How to give difficult feedback to a colleague

Someone on your team is well liked, has been there ten years, and is quietly costing everyone else time. Nobody has told him. He thinks he is one of the most productive people in the building — and he is not entirely wrong, which is what makes this hard.

Most people handle this by hinting for six months and then, when nothing changes, delivering something much blunter than they intended. There is a better sequence, and it is specific.

Behaviour, not character

'You've been a bit careless lately' is a claim about who someone is. It cannot be verified, it cannot be acted on, and it can only be argued with — so it will be.

'Your last three pull requests went in on Friday evening with no description' is a claim about what happened. It is checkable. There is nothing to dispute, which is exactly why it lands. The specificity is not politeness; it is what removes the argument.

Attach the cost, and give it a name

A specific observation on its own is just an observation. He will accept it and see no reason to change, because from where he sits nothing is broken.

The cost is what moves people, and it works best when it belongs to a person rather than to 'the team'. '...which means Sofia starts her Monday unblocking your branch instead of her own work' is a different sentence from '...which creates overhead'. One is an abstraction. The other is someone he has coffee with.

Expect the defensiveness and let it happen

He will explain. He will contextualise. He will point at how much he delivers and mention that nobody has raised this before. This is not bad faith — it is genuine surprise, and it is what anyone does when a self-image is contradicted without warning.

The mistake is to soften at that point, because softening confirms that the problem was not real. The other mistake is to escalate. What works is to stay on the specific: repeat the observation, do not repeat the judgment.

Real people concede in pieces. Someone who says 'you're right about everything' has not changed their mind, they have ended the conversation.

Leave with something he agreed to

The conversation is not finished when he accepts the point. It is finished when there is a change that he proposed or explicitly agreed to — and the difference matters more than it sounds.

'Going forward I'd like you to add a description to every PR' is your instruction. 'I'll write the description before I open anything, and if it's after four on a Friday I'll hold it until Monday' is his commitment. Only the second one survives contact with next week.

Getting there usually means asking rather than telling: 'what would work for you?' is the question that converts your requirement into his plan.

Practise thisGive Feedback Someone Does Not WantMarcus Lindqvist is friendly for about three sentences, then defends himself by citing his output. Vagueness inflates it; specifics deflate it.