How do I give feedback to someone I don’t manage?

You don’t need authority, but you do need standing

A lot of work doesn’t follow the organisation chart. You may depend on someone in Finance, Operations, HR, another country or another part of the business who has no reporting relationship with you. This is particularly true in matrix organisations, where much of the work happens sideways.

The difficulty comes when something isn’t working. Someone repeatedly gives you information too late, leaves important people out of a decision or does something that creates problems further down the line. If they worked for you, you would probably say something. When they don’t, it is easy to think: is this actually mine to raise?

I think the better question is whether you have standing. Not every irritating habit you notice is yours to correct. But if someone’s behaviour affects your work, an outcome you share or something you are responsible for, you probably have a legitimate reason to talk about it. You don’t need to pretend to be their manager to do that.

This is one of the wider challenges of giving useful feedback: the quality of the conversation depends not only on what you say, but also on the relationship from which you are saying it.

Talk about what happens where your work meets

Imagine someone in another function repeatedly involves your team only after important project decisions have been made. You could say: “You need to involve stakeholders earlier.” But notice what has happened. You have positioned yourself as someone entitled to evaluate how they do their job and tell them what they need to change. Compare that with: “My team has come into the process after the main decisions have been made on the last three projects. Each time we’ve then had to reopen some of those decisions because of implementation issues we could have identified earlier. Could we look at where we need to connect sooner?” The concern has not been softened. You have simply located it somewhere you unquestionably have standing to discuss: where their work meets yours.

This matters particularly when you work across functions and organisational boundaries. Many apparent people problems are also interface problems. Information arrives too late. Responsibilities are interpreted differently. One team’s efficiency creates another team’s rework. Decisions are made without the people who later have to implement them.

Looking at the interface does not mean pretending responsibility is always equally shared. Sometimes another person’s behaviour really is creating the problem. It does, however, give you somewhere more useful to begin than acting as their unofficial manager.

Make your perspective examinable

When you lack formal authority, the quality of the information you bring becomes even more important. “You’re not very collaborative” is a judgement about somebody. They can reasonably wonder why you believe you are qualified to make it. “The Operations team first saw the proposal after the implementation date had been agreed, and we’ve subsequently had to move that date twice” gives them something they can examine.

This distinction between observation and interpretation sits behind several useful approaches in my feedback models guide. The AID feedback model begins with the Action that was actually observed before considering its Impact and what might need to Develop. The BOOST feedback model approaches the same challenge from a slightly different direction, asking whether feedback is observed, objective and specific. Neither model removes judgement from feedback, but both make it harder to begin with a sweeping conclusion about the person rather than something they actually did.

That does not require you to behave like a CCTV camera. Leaders have to interpret what they see. You might reasonably conclude that the way somebody is working is causing unnecessary delay or making collaboration harder. The important thing is to recognise when you have moved from observation into interpretation and leave enough room for information that might change your view

“This is what I’ve noticed. This is the impact I’m seeing. What am I missing?” That is very different from handing someone a verdict. If the conversation is likely to be particularly sensitive, my article on how to give feedback without making someone defensive explores this part of the challenge in more depth.

Don’t disguise an instruction as feedback

There is another trap when giving feedback to someone you don’t manage. We sometimes use the language of feedback to smuggle authority into a conversation. “Just a bit of feedback. You really need to…” Need to according to whom?

There are situations in which you may have legitimate authority even though the person does not report to you. You might own a project, carry responsibility for risk, control a particular decision, represent a client requirement or operate within agreed governance. If that is the case, be clear about it. Reporting lines are not the only source of authority in organisations.

But if you do not have that authority, distinguish between offering information and issuing an instruction. Are you saying “Here’s something I think would be useful for you to know”? Are you asking “Can we understand what is happening here?”? Are you proposing “Could we agree to work differently next time?”? Or are you saying “I need this from you if I am going to deliver my part of the work”?

Those are different conversations. Being clear about what you actually want also makes it easier for the other person to respond. If you want awareness, say so. If you want to understand their perspective, ask. If you need a different working agreement, make the request explicit. The CEDAR feedback model can be useful here because it treats feedback as a conversation, moving through context, examples, diagnosis, action and review rather than presenting the other person with a one-way verdict. Calling all of these things “feedback” can obscure the real conversation you need to have.

What if they don’t agree?

This is where the absence of managerial authority becomes real. You may give clear, thoughtful feedback and discover that the other person simply does not agree with you. They may see the situation differently. They may know something you don’t. Or they may understand your concern perfectly well and still have different priorities.

Your next move cannot simply be to turn up the hierarchical volume. Start by finding out what they see differently. Their response may change your interpretation, add important context or reveal that the problem sits somewhere other than where you initially thought. Being willing to hear that matters particularly in lateral relationships because feedback cannot sensibly become something that only travels in one direction.

But listening does not mean abandoning your own judgement or responsibilities. There is a difference between controlling another person’s behaviour and being clear about what you need in order to do your own work.

You might eventually say “I understand why you don’t see the timing as a problem. From my side, I can’t commit my team to an implementation date unless we’re involved before that decision is final.” You are not pretending to manage them. You are making your own boundary and dependency clear. Sometimes agreement will still not be possible. If the consequences matter enough, an appropriate escalation route may be necessary. Influence without authority does not mean influence without boundaries.

What does current research suggest?

If you don’t manage someone, credibility becomes important for a fairly obvious reason: they have no formal obligation to treat your view as an assessment of their performance. Research backs this up. Source credibility is consistently associated with how feedback is processed (Zyberaj, 2026), while work on coworker feedback also points to the importance of trust and the two-way nature of these relationships (Limberg et al., 2026). In practice, I think this gives us a useful test before saying anything: why am I a credible person to raise this particular issue? Having directly experienced the consequences is a good reason. Having relevant expertise or responsibility may be another. Simply having an opinion about how somebody else should work is rather weaker.

There is also something here about reciprocity. If I want colleagues to listen when I explain how their behaviour affects my work, I need to be prepared to hear how mine affects theirs. That does not require turning every piece of feedback into an exchange of grievances. Sometimes there is simply something I need to say. But over time, feedback that only travels in one direction starts to look rather less like a relationship between colleagues and rather more like an unofficial reporting line. The research on coworker feedback and affective trust makes this worth paying attention to (Limberg et al., 2026).

None of this means that trust makes feedback true. Fulham, Krueger and Cohen (2022) remind us that recipients are also trying to work out whether feedback is accurate and useful. That brings us back to something much more practical: give the other person something they can examine. “We’ve received the figures after the decision meeting three times, and each time we’ve had to reopen the decision. What’s happening from your side?” is much easier to work with than “You need to be more organised.” One describes something happening between your work and theirs and opens it up for discussion. The other appoints you as judge.

So I would worry less about whether you have the right to give feedback to someone you don’t manage and more about whether you have something useful and relevant to bring to the conversation. Be able to say what you have noticed, why it matters to work you share, and why you are the person raising it. Then be prepared for the possibility that what comes back changes your view.

Five questions before giving feedback to someone you don’t manage

Before deciding exactly what you are going to say, I would spend a few minutes on these five questions.

1. What gives me standing to raise this? Why are you an appropriate person to have this conversation? If the only answer is “because I think they’re doing it badly”, think again. If their behaviour affects you, your team, a shared responsibility or an outcome you are accountable for, the basis for the conversation is much clearer.

2. What have I actually observed? Separate the behaviour or events you have seen from the conclusions you have reached about them. You may need those interpretations, but don’t accidentally present them as facts.

3. How is this affecting our shared work or outcome? What is happening at the point where your responsibilities, decisions or work connect? This gives you something more useful to discuss than a general assessment of the other person.

4. What might I not understand about their situation? What constraints, information, priorities or previous conversations might they know about that you don’t? This does not mean assuming your concern is wrong. It means leaving room for your picture to become more complete.

5. Would I be equally willing to hear how they think I am contributing to this? If you want feedback to travel laterally, it cannot sensibly become something you only give. Their answer may be uncomfortable. It may also reveal something important about the interface between you that neither of you could see alone.

There is then one final practical decision: What do you actually want from the conversation? Awareness? Their perspective? A different working agreement? A specific change? Knowing that before you begin can prevent feedback from becoming a vague attempt to make somebody else behave differently.

Conclusion

Giving feedback to someone you don’t manage is not simply managerial feedback with the authority removed. The relationship is different, and so is the basis on which the conversation works.

The most useful starting point is usually not “How do I tell them what they need to change?” but “What am I seeing where our work meets, why does it matter, and what gives me legitimate standing to raise it?” From there you can bring specific observations, explain the impact you are seeing, remain open to information you do not yet have and be clear about what you are asking for.

Authority gives you one reason to have a feedback conversation. Interdependence can give you another.

Three questions to reflect on

1. Where are you currently tolerating a problem because the person involved does not report to you?
2. If you raised it, could you describe what is happening where your work meets without turning the conversation into an appraisal of the other person?
3. How willing are you to hear their view of what you may be contributing to the same problem?

If you would like to explore ways of structuring feedback, then my Feedback Model Hub may be worth exploring. I explore giving feedback in my Leadership Library resources.

References

Fulham, N.M., Krueger, K.L. and Cohen, T.R. (2022) ‘Honest feedback: Barriers to receptivity and discerning the truth in feedback’, Current Opinion in Psychology, 46, 101405. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2022.101405.

Limberg, A. et al. (2026) ‘Tit for tat? Linking congruence in receiving and providing coworker feedback to affective trust’, Personnel Review, 55(1), pp. 27–48. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-03-2025-0248.

Zyberaj, J. (2026) ‘Examining the relationship between supervisory feedback characteristics and employee feedback processing: a systematic review and meta-analysis’, Current Psychology, 45, article 1221. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-026-09323-y.