The review form asks me to give feedback on my manager, and I don't want to be vague or get myself in trouble.

Behavior, impact, request: the shape that works upward

Feedback to a manager goes wrong in two directions. Either it is all praise (“great leader, very supportive”), which gives them nothing to act on, or it judges the person (“disorganized”, “doesn't care about the team”), which they will argue with instead of hear. The fix for both is to describe what they did, in one moment you saw, and what it did to your work.

A common model for this is Situation, Behavior, Impact: when, what they did, what happened next. Upward, add a fourth part, a small request, because a manager reading a survey cannot ask you what you meant.

One line of each, for the change you want:

- Situation: “In the October sprint” - Behavior: “the priority changed twice after planning, and we heard it in Slack” - Impact: “so two people redid work that was already reviewed” - Request: “Could changes go through standup, with the reason, so we can replan once?”

The same shape works for praise. “Thanks for being supportive” is pleasant and forgettable; “you took the question about the delay on the client call in March, and that let me fix the bug instead of defending it” tells them exactly what to repeat.

Example: comments for a year-end upward review

Most upward forms ask two things in some wording: what should your manager keep doing, and what could they do differently. Here is a filled-in pair, 116 words in all, for the request in the box above.

Keep doing:

“Priya keeps a one-to-one every Thursday afternoon and has not cancelled one since spring. It is the place where problems get raised early, and I have brought two blockers there that were fixed within the week. On the client call in March, when the launch slipped, she answered for the delay herself, which let the team spend the next two days on the fix.”

Do differently:

“Priorities sometimes change in the middle of a sprint and we hear about it in Slack instead of standup. In October that meant two of us redid work that had already passed review. If changes came through standup with a sentence on why, we could replan once and keep the sprint goal.”

Note what is missing: no “always” or “never”, no adjectives about her as a person, no comparison with another manager, and no request that only she could not fulfil, such as more headcount.

Anonymous survey or one-to-one: what changes

In an anonymous survey, the risk is that a detail gives you away. If you are the only designer on the team, “the design review in May” names you. Keep the moment specific enough to act on and general enough to share: “in two sprints this autumn” instead of the date of your own meeting. Many tools show a manager only grouped results above a minimum number of answers, but you cannot see how your company set that, so write as if they might guess.

In a one-to-one or a signed form, the details can be exact, and the request can be a question: “Would it work to…?” Say the positive part first only if you mean it; a compliment used to soften the change reads as a tactic.

Three checks before you submit either kind:

- Would you say each sentence to their face? If not, rewrite it until you would. - Does every criticism have a moment and a request attached? - Is anything in it about their private life, health or a rumor? Delete it.

If what you have to say is about harassment, discrimination or a safety problem, a survey box is the wrong place. Use your HR route or the reporting channel in your handbook.

Lines to adapt, for praise and for change

Keep doing:

- “When you explain why a deadline moved, the team takes the change much better.” - “You give credit by name in the all-hands, and people notice.” - “You answer blockers the same day, even short ones, which keeps us moving.” - “You let me run the vendor meeting in June and stayed quiet unless I asked. That is how I learned it.”

Do differently:

- “I'd find it easier to plan if I knew about review deadlines a week ahead instead of two days.” - “Feedback on my drafts comes in many small messages. One pass with all the comments would save us both time.” - “In meetings with leadership, I'd like the chance to present the work I did, with you there for questions.” - “When a decision goes against what the team proposed, a sentence on the reason would help us explain it to others.”

Words to swap: “micromanages” for the thing they check and how often; “unclear” for the instruction that was unclear; “not available” for how long a question waited.