The Self Growth Side of Peer Review

• by 2 Shabd
• September 21, 2026
• 5 min read

When you review someone else, it may look like you are simply helping them understand their strengths and areas for improvement. But there is another, less obvious benefit:

While observing others, you start observing yourself.

And that can make peer reviewing a powerful tool for your own growth.

1. You Become More Aware of Your Own Behaviour

Suppose your teammate is responsible for presenting your team's work.

During the activity, you notice that they:

• waited until the last minute to prepare,
• did not communicate a problem early,
• or ignored a useful suggestion from another teammate.

When you write an observation about this behaviour, you are not just describing what they did.

You are also creating a mental reference for what that behaviour looks like.

The next time you are in a similar situation, you may catch yourself thinking:

"Wait, am I doing the same thing I just pointed out in someone else?"

That moment of self-awareness is where the benefit begins.

2. You Become More Cautious About Repeating the Same Mistakes

A behaviour becomes easier to notice once you have consciously identified it.

If you repeatedly observe that good teamwork requires people to communicate problems early, you become more conscious of your own communication.

If you observe that someone dominates a discussion without giving others a chance to speak, you may become more aware of how much space you take in conversations.

If you observe that someone accepts criticism but never acts on it, you may start asking yourself whether you actually act on the feedback you receive.

You are essentially building your own behavioural checklist.

Every useful observation you make about someone else can become something you subconsciously check in yourself.

3. You Learn by Observing Real Situations

There is a difference between reading:

"You should communicate better."

and actually seeing a situation where poor communication creates a problem.

Peer reviewing gives you access to many different ways people behave in the same situation.

• One teammate may be excellent at organizing.
• Another may be good at taking initiative.
• Someone else may be good at handling disagreements.
• And someone may demonstrate a behaviour that creates friction for the team.

By observing all of these behaviours, you get more examples of what effective and ineffective behaviour looks like.

That becomes useful when you face similar situations yourself.

4. Your Reviews Make You More Responsible for Your Own Behaviour

There is also a psychological shift that happens when you know your observations are being used to understand behaviour.

You are no longer casually saying:

"He didn't communicate properly."

You are thinking more carefully about what actually happened.

• What did you observe?
• What did the person do?
• What was the impact?
• What could have been done differently?

That level of observation makes you more conscious of behaviour itself.

And once you start paying attention to behaviour in others, it becomes harder to completely ignore the same behaviour in yourself.

5. The Reviewer Can Become the Next Person Being Reviewed

This creates an interesting cycle.

You observe someone → you identify a behaviour → you understand why it matters → you become conscious of that behaviour in yourself → you get another opportunity to practise it differently.

So peer reviewing is not simply:

Reviewer → Person being reviewed

It can become:

Reviewer → Observation → Self-awareness → Behaviour change

That is where the real value lies.

6. The Best Review Is Not Just a Judgment

A useful peer review should not be about finding faults in someone.

It should help both people learn.

When you write:

"You need to communicate better."

there is not much to learn from it.

But when you write:

"When you realized the supplier had not delivered the required materials, you waited until the final discussion to mention it. Sharing the problem earlier could have given the team more time to find an alternative."

you are doing something different.

You are identifying a specific behaviour in a specific situation.

The person being reviewed gets an opportunity to improve it.

And you, as the reviewer, now have a concrete example of what early communication looks like — and something you can watch for in your own behaviour.

Peer Reviewing Is a Two-Way Learning Process

The person receiving the review gets:

Feedback → Awareness → Opportunity to improve

The person writing the review gets:

Observation → Behavioural awareness → Self-reflection → Opportunity to improve

That is why peer reviewing should not be thought of as something you do for someone else.

You are also training yourself to notice behaviour.

And when you become better at noticing behaviour in others, you often become better at noticing it in yourself.

Every observation you write about someone else can become a question you ask yourself:

"Do I do this too?"

That question may be one of the most valuable outcomes of peer reviewing.