Give me an example of a tough or critical piece of feedback you gave to a peer or manager and how it influenced their behaviour.
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Practice with feedback and follow-up questions
What is this question about
Interviewers use this question to assess whether you can deliver difficult feedback with judgment, courage, and respect, especially when there is some interpersonal risk. They are also looking for whether you understand the other person's context well enough to give feedback that is fair and useful, and whether you follow through long enough to know if it actually changed behavior. For more senior levels, the bar rises from 'I said the hard thing' to 'I influenced behavior without damaging trust.'
Key Insights
- Don't make this a story about being right. The strongest answers show that you were trying to help the person and the work succeed, not score a point or prove superior judgment.
- You need to show why the feedback was hard to give. If there was no interpersonal risk, status difference, or meaningful consequence, the story often feels too lightweight for the question.
- Close the loop. Many candidates stop at 'I gave the feedback'; strong answers show how you chose the channel, made the message actionable, and observed real behavior change afterward.
What interviewers probe atlevel
Top Priority
Even at junior level, don't stop at 'I said it'; show that you tried to make it easier for the behavior to change.
Good examples
🟢After the conversation, I suggested we quickly confirm test status before merging shared changes, and I followed that approach myself too.
🟢I asked my manager if we could summarize final decisions in one place after planning so I would know what direction to execute on.
Bad examples
🔴After I told them, I figured it was up to them to fix it.
🔴I gave my manager the feedback and waited to see what they would do.
Weak answers treat feedback as a handoff; strong answers show the candidate helped create conditions for the change to stick.
Valuable
Example answers atlevel
Great answers
In my first year, I was paired with another engineer on a checkout bug fix, and we kept stepping on each other's changes. The hard part was that they were more experienced than I was, but I noticed they were merging updates before I had finished testing the shared flow, which meant I was often finding issues late and we both had to redo work. Before bringing it up, I checked whether they thought my part was already done, and it turned out they didn't realize I was still validating the end-to-end path. I asked for a quick one-on-one and said that when changes landed before shared testing was complete, it created avoidable rework, and I suggested we do a quick check-in before merging anything that touched that area. They agreed, and after that they started pinging me first, and the late rework stopped for the rest of the project. It also made me more comfortable speaking up early when something was affecting delivery.
During a customer support rotation, I noticed one of our team leads was replying to tickets with very technical explanations that confused customers more than they helped. I was only a junior associate, so it felt awkward, but I pulled them aside and said that while the answers were accurate, they weren’t resolving the customer’s problem because people didn’t understand the terminology and still had to write back for clarification. I suggested we try a simpler format: start with the short answer, then give one plain-language step the customer could take next. They took that feedback well and asked me to help rewrite a few templates, and within a couple of weeks we saw fewer follow-up messages on those same issues. It also changed how they coached the team, because they started emphasizing clarity over sounding technically complete.
Poor answers
I gave my manager feedback that our daily standup was too early and people seemed half asleep. It was a little tough because managers decide those things, but I told them it would probably help productivity if we moved it later. They said they'd think about it, and eventually the meeting moved by thirty minutes. I think that showed I can give upward feedback when I need to.
Question Timeline
See when this question was last asked and where, including any notes left by other candidates.
Early April, 2026
Give me an example of a tough or critical piece of feedback you gave to your peer or manager and how that influence their behaviour
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