The short answer
The best prompts for feedback give the AI your honest notes and ask it to rewrite them as situation, behaviour and impact, with one clear request at the end. Use them to plan and rehearse hard conversations, write specific praise, draft fair performance reviews and process feedback you receive. Claude is our pick for tone, and ChatGPT voice mode is good for role-play. Keep anything about a named colleague in your company's approved work plan, not a personal one.
How to use these feedback prompts
Most feedback goes wrong in one of two ways: it is so soft the message gets lost, or so blunt it starts a fight. AI is very good at the step in between, turning your raw, honest notes into words that are specific, fair and easy to hear. These 12 prompts cover giving feedback, performance reviews, asking for feedback and receiving it. They all push the AI towards the same thing: describe behaviour and impact, not personality.
Replace everything in [square brackets] with your detail. You can paste your notes as bluntly as you like; the AI will do the softening. What you should not paste is anything private about the other person, such as health, family or a grievance, unless your company has an approved work plan for that. More on that below.
Prompts for giving feedback to someone
Start with Turn a frustration into specific feedback, then Plan a hard feedback conversation and Role-play the conversation first, and use Write praise that actually lands for the good news. The first prompt uses situation, behaviour and impact, a simple structure many managers are trained in: when it happened, what the person did and what effect it had. It works because it removes guessing about motives, which is what makes people defensive.
The role-play is the most underrated prompt on this page. Telling the AI how the other person is likely to react, and asking it not to make things easy, gives you a realistic rehearsal. Do two rounds and you will walk into the real conversation with your first sentences ready. Positive feedback deserves the same care: "great job" is forgotten by lunch, while a message that names what someone did and what it changed is often saved.
Prompts for performance reviews
Draft a balanced performance review, Check a review for biased language and Write a self-review that shows impact make review season faster and fairer. The draft prompt asks the AI to flag where your evidence is too thin, which keeps you honest about conclusions you cannot support. The bias check catches words that describe personality rather than work. Words such as abrasive or emotional are a common problem in written reviews, and a quick check before you submit is cheap.
A performance review is a decision about a person, so the AI drafts and you decide. Never paste a review into a personal AI plan. Use your company's approved tool, and keep health, family and other personal matters out of the prompt entirely. Our prompts for HR cover the wider data rules.
Prompts for asking for and receiving feedback
Ask for useful feedback, Make sense of feedback I received and Give upward feedback to my manager help with the side of feedback people find hardest. Asking three specific questions gets you far more than "any feedback?". When you receive criticism, the processing prompt separates what you can act on from general comments and helps you reply graciously instead of defensively.
Prompts for feedback on work and candidates
Give feedback on a draft document and Write feedback for a candidate who was not hired cover two common written cases. Asking the AI to rank points by impact and quote the passage stops it burying the one important change under ten small ones. The candidate prompt only uses job-related points from scored interview notes, which keeps the message useful and fair.
How to adapt these prompts
- Name the relationship. Feedback to a new hire, a peer, a senior leader or a client needs a different tone. Say which.
- Name the channel. A Slack message, an email and a face-to-face conversation need different lengths. Ask for the one you will use.
- Add your culture. Feedback norms differ a lot between countries and companies. Tell the AI, for example, "we are a direct Dutch team" or "this is a formal Japanese client".
- Keep your words in the final version. If the result sounds unlike you, ask the AI to use more of your original phrasing.
Which AI tool works best for feedback
Claude is our pick for feedback, because tone is where it is strongest: it keeps your meaning, removes the sting and tells you plainly when a message is still too soft. The free plan, with Claude Sonnet and Haiku, handles every prompt here. ChatGPT is very good at the role-play, especially in voice mode, which is included on the free plan with limits. If your company uses Microsoft 365, Microsoft Copilot can draft in Outlook and Teams with enterprise data protection on a work account, which is the right place for anything about a named colleague. Grammarly's free plan includes tone detection, a useful last check on an email before you send it.
For personal plans, switch off training before you paste anything about colleagues: in ChatGPT under Settings, Data controls, Improve the model for everyone, and in Claude under Settings, Privacy, Help Improve our AI models. For more on writing at work, see the best AI for writing emails and how to write better emails with AI.
Prompts to copy
Turn a frustration into specific feedback
I need to give feedback to a [colleague / direct report] about [the issue]. Here is what happened, in my own blunt words: [paste]. Rewrite it as feedback using situation, behaviour and impact: when and where, exactly what they did, and the effect it had. Remove judgements about their character or motives. End with one clear request for what I would like them to do differently.
You get: Calm, specific feedback built from your raw notes
Plan a hard feedback conversation
I have to tell [role] that [the issue]. Our relationship is [good / strained / new]. Plan a 15-minute conversation: my opening two sentences, the one point I must not water down, three questions to understand their side, how to respond if they get defensive or upset, and how to agree a next step and a date to check in. Keep it direct and kind.
You get: A conversation plan with words for the hardest moments
Role-play the conversation first
Play [colleague's role], who is [describe their likely reaction, for example defensive and busy]. I will practise giving you this feedback: [summary]. React realistically, push back the way they might, and do not make it easy. When I say or type "stop", tell me where I was clear, where I softened the message too much and one sentence I should change.
You get: A rehearsal with someone who pushes back
Write praise that actually lands
Help me thank [name or role] for [what they did]. The impact was: [paste]. Write a short message for [Slack / email / a team meeting] that names exactly what they did and why it mattered, in under 80 words. No generic praise such as "great job" or "rockstar". Then suggest one way to make the recognition visible to their manager or team.
You get: Specific recognition that people remember
Draft a balanced performance review
Draft the manager section of a performance review for a [job title]. Their goals were: [paste]. Evidence for the period: [paste, facts only, no health or personal matters]. Structure it as achievements against each goal, strengths with an example each, one or two development areas with an example and a suggestion each, and goals for next period. Use neutral, specific language and flag anywhere my evidence is too thin to support a conclusion.
You get: A fair review draft that shows where your evidence is weak
Check a review for biased language
Review this performance feedback I wrote: [paste]. Flag words that describe personality rather than work (for example abrasive, emotional, bossy, not a culture fit), vague claims without examples and any comment about age, family, health or other personal matters. For each flag, suggest a specific, behaviour-based rewrite.
You get: A bias and vagueness check before you submit
Write a self-review that shows impact
Help me write my self-review. My role: [job title]. My goals this period: [paste]. What I did: [paste rough notes]. Turn this into achievements with results and numbers where I have given them, one honest area where I want to grow and what support I need. Do not invent results. Mark any claim that needs evidence with [ADD PROOF].
You get: A self-review that makes your work visible without overclaiming
Ask for useful feedback
Write a short message asking [my manager / two peers] for feedback on [a project or skill]. Ask three specific questions that are easy to answer honestly, for example what I should keep doing, what I should change and one thing I missed. Under 100 words. Make it clear I want candour, not compliments.
You get: A request that gets real answers instead of "all good"
Make sense of feedback I received
Here is feedback I received from [source]: [paste]. Help me process it calmly. Separate the specific, actionable points from general comments, identify any pattern across the comments, and suggest which one or two changes would make the biggest difference. Then help me write a short, gracious reply that thanks them and says what I will do.
You get: Clarity on what to act on, plus a reply that keeps the relationship
Give upward feedback to my manager
I want to give my manager feedback about [the issue, for example last-minute deadline changes]. Context: [paste]. Draft what I could say in our next one-to-one, framed around the impact on my work and the team and a concrete suggestion. Keep it respectful and low-risk for me, and suggest how to open the topic.
You get: Upward feedback that is honest and safe to say
Give feedback on a draft document
Act as an editor reviewing my colleague's draft [report / proposal]: [paste]. Give feedback I can pass on: the three biggest improvements first, ranked by impact, then smaller points. For each point, quote the passage, explain the problem and suggest a fix. Start with what genuinely works so the feedback is easy to accept.
You get: Ranked, quote-backed feedback on someone's work
Write feedback for a candidate who was not hired
Write a short, kind message to a candidate who reached the final round for [role] but was not offered the job. Our scored interview notes show: [paste, job-related points only]. Give two specific, job-related pieces of feedback they can use, thank them for their time and keep the door open if that is genuine. Under 150 words. Do not mention anything about the candidate's personal characteristics and do not compare them with the person we hired.
You get: A respectful rejection with useful, job-related feedback