At my org, peer review doesn’t exist. The feedback is usually delivered by my engineering manager and sometimes my team’s director. Would love to know how can I take the initiative to start an effective feedback process within my team.
Lead by example, start by asking for feedback about yourself. You can do this in a 1:1 setting or bring up the idea in a team meeting. Ask for feedback by a certain date to make it more formal, and make it clear that you’re really eager to listen and have more impact. You could also schedule dedicated “1:1 feedback sessions” with people, so you don’t get distracted by project updates in these meetings.
After a few weeks, come back to the team and share your experience getting the feedback. If it went well, share some of your learnings and ask if folks are interested in doing something similar.
If you want this to be part of the team culture, propose a structure that others can follow, eg. dates for when feedback should be requested and how many people to request. You don’t need fancy tooling for this — literally by sending feedback requests in Slack/email.
Make sure you also get buy in from the manager/director — they shouldn’t feel like you’re going behind their back. Instead phrase it as “having the option of feedback being shared directly will create a higher trust and more effective team”