Stations About Giving Feedback to a Peer

The prompt puts you level with the other person. Not their supervisor, not their teacher. A group member, a lab partner, a fellow volunteer. And something they are doing is a problem: they are not pulling their weight, they are cutting corners, they keep turning up late and the rest of you are covering.

Candidates fail this in two directions. Some go so soft that the message never actually gets delivered: four minutes of warmth and the person leaves without knowing there was a problem. Others swing the other way and deliver a small speech about professionalism to someone who never agreed to be lectured. Both are avoidance, oddly enough, of the same uncomfortable middle.

What the station is checking

Rubrics vary by university and are not usually published, so check the current admissions page for whichever course you are interviewing at instead of assuming a common template. But given the domains stations are typically scored against, a peer feedback station is fairly transparent about what it wants: did the message get delivered clearly, was the other person treated as an equal with a perspective of their own, and did anything actually get resolved.

The peer framing matters. You have no authority to instruct them, which removes the easy route and is exactly why the scenario is written that way.

Ask before you tell

You are walking in with a theory about someone else's behaviour, built from the outside. Opening with a question rather than a verdict costs twenty seconds and repeatedly turns out to be the difference between a conversation and a confrontation.

How have you been finding the project, or, how do you think it has been going with the group. Sometimes they tell you something that reframes the whole thing: they have been unwell, they were never told what they were supposed to be doing, something at home has fallen apart. Assessors notice enormously when a candidate asks first, because acting on an incomplete picture is one of the specific risks the station is built to expose.

The structure

Signal what the conversation is, briefly

There is something I want to raise, and I would rather say it to you than to anyone else. That single sentence does two things: it removes the ambush, and it establishes that you have come to them directly rather than gone around them, which is worth marks on its own.

Describe behaviour, not character

This is the whole craft of feedback. You are not unreliable is a judgement about who they are, and it can only be defended or denied. The last three sessions have started without you and we have redone parts of your section is a description of events, and it can be discussed.

Stay with what you personally observed. Second hand complaints from other group members weaken you immediately, because now the conversation is about who said what.

Name the impact

Behaviour without consequence sounds like nagging. The reason it matters to me is that we are handing it in on Friday and I have been staying back to cover it. Impact answers the unspoken question of why you are raising this at all, and it keeps the feedback grounded in something real rather than in a standard you are enforcing.

Hand it over and stop talking

The most common technical error in these stations is not pausing. You deliver observation and impact and then keep going, into solutions, reassurance and qualifications, until the other person has no opening. Say your piece and stop. What is going on from your side. The silence is uncomfortable and it is where the station actually starts.

Agree something specific

A feedback conversation that ends with everyone feeling better and nothing changing has not worked. Land on something concrete and small: who does what, by when, and when you will check in. Ask them what would help rather than prescribing it, because a plan they proposed is a plan they might follow.

Swap the mush for the specific

Vagueness is what fear sounds like. These are the swaps worth rehearsing until they are automatic.

• Instead of some people have noticed, use I have noticed. Own it or do not say it.
• Instead of you have not been great lately, use the last two write ups came in after the deadline.
• Instead of maybe you could try to be a bit more organised, use could you send your part by Wednesday so I can put it together on Thursday.
• Instead of it is probably not a big deal but, cut the hedge entirely. It tells them to ignore the next sentence.
• Instead of you always, use the specific instances you actually saw. Always invites a counterexample and ends the discussion of the real issue.

Skip the compliment sandwich

Praise, criticism, praise is taught everywhere and everyone can hear it coming. The first compliment reads as a warning siren and the last one reads as an apology for the middle, which quietly cancels the message. If you genuinely value something about their work, say it because it is true and not as packaging. Honest and warm beats structured and hollow.

When they get defensive

Actors are frequently briefed to push back, and the assessor is watching what you do next. Do not retreat and do not repeat the accusation harder. Acknowledge the reaction, then restate the concrete point once, calmly. I can hear that this feels like it came out of nowhere, and I should have said something sooner. The part I still need to sort out is Friday.

If they get upset rather than angry, stop the agenda and deal with the person. Feedback delivered over the top of distress does not land anyway, and the marks in that moment are for noticing.

And if their explanation genuinely changes the picture, say so. Updating in front of them is not losing the argument, it is what asking first was for.

Preparing

Use the reading time outside the door to fix three things: the one specific behaviour you will name, the impact you will attach to it, and the single sentence you will open with. Everything after that is a conversation you cannot script, but those three keep you from wandering.

Because these appear so often across a typical circuit, it is worth rehearsing the uncomfortable sentence out loud rather than planning it silently. The gap between what people intend to say and what they actually say when someone is looking at them is large, and it only closes with repetition.

That is the honest case for practising against something that will not soften for you. A timed station marked on a rubric will tell you whether the message was actually delivered or merely implied. The first speaking station is free on the trial, no card required, and the trial does not convert by itself.

Say the specific thing, say why it matters, then be quiet and listen. That is most of it, and it is harder than it reads.