reviewer guide published by Texas A&M University-Commerce adds the third piece — every constructive comment should carry an explicit forward direction, a "going forward, I would like to see…" that turns a verdict into a plan. ## What should I write in my self-review? Specifics, and your own honest read of them. The most common weakness in self-evaluations, according to Rippling's guide to self-evaluation examples, is vagueness: "I am a strong collaborator" tells your reviewer nothing at all. The version that works names the evidence instead — the three cross-functional projects, the written note from the product lead after a launch, the percentage, the timeline, the before-and-after comparison. Where your work produces numbers, use them. Growth areas follow the same rule with a forward turn. Rippling's suggested openers run along the lines of "I recognized that [gap] and have since [action]…", and they work because they show that you noticed something and then did something about it. Deel's guidance on the same question is blunter: the strongest self-evaluations are honest accounts of the work done and the gaps acknowledged, not polished performances. The hard part is rarely the writing. It is knowing which of your gaps are worth naming, and that is far easier when you walk in with [a clear read on your own strengths](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) instead of assembling one the night before the form is due. ## How do I write review feedback for a coworker? Rippling's set of peer review examples lands on three requirements: be specific, be balanced, and be action-oriented. Balanced does not mean padding a criticism with a compliment; it means the comment reflects the whole of what you have actually seen. Action-oriented means the person can do something differently on Monday morning. The practical test is whether your comment survives being read aloud to the person, because in many systems it will be. Write about what someone did and what followed from it, never about what they are like. "Handed the project over without covering the two open questions" is workable. "Careless" is not. ## What do I say when the feedback about me is negative? First, slow the moment down. The sequence that works is to make sure you have understood the comment, then add your own view of what happened, then go away and reflect on it — in that order. Most of the damage in these conversations comes from collapsing all three into an [instant reaction](/knowledge/self-awareness/how-to-not-take-criticism-personally/). Second, get the comment specific enough to be usable. If it arrives broad, ask what it would have looked like done well, and ask which instances it is based on. That one question converts a judgment into a description, and a description is something you can work with. It also happens to demonstrate the thing your manager is watching for in that moment, which is not whether you agree but whether you can take it in. ## What if I disagree with the feedback in my review? Say so. [Disagreeing with your manager](/knowledge/working-with-your-manager/disagree-with-your-manager/) is legitimate, and a review is one of the places it belongs — the relationship works better as a partnership than as a sentence handed down. What matters is how you do it. Separate the observation from the conclusion drawn from it. You can accept "the report was three days late" while contesting "you don't manage deadlines," and it is almost always the second half worth contesting. Bring the instances the conclusion missed. Ask what evidence sits behind it. Then, however it lands, close the way a good review closes: Leapsome's guidance is to end by agreeing on next steps and on a shared definition of what success looks like. A disagreement that finishes with an agreed next step is a productive review, not a failed one. ## How do I answer "what feedback have you received, and how did you respond?" Common enough to be worth preparing for. Lattice's list of review questions singles this one out because it tests coachability and self-awareness at the same time — it is checking whether feedback changes anything after you have heard it. Answer in three moves: the feedback you got, the specific thing you changed, and what happened afterward. One real example told properly beats three vague ones. And if you genuinely cannot think of any, that is much better to discover before the meeting than during it; usually it means you need to start [asking for feedback](/knowledge/working-with-your-manager/ask-for-feedback-at-work/) rather than that none has been available. ## Can I give my manager feedback in the review? Usually yes, and more and more often it is explicitly asked for. Keep it about the work rather than the person, keep it to one or two things rather than a list, and use precisely the anatomy you would want used on you: the specific situation, the effect it had on your work, and what would be more useful instead. Framing carries more weight here than anywhere else in the conversation, because the difference in position is real. "It would help me to know which of these takes priority when they collide" asks for something concrete and easy to give. "You give unclear direction" asks for a defense. ## What do I do after the review is over? The meeting ends, the form gets filed, and that is usually where the value quietly disappears. Two habits prevent it. Write down, in your own words, the two things you and your manager agreed you would do differently and what success on each would look like. Leapsome's guidance treats that shared definition as the real output of the review, more than the ratings are. Then carry one of them into your [regular one-on-ones](/knowledge/working-with-your-manager/one-on-one-discussion/). Feedback you revisit six weeks later becomes a change; feedback you read once becomes a document. ## The skills a review actually tests Read those answers together and the same few capabilities keep surfacing under different questions: setting the conversation up with your manager, taking in a comment about yourself without flinching, and finding words for something specific and slightly awkward. The examples are the visible part. These are what decide how much any of them is worth to you. **Working with Your Manager** is the difference between a review that happens to you and one you take part in. It means preparing rather than arriving, making your results visible before someone else summarizes them, asking what "better" would concretely look like, and saying what you want next — a partnership rather than a verdict. Disagreement is allowed inside that partnership, which is what makes the honest version of the conversation possible in the first place. **Building Self-Awareness** is what turns a critical comment into something other than a bad afternoon. It is the practice of taking feedback in properly — understanding it, adding your own view, then reflecting — and of asking for specific, future-focused advice rather than waiting for the annual verdict. It also covers the part no example list can do for you: recognizing which comments name a genuine blind spot and which name a one-off. **Communication** works in both directions in a review. It is what lets you ask a clarifying question without sounding defensive, state your main point first when you have limited time, and — when you are the one writing about a peer or your manager — say the specific, useful thing rather than the safe, empty one. Giving feedback well is a communication situation with its own rules, not a matter of finding kinder words. None of the three is a fixed trait you either have or do not. The quickest way to see which one is currently costing you most in reviews is to [check where each of yours stands](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) — the assessment covers **twelve work skills** in total, and these three are simply the ones a review leans on hardest. Some of this may already describe how you handle reviews — asking what a vague comment is based on, or writing down what you agreed instead of trusting yourself to remember it. Those are practices, not personality, and the ones you have not built yet are built the same way the others were. It is also the kind of thing that compounds: the more responsibility you take on, the more of your work reaches other people as somebody's summary of it, and the more it matters that you can shape and use those summaries. Reading up on what good feedback looks like before your review, rather than replaying the conversation afterward, is already the part most people skip. ## Find out where your own skills stand What is left is to see which of these you are actually strong at. The **free** Job Skills Test is a short self-assessment covering the twelve work skills behind conversations like this one — including working with your manager, self-awareness, and communication. It shows where you already hold up and which one or two skills would make the biggest difference to how your next review goes, so you prepare for the right thing rather than everything. **[Take the test](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/)** *Free, takes 7 minutes, and your results appear right away.* ## Who this is for - Professionals building practical workplace skills - Readers looking for specific, usable work advice - Managers, educators, and coaches supporting career readiness ## Common questions ### What is this guide about? Review feedback examples for self-reviews, peer reviews, and upward feedback, plus what to say when the feedback is about you and you don't fully agree. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Working with Your Manager. It also relates to Building Self-Awareness, Communication. ### What is the recommended next step? Use the free Work Skills Test to reflect on which work skill to improve next. ## Related pages - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/working-with-your-manager.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/self-awareness.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/communication.md - https://headwayskills.com/work-skills-test.md ## Citation guidance Use the canonical page when citing this content: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/working-with-your-manager/review-feedback-examples/ Preferred summary: "Review feedback examples for self-reviews, peer reviews, and upward feedback, plus what to say when the feedback is about you and you don't fully agree." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.